Monthly archive for December 2013
Showing results 6 - 10 of 15 for the month of December, 2013.
12 Dec 2013
The Drift Record Shop describes itself as “an immaculately curated independent music specialist based right in the heart of the Devon countryside”. Picking up on Ruth Potts’ suggestion yesterday that “wherever practical and possible develop lasting relationships with things by having and making nothing that is designed to last less than 10 years”, we thought it might be good to pop into Drift for a chat. We spoke to Rupert Morrison, who runs the shop, to hear more about the vinyl revival and what it tells us about how people relate to artifacts of beauty.
One of the things that’s been quite marked in music over the last few years has been the return of vinyl back from the dead pretty much. What does that tell us about how people’s relationship with music and how they buy it is changing do you think?
For us, we’ve probably sold about as much vinyl now as we always have. It’s just a case that the awareness is drastically different. Things like Record Store Day and Black Friday have just passed, stations like 6 Music and The Guardian have been particularly supportive as well. The awareness of the format of vinyl, the awareness of independent retailers, the awareness of actually going and buying a record from a local record shop has become a hugely supported thing and I think in this sector, more than any other sector. You don’t get a network of shoe shops or even book shops, which would seem like a very logical thing, coming together under an umbrella of marketing and support. It’s really just awareness.
More vinyl is being pressed now than for the last couple of decades. The prices are better, the availability is a bit better. But the best part, we always stock a comparable amount and certainly sell a comparable amount, but it’s nice that people want to come and get involved and maybe we’re diversifying in terms of demographics that are getting into it, particularly younger people, the kids.
And why do people buy it?
Vinyl? Because it sounds better. Because it makes them look cool. That’s what it’s all about isn’t it? It’s been an easy sell to people. It’s bigger. You’ve got a CD, whereas vinyl’s four times bigger, it’s bigger artwork and you buy it and carry it around and people know you’ve bought something. You can talk about analogue and how that’s what you’re into.
You can look at shops like Urban Outfitters, they’re very canny and their ability to track zeitgeists is second to none. They started selling Nirvana and Sub Pop and Sonic Youth t-shirts around 7 or 8 years ago, and suddenly everybody’s doing that and grunge is back with the kids and now they’re even covering that kind of stuff on X-Factor.
As soon as they started selling copies of hip-hop records, so NWA has just been reissued today. As soon as those records started appearing in firstly Urban Outfitters, I think Topshop even sells a few records now, it’s fashion. It’s a fashion thing and that’s why it’s been such an easy sell.
But the actual brass text of why a lot of people buy vinyl is because it’s a great format to listen to music on. I think that again it’s a slightly easy sell to people to invest in physicality when that physicality’s a bit impressive. It’s big. It’s a huge physical thing that you can hold. I think that’s why.
What’s the difference with something like if you bought, say, Metal Box by Public Image Limited on CD or had it as three or four 12 inches in the actual metal box? You make music as well (Rupert records as R.G. Morrison) and when you make music to be on a CD as a long list of tracks, how different is it, as an artist, when you’re preparing something you know’s going to be on vinyl with 2 sides, 4 sides, 6 sides or whatever?
When we were writing the new record, we programmed it as 2 halves, so it wasn’t just a case of “that’s about the half way mark and which side does the last track fall on, that’s the first five and that’s the second five”. Traditionally always the track 7 is the strong track because it’s the flip, it’s the first track on the B side. You do have to programme things in a certain way. I know a lot of my friends and peers who are in bands actually write in the context of 2 sides, or 4 sides if they’re on a slightly more affluent label! Not to suggest my label aren’t, it just doesn’t require 4 sides.
I think traditionally it’s a format that musicians have grown up with. It’s existed for longer than any of us so the fact that it’s still here is why it’s such an enduring format. The most important records that I own are always on vinyl even though I probably own more CDs and cassettes than I own vinyl. It’s just that that’s always been a cheaper format and a bit more throwaway, so I just, growing up, had all three. But I haven’t got a tape player at the moment. I’ve got lots of boxes!
I think in terms of the quality of actual audio, if you’ve got a good amplifier then you’ll hear the difference. If you’ve got a good stylus you’ll hear the difference. But I think realistically a lot of the more domestic, budget players won’t make that much difference in quality between CD and vinyl. But there’s always a process of how you consume that music. It’s not as easy as to skip forward. There’s certainly no shuffling and you do pretty much have to sit and listen to something and then flip it over and listen to the other tracks. I think when everything’s so disposable and at your fingertips, it’s a different way of consuming music. I think you tend to listen more. I think that’s had an impact as well.
I was watching a video on the Erased Tapes website all about vinyl and what they do, the care and the artistry they put into that, creating these beautiful, beautiful things. What’s your sense of how vinyl has become something that’s really just gorgeous and exquisite?
Those guys are a slight exception because they’re all based in Berlin and they’re completely mad, eccentric German guys who have put themselves in a position where they can do that. But there’s a certain fetish element. With things like Record Store Day, there’s certain customers who queue up and come in who we see once a year, they turn up on Record Store Day and are buying things based on what they’re told is the exclusive nature of the element.
