GROW campaign points: Food Price Spikes

For my last post of the day on World Food Day, I'm going to talk a little bit about one of the four major issues that Oxfam are trying to tackle in the GROW campaign: Food Price Spikes. This year's World Food Day theme is “FOOD PRICES – FROM CRISIS TO STABILITY” so it's particularly fitting to talk about this today. Here's how Oxfam explain the issue:

“After decades of progress, the number of people without enough to eat is actually increasing, and food price spikes are a big part of the problem. That's because, when you spend up to 75% of your weekly income on food – as many poor families are forced to do – sudden rises have an especially destructive effect. Price spikes have many causes – the changing climate, oil prices, dysfunctional commodities markets, biofuels policies that mean crops end up in cars and not on plates – but what's clear is that we are facing a whole new challenge. It's time for governments to work together to deal with food price crises effectively – and to tackle the problems that mean millions of people can't afford enough to eat.”

In these tough economic times, even in this country we are feeling the effects of fluctuations in food prices. From a quick bit of Google researching (please comment if you find figures that are different!) I found out that in the UK 8.8% of what we spend goes on food. So obviously in a country where up to 80% goes on food, the effects of price spikes are going to be much more greatly felt. By backing Oxfam's campaign, we can work together to make the food future more secure for everyone.

Sign up to show your support and make a difference.

Food Diary: The Perils of a Busy Weekend

When I decided to do a food diary for Oxfam's GROW week, this isn't the ideal start I had imagined. As I've previously posted, I enjoy cooking most of my food from scratch but there are times, even for those of us with the best intentions, when convenience wins the day. I've had a very busy weekend! I was up early on Saturday to help set up for a dry stone walling course on the farm then after an hour or so at home to work on my first blog posts for GROW week I raced down to town to meet fellow Oxfam campaigner Milly from the station. We had lunch at The Keys restaurant and a good catch up on how our Oxfam work is going then set about campaigning at Oxjam Huddersfield (I'll be writing about this in much more detail – watch this space!). We were certainly very productive, visiting all 6 venues across town and taking over 60 photos of Oxjammers pledging their support to the GROW campaign. We stopped into my least favourite supermarket to get a sandwich en route between venues. I got home just after midnight and went straight to bed – campaigning is pretty tiring work!

On Sundays I work as a waitress so again I've been out all day. I didn't have time to prepare a proper packed lunch so I just took snacks.

So now I've made my excuses, here is my weekend food diary:

Saturday:

Cold Porridge with Sultanas, Cinnamon and Ginger

Cup of Tea (at Stirley Farm) - Fairtrade Teabag, local delivered milk

Cup of Tea (at home) - Fairtrade Teabag, organic milk from supermarket

Malt Loaf slice with olive spread

Jacket potato with Beef Chilli and grated cheese and side salad at The Keys

Bottled Swedish Pear Cider at Student Union

Tesco Ham and Cheddar sandwich

Tesco finest Hand Cooked crisps Sea Salt and West Country Cider Vinegar

3 x Half Pint Broadoaks Perry at the Head of Steam

Sunday:

Cold Porridge with Sultanas, Cinnamon and Ginger

Cup of Tea (at home) - Fairtrade Teabag, organic milk from supermarket

Hot Chocolate (where I made a mistake on an order – what a treat!)

6 x Sainsbury's Scottish oat cakes

The last remaining scrapings from a tub of hummus (from Sainsbury's I think)

Philadelphia

2 x Malt Loaf slice with olive spread

A couple of chips in the kitchen at the restaurant

Pasta (Sainsbury's Organic brand) and leftover home-made sauce containing onion, garlic, tomato, aubergine, squash, chorizo

Half a packet of instant custard

Fairtrade Banana – put in the freezer but I wasn't patient enough to let it freeze properly so it was just highly chilled...

