Beautiful carrots

Every now and again, I get involved in looking at the bigger picture of what we do here at North Aston.  In pursuit of that, yesterday I went to the All Party Parliamentary Group on Agroecology in the Houses of Parliament to hear some eminent people discussing why our economic system makes it more profitable to produce food in ways that damage the environment and our health, instead of rewarding methods of production that deliver benefits.  The original question, unsurprisingly, answered by one and all, was that the economic system was driven by very limited criteria that didn't take into account the true costs of current practices.

The discussion then was that in order to truly reflect the real costs one must quantify (make visible and accountable) all the externalities (the consequences) good and bad of different food production methods so that decision making on support and funding can be well-grounded.  One then must find a way of putting a value on health, well-being, environment, etc. no idea how one does that but there are clever people out there already on the case and 'modelling' seems to be an exciting and happening kind of research tool which can handle these complex issues.  (In my day I think they called it 'statistics' but this is much cleverer!)

That's good then, all sorted!  For sure now everyone will see that the future depends on nurturing our resources not exploiting them.  Yeah right!  Now all we have to do is overcome the well-financed vested interests who have at their disposal resources which will at every turn counteract any move that threatens the status quo.  Sometimes it does feel incredibly pointless trying to change things but then doing nothing is not an option!!

Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but I defy anyone to dispute the beauty and fine taste of this week's carrots.  A comment from Val (who is celebrating her birthday today) was that "they were a joy to harvest, hardly any imperfections or little ones to discard".  Hope you enjoy them.

In the box this week we have (drum roll)  NEW potatoes!  We also have those delicious new carrots pulled by Val, onions, pointed green cabbage, calabrese, tomatoes, mushrooms and lettuce.  In the fruit bag as well as apples, oranges and bananas we have clementines and kiwis.