It’s a more laborious process, making vinyl. It’s kind of like alchemy, in terms of mastering the records. There’s so many different factors. It’s a very artisan thing and it’s a finalising part of the process which has been the recording process. Vinyl mastering engineers are amazing. The guy who masters my records, a great guy called Noel Somerville, mastered the Boards of Canada records. He did such a good job when they first made those records making the plates that he pointed out that there isn’t really any point in him remastering those records from tapes, just get the plates he made. As soon as he said that and went ahead with it, he realised that he’d done himself out of a couple of days of studio time!
With somebody like Noel’s work, he went through the process 15 years ago. Those physical plates, they got them, they pressed them, and those records still sound fantastic. It’s a complicated thing, it’s not quite the same as just flattening audio and putting it on CD. It’s an artisan thing.
In terms of packaging, vinyl is bigger. There’s a guy locally, I think it’s called Live Work Unit. What he actually produced for his CD packaging was amazing. It was almost like an A3 size poster that he’d worked out how to carefully fold down so it formed the shell of the packaging. There were tracing paper inserts, it was a really beautiful thing. So you can put that attention in, but in terms of mass producing something, it’s different economics isn’t it?
What difference does it make for a small, independent shop like you as part of a local economy like this? Does it feel like one of the things that’s an essential part of the mix that distinguishes you from, say, Fopp?
I think the biggest thing with us is our actual process of presenting things. Realistically, you could go into our shop or go into any number of independent record shops today and the same records have just come out and will be on the racks. We get the same press releases so if they felt like talking about it they’d probably say the same things, they’d probably play the same records. There’s a fair chance you could go into any of those independents and pick up the same records today, so it’s about how we curate what we get in.
We certainly don’t take everything, I’d say we only take about a third of what’s actually offered to us. There’s a huge amount available and I think a big part is the curating process. In terms of getting people to come in, having limited stock and exclusive stock helps, and they tend to be a bit more expensive so selling those units can certainly help in terms of having a slightly quieter day.
We’re not particularly close to any of the big retailers like HMV or Fopp. Plymouth and Exeter still have HMV shops but I don’t think it really affects us a great deal to be honest. I certainly wouldn’t want them to go. I think HMV is run terribly, and I think the people who have been put in a position to do so are complete idiots and they’ve proved themselves to be incompetent and inept beyond belief, but they’re still there and I just hope that the goodwill they’ve been shown and the support they’ve been shown by distributors and labels that they turn a corner and you do still have a large physical high street retailer.
We’re lucky that we’re able to do what we do where we do it, but there are lots of places that you can’t just rock up and take a fairly big shop space and do something as decadent as we’re doing, because the overheads are just not viable and even someone like HMV are going to get driven out of that equation, and it’ll just become a Primark. You then won’t have that physical retailing and it becomes the norm that people don’t physically see things, which feels like a sad situation to me.
One of the things that you do so beautifully here is the love and care that you put to the Deluxe newspaper that you do and the booklet of the 2013 Records of the Year, it’s all so beautifully designed. What is that ingredient, do you think? Is it just that the people who run the shop are music nerds?
Rupert’s mum: What we set out to do was produce the best shop we could and produce a shop that we would want to walk into, and I think that makes the difference.
There was someone on Twitter the other day (@willrobertcen) who said “if Santa had a grotto it would look like this” (and posted the photo below). That’s something really magical. If you love music, it’s really nice.
!["If Santa had a grotto it would look like this".](https://www.transitionculture.org/wp-content/plugins/wp-o-matic/cache/7421e9e507_santadrift.jpg ""If Santa had a grotto it would look like this".")
We’re very lucky in that we’re able to do it. I don’t say that lightly because it’s a really difficult time. I think globally people are feeling it, so even when you scale it right back to problems of traffic directions and getting people to physically come into the shop, it’s a really hard thing to do and a really hard time to do it. We are supported, and we’re very grateful to be given the time and opportunity to do that but I think as soon as you don’t care about this, it is a job and we are geared around commerce, that’s what we’re here for.
Although it’s nice to have information written on the front of the CDs and booklets produced about things, it’s produced as a mechanism to make the process more svelte, for people to come in and find what they’re after and spend money, because that’s what we’re here for. But at the same time, it’s not got huge profit margins. If we were interested in making huge amounts of money then I think we’d be running off t-shirts and hitting the mechanisms and models that much more successful people do. It’s about loving that we do it. We’re not looking to become as big as Fopp because as soon as you do, you lose the part that we enjoy doing so much. So long as we accept that there’s not any retiring, we’re happy to keep on keeping on.
Read more»
11 Dec 2013
Ruth Potts is the co-author, with Andrew Simms, of a pamphlet called The New Materialism, founder of Bread, Print and Roses, and organiser of the recent ‘Festival of Making’. She describes her work as “inviting people to fall in love with stuff in a good way”. We sat down with Ruth under a tree in the Healthy Futures garden in Totnes to pick her brains about materialism, “stuff” and what a new relationship with stuff could look like.