The idea of keeping the food diary is that I will analyse the food that I've been eating and look at particular issues. From this monster list I'm not really sure where to start. I think the thing that is most apparent after this weekend is that buying food on the go doesn't always make it easy to make the most ethical or ecological choices. I have no idea where the food I ate at The Keys came from or what their food agenda is, if they have one! Being quite an indecisive person, I have enough trouble choosing a sandwich quickly in the first place let alone if I were to read the ingredients list on each one... Looking at the ingredients now for the sandwich I chose (bad choice, quite disappointing) both the bread roll and the mayonnaise have egg in them. In a previous post I've written about how I always buy free range eggs but to be honest I don't pay that much attention to egg as ingredients in other products. I doubt the eggs in my rubbish sandwich were free range. I think this is something I'm going to have to start paying more attention to... This convenience food business is all rather inconvenient.

I could probably write an essay on what I've eaten this weekend, and I might revisit some of the items over the week, but I think that's enough to sink your teeth into for now.

World Food Day - My Food Story

Like most people, my relationship with food was formed in my childhood but unlike a lot people, I grew up on a farm so my connection to food runs particularly deep. We drank raw milk, ate eggs from our own hens and beef from our own cows and, much to the horror of most people I relate my stories to, I had no qualms about eating my closest childhood friends. What is more, food never went in the bin. Ever. When I left home, putting peeling or scraps into the bin was something I could never get used to (thank goodness for composting!). Having always had a special place in my heart for the chickens and ducks on the farm, I could never bring myself to buy eggs from caged hens. The taste and even the colour of eggs from home is simply incomparable to anything you get from the supermarket.

So it might surprise you to hear that, even though my parents are organic dairy farmers, I had always been somewhat less picky about the milk I bought. It was only this summer after working with OMSCo promoting the conservation benefits of organic dairy farming that I actually thought about the bigger picture of what difference that seemingly insignificant supermarket choice can make. For a price difference of a few pence, I like to know that I'm supporting an industry that has a less negative environmental impact than conventional farming and has increased welfare benefits for the cows too. It's also the industry my parents are involved in so it is quite shameful how late in the day this realisation has come! So you see, it's even possible for someone with a strong link to the land to become disconnected from it...

So that's my food story. What's yours? Please comment, I'd love to know.

GROW: What's it all about?

This week, 15^th - 22^nd October, is GROW week. The GROW campaign was launched earlier this year and is Oxfam's major campaign at the moment. Here's a quick guide to the GROW campaign:

What's it all about? Nearly one billion people worldwide do not have enough to eat. This isn't down to any one factor. GROW is about getting to the root causes of global hunger and fixing our broken food system. If you've got 45 seconds free, watch this video!

Why does it matter? Oxfam is well known for it's work in famine relief - it's the reason they were originally founded! Tackling the underlying causes of hunger and making sure that the food we making is effectively and fairly distributed means that in the future such interventions won't be necessary. Oxfam believes that there are four major causes of global hunger which form the pillars of the GROW campaign. I will talk about each one in greater detail throughout the week. The four issues are 1) Land Grabs 2) Climate Change 3) Food Price Hikes 4) Intensive Farming

What can I do? This is a global problem which everyone in every country is connected to through the food they eat. Don't feel disempowered by the scale of the problem - each and everyone one of us can make a difference! I've organised the following ways you can get involved taking into consideration the busy busy lifestyles I know a lot of you lead:

 "Hmmm I'd like things to change but I'm quite busy. Is there anything I can do right now?" Yes! Sign up here to show your support for the campaign. At the time I wrote this 11,066 had joined the movement to fix the global food system.

"That's great. I've signed up. I can probably spare another 5 minutes. What's next?" Now you're signed up you'll receive campaign updates. You can get involved in campaigning from the comfort of your computer. You can email your MP, respond to calls to action, watch videos and share them with your friends to spread the word about GROW.

"I've got plenty of time and I'd love to do more!" Find out if there is an Oxfam campaign group in your area. There are lots of great ideas about ways you can raise awareness about Oxfam and GROW on the website including organising a GROW dinner party or picnic, staging a Land Grab or just getting out and talking to people at local events. Or you could blog about it!

