Food

Being an importer of food at a time when world grain stocks are at all time lows, and there’s barely enough harvest to feed everyone in the world is not a comfortable place to be. The prognosis is worse as populations increase and the fossil fuel inputs to artificial fertilizers, shipping, storage and packaging all act to increase prices. There is little if anything the States can do to contain these price rises.

We must have a food security policy. We must look to producing as much as we can for local consumption. Our patterns of agriculture will have to evolve into something more like traditional organic, low input, market gardening models. One answer to what do we all do in a post gadget economy is grow your own –allotments. Growing your own is one sure way to minimise the monetary cost of feeding yourself. Once we have allotments available they should be prioritised for those who live in flats, have children, and don’t have gardens. Horticultural courses will be in high demand as people relearn the skills of fruit and vegetable gardening.

Diets are likely to change in the coming years just because of circumstances. Meat and dairy will become relatively more expensive. It takes more land to produce food from animals than from grain and vegetables. With more mouths in the world to feed we either have to find more fertile land, or eat less meat on average.

It is unlikely we would to still be using oil based fuel for agricultural machinery. We might look to biodiesel and the like for keeping the food system going. In the worst case we may even have to contemplate a much higher agricultural labour force.

With climate change we will have to consider what are suitable crops to be growing. Already in the UK there are adventurous growers experimenting with new crops for them like citrus and olives and tea.