What’s wrong with materialism Ruth? Surely people only buy iPads because they need them?
I guess what we’re saying in the pamphlet is that there isn’t anything wrong with materialism. We are after all part of a material world. We live in a physical world, we’re part of that physical world. But we think materialism has become synonymous with a sort of passive and destructive consumerism so that we are persuaded, to paraphrase the economist Tim Jackson, to buy stuff we don’t need often for people that we don’t really like in order to create an impression that won’t last.
We’ve been persuaded, in an economy that is driven by the need to produce ever more, to buy stuff that doesn’t make us happy. We’ve been caught in a hedonic treadmill in which we’re constantly chasing the next thing. I think that the response of the Green movement to date has been either this hair-shirt miserablism where we’re told that we ought to reject stuff altogether, or it’s been replacing one kind of fairly unhappy consumerism with another, so you can have a Prius, you can have your designer shoes, your Jimmy Choos, as long as they’ve got a bit of recycled material in the sole.
I think there’s another way that we could be approaching this and I think the Green movement has been missing a trick, because actually the Green movement has distilled a different kind of materialism for decades. We know that living within our means both socially and environmentally involves things like repairing more, reimagining things we already have, recycling and many other activities prefixed with ‘re’.
The Green movement knows how to live better and I think the exciting thing about this is that by mending and caring for the stuff we already have, we enter into a different relationship with stuff which is about long-term lasting caring relationships rather than the slightly abusive consumer relationship.
The added benefit of that in the context of the current situation where we’re entering a period of austerity where the government is telling us to get out of the debt crisis at least in terms of household debt in the UK by buying more stuff, which isn’t making us happier and is getting us further into debt.
If you look at the type of economy that we could have, which is based on repairing what we have, repairing things from scratch, making things from recycled materials, it’s an economy that is rich in employment and I think it’s a real answer to a situation where everybody agrees that to stabilise the economy you need to increase demand and this is a way of increasing demand for services, for doing things, in a way that doesn’t also and in fact could decrease consumption.
Isn’t that shift to an economy based on all the different ‘re’s that you mentioned one that would bring economies such as ours to its knees?
I don’t think it would. I think it’s one that is rich in employment actually. It’s an economy that calls for practical people and artists in equal measure, so you’d see a huge rise in employment in repair and maintenance for example, so everything from plumbers to painters and bakers. It’s actually a richer, more diverse economy, and an economy which replaces the impoverishment of work; the impoverishment of the call centre and the relatively stripped-bare employment, types of employment that are satisfying and rich in social connections.
I think there is everything to be gained by switching from an economy that’s built on ever rising levels of consumption to one that’s based on repair, maintenance and doing things together.
We all have a relationship with stuff. We all have stuff in our lives. What does a healthy relationship with stuff look like? I like one of the things in your Manifesto for the New Materialism that says you shouldn’t buy anything that’s not going to last less than 10 years. What does our relationship with stuff, the contents of our house, look like in a world of new materialism?
In a New Materialist world, we would have things that we repair rather than throw away. We wouldn’t have constant upgrades. If we think about it in terms of our social relationships, what we all ultimately seek is meaningful and lasting relationships and I think that can be applied to stuff. Rather than having situations where the moment we buy something there’s a new must-have model, I think we’re looking for a world where perhaps, as they once did, our washing machines last a lifetime. I think the oldest working fridge is something like 93 years old.
It’s a culture where we build memories around the things we have in our homes. We care for them and we repair them. It’s where, in the words of Erich Fromm, buying things is ‘keeping it’ buying and where we actually have control over things that we have. I’m sure many of us have experienced the frustration where one tiny element in a toaster blows and the whole thing has to be scrapped because we can no longer access the parts that we need in order to repair it. It’s getting back to a stage where we have both a relationship with but also control over the things that we have, so we’re not just passive consumers but we’re actively engaged with our things.
I think you can already see that emerging, from the culture of repair, furniture recycling projects that are springing up all over the country to the rather fantastic Restart project whose strapline is ‘don’t despair, repair’, who are teaching people how to mend and care for and make last perhaps some of the things that have become the most high-velocity in the modern economy. Things like our laptops and our mobile phones. There’s a huge satisfaction in making things last actually.
You recently had a Festival of Making here in Totnes. How did it go?
The Festival of Making came because this is such a period of consumption and shopping, the run-up to Christmas is all about how many shopping days there are left til Christmas. We just thought it would be fun to put a Festival of Making in the heart of the Totnes high street, so we hired Totnes Civic Hall for a day and we invited local makers and craftspeople and re-makers to come and share their skills for an afternoon. We had people learning how to spin yarn that they could then knit, learning how to bake, learning how to weave containers from recycled tetra paks, people carving bows and arrows. We had a whole range of activities going on.
One of the beautiful reflections that came from that was the woman who’d been teaching people how to spin said that she had taught people not only from Totnes but also, because Totnes has a Language School, people from around the world learnt how to spin. She’d sent them off home with their spindles and with a quantity of yarn so that they could carry on that practice and teach others.