"I've got plenty of time and I'd like to know more. I could do with a nice bit of bedtime reading" Read the report Growing a Better Future and Land and Power for more information about Land Grabs.

Food for thought

Why talk about food? Food unites us. Everybody eats – although some eat more than others.

The topic of food is one that I feel particularly passionate about. One reason for this and perhaps the root of it all, is that I love eating. Being able to cook and eat delicious meals is one thing that makes me really happy. I also care about where my food comes from and how it got to my plate. Friends and family will tell you that a trip to the supermarket with me is a nightmarish experience. Expect long deliberation over whether it's better to buy certain products grown abroad or in the UK (ie high carbon footprint from air miles or from inputs needed to grow in our climate?) Are dried chick peas better than tinned chick peas or vice versa?

Some people will think “does it matter?” Well, yes it does. I'm a big believer in consumer power and the mantra “every purchase you make is a vote about the kind of world you'd like to live in”. I like to think that the lifestyle choice I make won't be to the detriment of others, at home or abroad, in this generation or the next. Again, some people might think one person's weekly shop won't make that much difference... But one person can make a difference when they're part of a growing movement of people who want to see a change in the way our food system works.

Oxfam's current major campaign, GROW, is all about fixing the global food system. When 1 billion people across the planet go hungry every day, it's clear that something needs to change. This week, from the 15^th to the 22^nd of October, is GROW week. If you haven't already, sign up to show your support for the campaign.

Throughout GROW week, I'll be blogging daily about all things food related. I'm going to be looking in great detail at the food I eat each day as well as thinking about some of the food dilemmas which plague me the most. Follow my food musings and join me in the global dinner conversation!

The Girl Effect

After a slow start in getting this blog off the ground, I was inspired by the wonderful, creative people I met at some training I did with Oxfam to jump back on the social media bandwagon. So I've been tweeting and blogging away, and my Facebook has never been so interesting since becoming a member of the Oxfam Change group!

It was on the blog of one fellow Change activist - Love-Chari-Tea - that I first saw a video about the Girl Effect. This is truly thought-provoking stuff. If you've got three minutes to spare, watch this video. You'll be moved and inspired and you'll probably end up watching all the other videos too...

As part of a week-long campaign, I'm one of over 500 people (at the time I wrote this!) who've written blog posts about The Girl Effect. You can see all the posts here and if you're moved to write your own, you can add it to the growing list.

Zero Waste Challenge

I've been catching up on my backlog Woman's Hour podcasts over the past few days and I found Birgitte Johnson's Zero Waste Challenge a particularly interesting listen. Birgitte, a working mother of two, has been keeping an audio diary documenting her attempts to reduce her family's non-recyclable waste to zero. That's right – nothing in the bin. I've enjoyed listening to the highs (for example, when they found pasta with paper packaging) and lows (when they discovered that inside the paper packaging was actually a layer of plastic...) of the family in this eco-soap opera. As Birgitte and the family came up against various obstacles I found myself shouting out solutions (a bad habit to get into when listening to your ipod). For starters - make your own pasta! Kids want ice lollies but can't get ones with recyclable wrappers? Make your own! We used to have a freezable ice lolly mould when we were kids. Great fun! Can't find meat in the supermarket that isn't wrapped in layers and layers of packaging? Go to the butchers and ask them to wrap in paper or put it in your own packaging. Do the same at the deli. Easy!

Or maybe easier said than done. I think all conscientious people who have the slightest green inclinations would like to make everything from scratch, do the rounds at the butcher, baker and candlestick maker, and make sure that every purchase is the greenest one they could possibly make... but who has the time?! I don't have time and I don't have two children and a pessimistic husband think about...

Between 15^th and 22^nd of October as part of Oxfam's GROW week, I'll be blogging about EVERYTHING that I eat. And I eat a lot. I'll be thinking about all the different food choices we're given which are frequently confusing, often conflicting. Perhaps I'll try the zero waste challenge at some point after this blog-a-thon. I wonder what my family would think of a zero waste Christmas...? Probably that I was just being difficult, as usual.