She very much hoped that we had on that day ignited something of a passion for making in everyone who came through the hall, and it was a beautiful afternoon. It was buzzing and it was alive and people were chatting and learning from one another and really enjoying themselves.
George Monbiot wrote a great article this week about Christmas. There is of course a whole industry that makes us desire that stuff. Nobody felt they needed an iPad before iPads were invented. How do we overcome that powerful commercial brainwashing?
I think there are very strong and powerful arguments for restrictions to advertising, because advertising is the medium which, in the words of Edward Bernays, one of the founding fathers of the modern advertising industry, is about “trying to convince somebody who is a nobody what they’re a somebody”. I think that’s a really miserable way of looking at people actually.
In the words of Virginia Woolf, “there are no such thing as ordinary people”. So yes, restrictions on advertising, but what we were trying to get at with The New Materialism was that the moment that we start to enter into a relationship with the things that we have by caring for them and repairing them, actually we reduce some of the lure of that advertising, because we don’t want to give up things that we love. By learning to repair what we have, part of that is that it could make us immune to advertising and satisfied with what we have.
I think George Monbiot is exactly right to point out that Christmas is one of the points of the year where this mass consumer treadmill goes into absolute overdrive and we’re convinced not only that we have to buy something for everybody but that we have to spend hundreds of pounds that in the current climate or if ever, people don’t have. This is why we are experimenting this year by making the run up to Christmas a ‘Make Something Month’.
We’re encouraging people just to have a go at one thing, because we think that the more that we make for one another in the run up to Christmas, actually the more we’re going to spend time with people because often making involves asking advice off other people, learning from others, and there’s a chance that we might all arrive at Christmas a bit happier and a bit less in debt.
Read more»
11 Dec 2013
It’s not that I’m lazy, it’s just that I never really got the whole keeping fit thing. I share an office with people whose idea of a good time is running across Dartmoor at night with a head torch on, hours in the gym or cycling across mountain ranges in the snow. Never quite got the appeal myself. But what might it take to get this slightly overweight 40-something up and out and exercising? Reading about the risks of not? No. The enthusiasms of exercise-hardened colleagues? No. The near-fatal heart attack of a very dear friend? … Where do I sign up?
I cycle to work and back, a journey that involves a pretty impressive hill, but that’s about it. Most of my days are spent behind a desk, typing. Not conducive to good health, given that sitting down can lead to an increased rate of a range of health problems, including blood clots on the lungs. Yuk. When I’m home, the daily doings of family life keep me on my feet most of the time, but it’s not enough really.
I did try running a few months ago (whatever happened to “jogging”? It seems to be definitely “running” now…), inspired by my office-mates and their tales of the mythical moment when “the endorphins kick in” and you feel amazing. I tried it for two weeks. A distinct lack on endorphins. Lots of puffing and panting in a sweaty blather, looking faintly ridiculous, my body letting me know in several different ways that it really was not enjoying this, until I pulled a muscle in the back of my leg and my career as a long distance runner was prematurely laid to rest. I wasn’t too sad about that, if I’m honest.
I tried yoga. I kind of enjoyed that, even though it was actually surprisingly hard work. I had to pay for 10 sessions, but with work commitments I ended up only making about 6, so I didn’t do that again. Apart from gardening, the odd extra bit of cycling and walking the dog, that was about it really. I used to play football occasionally at events with 12 year old boys where a few similarly out-of-shape dads could convince themselves that they were actually sort of still in shape, and reasonably good at football, neither of which were really true.
Then, two weeks ago, one of my very best friends, who I’ve known since I was 16, had a heart attack. At 46. A year older than me. If he hadn’t been at his brother’s house, who called the ambulance quickly, he may not be here today. He spent 5 days in hospital, had 2 stents put it, and will be on medication for the rest of his life. They did that amazing thing where they insert a tube into your wrist and through that can basically give your heart a full MOT, unblock tubes, install new bits and so on. It was a huge shock to friends and family, I think I’m still feeling it.
He’s the first of my peers to have such an experience. Luckily he’s still here, but he could easily have not been. Since the beginning of Transition, we have talked about how change happens. How can we bring about the kinds of change, on the scale required, to turn things around in time? We challenged the “people will only change when they have no choice” school of thought, because if it were true, there would be no recovered addicts in the world. We speculated on the approach of Motivational Interviewing, which finds that change happens when our actual behaviour and our core, foundational beliefs come into such discrepancy with each other that we have to change.
We’ve tried to model, through Transition, an approach that invites people, without the guilt-trips and cajoling, that change is more fun than no change, and for some, that really works. As someone told me the other day, “I’ve cut my carbon footprint by 60% over the past 2 years, and it’s been an absolute blast”. But I do now appreciate that there is also a place for being shocked into action. I’d known I should be doing more for years, and didn’t do it. This was the kick up the arse that I needed.
As a result, I’ve finally found a form of exercise that suits me. Swimming. Swimming’s great isn’t it? Never really appreciated it before. One of my regularly-exercising colleagues told me that when it comes to fitness things, it takes 3 weeks to form a habit. Well, I’m nearly 3 weeks in now, and it’s starting to feel like a habit. I try to go every lunchtime. The first time I went I could only swim 2 lengths front crawl before I was too puffed and had to do a couple in breast stroke to get my breath back. Now I can do 50. I can feel myself getting fitter, and more resilient when I am swimming. And yes, whether they’re the mythical endorphins or not, I definitely get something from it.
Great thing about swimming also is that you don’t need to fear looking like a big red sweaty blob, because everyone looks red and wet. It is sufficiently solitary to overcome the need for out-of-breath conversation-making, but there is also a social aspect to it. And the whole politics of lane swimming are fascinating. It has introduced my to a whole fascinating subculture of slightly out-of-shape over 40s who plough up and down the lanes every lunchtime. I love it.
For ages I had thought I should give it a go, but I didn’t have any goggles. That was my excuse. But I never got round to getting any goggles. Funny that. When I decided I was going to give it a go, it turned out they sold really good ones at the swimming pool. Just at the counter. Doh. So I guess this post is like my giving up flying post, or my I’m leaving Amazon post, it’s a statement of intent that people can hold me to, that I can hold myself to.
So yes, people, I am now a swimmer. I will do it in whatever lunchtimes I can. I don’t want to drop dead at 46 thank you very much. In the same way that I don’t want a world that has warmed by 4 degrees, a world run by Amazon, a world where the NSA have access to whatever personal data they feel might come in handy at some point, a world that thinks depending on cheap oil into the indefinite future is a smart move, I don’t want to live in a world where I keel over in a few years. It’s time to do something about it. Being of service to these times requires a healthy body to get you around.
Life has given me a kick up the backside, and I intend to be propelled forward by it. And thanks Iain, delighted to have you still with us mate.
Read more»
10 Dec 2013
What would our food system look like if the impacts of production on the environment and on public health were taken into account? At present the polluter doesn’t pay, and those producing food sustainably are not rewarded for positive outcomes. How might things work if the true costs of agriculture were taken into account? Tamzin Pinkerton, Food and wellbeing Editor for Transition Free Press, recently attended the True Cost Accounting in Food and Farming conference, organised by the Sustainable Food Trust at the Royal Geographical Society in London. It described itself as “a unique opportunity to discuss the development of a new economic model for a sustainable future”, and featured a great programme of international speakers. So how was it? Over to Tamzin:
“I arrived at the National Geographic Society, the beautiful South Kensington conference venue, early last Friday morning. For two days prior to the conference, many participants had been attending workshops and brain storming sessions together, so by Friday the buzz of ideas and connections had already filled the space. As guests took their seats, (including familiar foody faces from the UK, international growers, writers and NGO representatives, and an encouraging number of young students), I delved into the conference literature in preparation for the day ahead.
For those of you unfamiliar with the notion of true-cost accounting (as I was prior to last Friday), it is, briefly, the idea that the price of a product should reflect not only the cost of production and transport etc, but also the environmental and human health costs incurred to produce that jar of coffee, bunch of bananas or loaf of bread, for example. In simple terms, this would mean that a loaf made from pesticide heavy, GM wheat grown on a monoculture based farm in the US, would cost more to the UK consumer than would one made from organic wheat grown on a biodiverse farm in Suffolk.
Our current system would then effectively be turned on its head, ensuring that polluters in food production would be held accountable for the damage their practices cause. At the same time, it would mean that producers who support environmental and human health would be rewarded with tax breaks and exemption from polluters fees, while their produce would become more accessible and ultimately more profitable. Consumers would also be able to make more informed decisions about the products they buy, having a greater incentive to purchase the safer, healthier and cheaper products. True cost accounting is therefore a way of giving the environment and human health a presence and value within the economic system.
The term ‘externalities’ is used to describe environmental and human health costs currently not factored in to the price of products. An example of these would be the cost to the NHS of treating patients with obesity as a consequence of poor, modern-day diets. Further examples would be supermarket procurement practices that encourage large amounts of waste along the supply chain, or farming methods that require the subsequent clean up of water and ecosystems.
The Sustainable Food Trust (SFT) is working to promote true cost accounting in the food industry, and is also calling for more independent research to look at the nature of these externalities as well as how costs can be assigned to them. The purpose of this conference then was to raise the profile of true cost accounting, to bring together leaders and organisations in the field, and to explore ideas for action.
The list of speakers for the day was diverse and brilliant, and each one could easily have filled an entire morning with riveting stories, research results and plans of action. As it was, time was tight, but by presenting an array of fascinating perspectives the audience was definitely left wanting to find out more for themselves.
Patrick Holden opened the event by discussing the importance of stories to help connect us to our food cultures and embed our relationships to food. Prior to founding the SFT in 2011, Holden had been the director of the Soil Association for 15 years. I was particularly struck by the shift in his views about what is needed to effect change in the food industry. While he clearly still values organic farming, he now sees that all food systems need to be overhauled, and that focusing efforts on the small, organic food market alone was never going to be enough. He argues that work towards the latter was well intentioned, but naïve and overly optimistic. As a result, the focus of SFT is broader than that of the Soil Association, looking to cooperate not only with producers that are certified organic, but with all those using sustainable production methods.
Following Patrick Holden was a video message of support from Prince Charles, who had visited a workshop the day before but who was unable to be present at the Friday conference. Here is that video:
The Prince spoke of the impossibility of feeding the world on the back of weakening ecosystems. He argued that the crucial missing piece in today’s food industry is that the polluter is not held financially accountable, and that this needs to change. The Prince called for more research into finding ways of making ecological farming more profitable, and he ended on a note of cheerful optimism, saying that we do have the capacity to turn the current tide.
We then launched into the first session of the morning entitled Current Food Systems – The Hidden Costs. Professor Jules Pretty of Essex University, kicked off with his keynote address, The Need for Change. He discussed the growing awareness of the impact of farming externalities over the years since the so-called green revolution of the ‘50s and ‘60s. This led to the study conducted by Pretty and others in 1998 that attempted to calculate the cost of these externalities in the UK, (including wildlife damage, soil erosion, food poisoning etc) and the figure they arrived at was £2.4 billion per year – an amount that was in fact higher than the net income from farming at the time.
Pretty also acknowledged that this figure didn’t reflect the full extent of farming externalities – it didn’t for example, include the costs of pesticide-induced harm to human health, which would no doubt have added to the total quite considerably. It was nevertheless an important step towards assessing the true cost of food production, and Tim Lang’s study in 2005 built upon this, coining the term ‘food miles’ and exploring the costs of food transportation. The thrust of Pretty’s argument was that we need to increase yields in sustainable and small-scale agriculture. In doing so, we would protect our natural capital whilst ensuring the world’s population is well fed.
We often hear that we already produce enough to feed the entire world population, but the point illustrated by Pretty’s work on externalities, is that much of that food is produced in a way that is costly and harmful to ecosystems and human health. The focus, then, needs to be on increasing the yields of sustainable growing methods – whether through habitat design, agroforestry, mixed cropping techniques and others – to ensure not only that the environment is cared for, but also that people are eating nutritious, health-supporting foods.
Following Pretty’s keynote address were a series of short presentations by five other speakers. Professor Whendee Silver of the University of California at Berkeley, discussed the importance of locking carbon into the soil and asked whether agricultural practices can help to manage the carbon cycle so as to be part of the solution to rising CO2 levels. She argued that preserving grasslands, as carbon rich eco systems that cover 30% of the globe’s landmass, could be a way of off-setting the carbon we release into the atmosphere.
During the questions session later on, Silver also emphasised the power of word of mouth, saying that everyone at the conference was a communicator and we all have a responsibility to share stories and ideas gleaned from this conference to inspire curiosity and provoke debate.
Professor Tim Lang, of City University, followed with his discussion linking food policy and public health. Lang has been looking at the global burden of disease, focusing specifically on those diseases that are food related. He has estimated that the global costs of treatment for diabetes are approximately $1.7 trillion, that cardiovascular disease incurs $15.6 trillion and that cancer costs $8.3 trillion.
His point then, is that even if our food prices currently don’t reflect these health externalities, we are already paying for them through our taxes and our health care systems. Lang argues that we need to design our food system around ecological and public health, and that a dietary shift – away from the over-consumption of meat and towards plant-based diets – will support health and cost us less.
Next up was Peter Blom, Chief Executive of the Triodos Bank. Blom argued that our environmental, financial and social crises are connected by the practice of borrowing from the future instead of learning to build on the past, and that we need to rid ourselves of the illusion that over indebtedness is acceptable and that money will always be there. He identified three principles that would ensure environmental, social and financial success and that can be applied to any sector: transparency, sustainability and diversity.
Nadia Scialabba, the Senior Environment Officer from the FAO in Rome, then spoke about her work modelling low impact agriculture, for positive environmental impact. She discussed how organics currently internalise the external costs whereas conventional agriculture does not, and how this skews consumer choice and leaves little financial incentive for a shift to sustainable farming methods. And, in the current system, food prices have been so prohibitively high for millions, that it is unrealistic to expect them to pay the cost of natural resources on top of those prices. A new system is therefore necessary. Scialabba also emphasised the huge gap between knowledge and action – that numerous case studies exist proving sustainable methods can produce healthy yields etc, but that action is yet to follow in any meaningful way.
Lastly, Guillermo Castilieja of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation spoke about his conservation work in the Amazon, the role of funding organisations, and the need for collective, multi stakeholder action if we are to effect change in the food system. After a brief (organic, fair-trade) coffee break, the next session followed under the title of True Cost Accounting in Practice. This was where the idea of true cost accounting began to come alive for me, as we dug deeper into the realities of externality costs as well as the complexity of attributing costs.
Dr Pete Myers, the founder and CEO of the not-for-profit organisation Environmental Health Sciences, was the first to speak. The focus of his research is a matter close to my heart, and looks at the human health consequences of chemical contamination in our environment, particularly from agricultural pesticides and herbicides. This is an area that highlights the need for far more research into farming externalities, as Myers pointed out that only the tiniest amount of chemicals have been subjected to independent studies and only a fraction of studies currently connect the cause and effect of widespread chemical usage in our environment. Much headway has been made in recent years however, particularly in the field of epigenetics, exploring endocrine disruption as an effect of chemical exposure and how events in the womb play out over a person or animal’s lifetime.
Myers emphasised the point that low doses do matter, citing studies conducted on mice that show how the most minute traces of hormone disrupting chemicals can cause obesity. Worryingly, Myers also pointed out that the tools we currently use to assess what is safe in the chemical world, are deeply flawed and based on out of date science from the 1950s. I was thrilled that Myers was included in the line up though as I often feel this is a crucial, but much neglected and misunderstood area of the debate around food – one that does however, have an important role to play in the true cost accounting approach.
Nadia Scialabba then spoke once more about her FAO report, published earlier this year, that looked at the environmental impact of food waste along food chains across the world. This is the first, large-scale study of its kind into food waste and its findings are staggering. They calculated, for example, that the cost of food waste, based on producer prices, is $750 billion USD per year. The full summary of this report can be downloaded here.
Tristram Stuart, the food waste campaigner and founder of Feeding the 5k, next spoke on the same topic of food waste and the costs it incurs. He estimates that a 1/3 of all food produced is wasted, and calculates that if the land used to grow this food were simply left untouched, we would sequester 26 billion tons of carbon in its soil. Stuart is particularly keen on the idea of feeding food waste not fit for human consumption, to pigs. This is a practice currently banned by the EU, but one that he argues would be 67% more energy efficient than passing it through anaerobic digesters. Stuart also pointed out that food companies are so concerned about their brand image, that forcing them to internalise the cost of waste through a true cost accounting mechanism would have a dramatic, positive effect on their practices.
Adrian de Groot Ruiz, Executive Director or the organisation True Price, then took the stage to discuss the methodology of calculating the true cost of food products. Together with the SFT, True Price conducted a study on the price of coffee produced in Brazil, comparing true cost pricing of conventional and sustainable coffee products. They found that, by factoring in the cost of all externalities present in the production methods, a 250g pack of conventionally grown coffee (with a current retail price of $2) would have the true price of $5.17. By contrast, the true price of a 250g pack of sustainably produced coffee, was found to be $4.58.
De Groot Ruiz added though that as these sustainable methods improve in efficiency and yield, they estimate that the true price of the same pack of coffee could be reduced to $3.79 by 2018. This was a fascinating breakdown of how true cost accounting would work. The gap between current, cheap retail prices and true prices assigned to the more sustainable option, remains however. How this can be addressed in the context of increasing levels of food poverty around the globe, is an issue that was raised a number of times during the day and is one that clearly requires much careful research and attention.
Last to speak in this session was Helmy Abouleish, managing director of SEKEM, an organisation that works for sustainable development, community building and biodynamic farming in Egypt. I found his story particularly inspiring and he delivered it with passion and humour. Abouleish inherited the vision from his father of reclaiming desert soil, whilst also tackling social and economic challenges faced by Egyptian society. He quoted Mandela saying that ‘It always seems impossible until it is done’, and despite much scepticism, they have, since 1975, created communities and lush, productive farms in what was formally a barren desert. Abouleish explained that their focus on producing rich, nutritious compost and protecting the living soil, means they use 40% less water than their neighbours. The scale of their vision and extent of their achievements is quite staggering – do have a look at their website to get a full picture of the many projects they are engaged in.
By this point, my head was bulging with inspiration, and I spared a thought for the hard-working graphic designer, busy capturing the day’s highlights on a very long piece of paper running alongside the stage. Below is the first section of her work – I am hoping the full piece will be posted on the SFT website soon. Once this last session ended, off we all went to enjoy a delicious organic lunch that would sustain us through the afternoon.
The first session after lunch, Ecosystems and Food Systems: Valuing the Connection, began with a talk by Pavan Sukhdev of the global initiative, The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB). Sukhdev, an environmental economist, has been leading TEEB’s work to assess the value of what they refer to as ecosystem services – those mechanisms within our ecosystems upon which our economies depend. One example of this would be the crucial role that bees play as pollinators, and as Sukhdev pointed out, ‘No bee ever sent you an invoice’. That was my first favourite quote of the day. My second came later in his talk when he described externalities as ‘the biggest free lunch in the history of the world’. He described how, for example, the true costs of cattle ranching in South America are actually 18 times higher than the apparent costs.
TEEB also works to determine the cost of the loss of biodiversity and of environmental damage, and their aim is to ensure their findings are incorporated into decisions made by businesses and governments across the world. Sukhdev argued that the reason change isn’t happening on any grand scale is simply because the changes needed to protect our environment and health do not, in our current system, increase profit for corporations. He also referred to the work of the organisation Trucost, who are collecting data and attributing cost to the externalities produced by practices of the top 3000 global companies. In closing Sukhdev was keen to draw attention to TEEB’s recently initiated study on agriculture and food, a scoping workshop for which will be held in January 2014. See here for more information.
Following Sukhdev’s talk were three brief presentations by leaders in the field of conservation. Peter Seligmann, Chief Executive of Conservation International, began by focusing on the role of corporations and their relationship to conservation work. He was broadly optimistic about the shifts happening within corporations, which he saw as being driven by enlightened self-interest and a growing awareness of their own dependence upon the health of the environment. This elicited some scepticism from members of the audience, but Seligmann remained firm in his outlook as he spoke of the growing desire amongst corporations to act as partners with, rather than predators of, our ecosystems.
Ann Tutwiler of Biodiversity International then followed, with a stark picture of the rapid decline in biodiversity in recent years. She began by describing how of the 250,000 globally identified plant species, 7,000 of them have been used by humans throughout history, but now only 3 of these provide 60% of our total energy intake. Specific plant families tell a similar story: there are 3,000 varieties of the quinoa grain but we largely consume only 2; there are 1,000 varieties of banana but we mostly eat only one, known as the cavendish; and there are thousands of varieties of rice, but only a dozen are now widely grown.
Tutwiler pointed out that the regions of the globe that are rich in biodiversity also have high rates of poverty and that this is a precarious position to be in, as farmers struggling on the bread line won’t choose to conserve their ecosystems unless they have a perceived use for biodiverse species. Lastly, Tutwiler sited some fascinating research recently conducted in post-disaster zones in Central America, that found that those farms with greater biodiversity experienced only 50% loss of crops, as compared with the 100% losses experienced by conventional farms in the same areas. The biodiverse farms were also able to recover more quickly than their conventional counterparts.
Last to speak in this session was Mike Clarke, Chief Executive of the RSPB. Clarke also presented a bleak and shocking scenario, currently faced by bird populations around the world. He told us that since 1980, birds have been dying at a rate of 1 every 8 minutes. Many species are heading towards extinction, and Clarke gave the example of the turtle-dove which, according to current levels of decline, will be extinct within 7 years largely because of a decline of wild flowers. Clarke referred us to the brilliant publication entitled The State of the World’s Birdlife, which was launched earlier this year and is available to download here. He concluded by saying that the cost of a declining link between nature and human beings is too great, and that it is crucial that the SFT succeeds in making true cost accounting happen.
After a short break, we reconvened for the final session of the day: Testing the Proposition: Debate. A panel of five experts was gathered to discuss ideas and plans for action, and was comprised of the following:
John Humphrys of Radio 4 chaired the panel and opened the discussion with a flurry of media related (and food unrelated) jokes. I was hoping this session would be a fitting end to a rich, thought-provoking day; that it would be an opportunity to digest what we had learnt, and to identify, or at least begin to discuss, what steps would come next. It did seem though that Humphrys misjudged the mood at the conference – it had been buoyant, serious and determined – and instead, by unnecessarily and quite patronisingly grilling most people that spoke, he created one of antagonism and frustration.
As a result, most of the questions that came from the audience were attempts to defend organics, local food or the SFT vision, when instead it would have been more helpful to integrate lessons and ideas that had arisen in earlier sessions. That aside, the panel were robust in the face of Humphry’s interrogations, and Gustafson was particularly eloquent as she defended the need for affordable, healthy and safe food for all.
Having now digested the day, there are a few questions that remain for me. For one, there are clearly some externalities that are easier to quantify, in terms of cost, than others. We can be certain of the cost of a short term clean up job, but how would we establish the financial cost of child labour, life-threatening disease or the extinction of a native bird species? Complications of assigning costs arise not only because such externalities have multifaceted and complex consequences, but also in that there might be a danger of reducing what is invaluable – life and health – to a matter of economics. Reframing ecology in terms that policy makers understand may push the debate into political circles, but aren’t we then ignoring the sacredness and preciousness of the ecosystems that sustain us, and the value that they hold far beyond the market place?
A further question I have is around what would need to happen to make true cost accounting a reality. It would require support and commitment from policy makers if the market is to be restructured in such a way that protecting the environment becomes more financially profitable than damaging it. And I wonder whether being so reliant on the current system and the political will within it, could prevent the radical changes hoped for by the SFT. But I am still deeply excited about the SFT vision and am optimistic about their ability to realise it. Most of my optimism comes, I think, from the strength of feeling and collective dedication to this vision, displayed from so many sides of the food debate at this conference.
I am also particularly encouraged by the broadening of the definition of sustainability that was evident throughout many presentations and discussions – one that is concerned not only with the lowering of CO2 levels in the atmosphere, but includes also the need to protect our bird populations, to eliminate child labour, to support community cohesion, to prevent the use of pesticides that cause life-threatening diseases, to halt the destruction of virgin forests, to make affordable, nutritious food widely available, and to create an economic system that values all of the above.
Read more»
9 Dec 2013
What’s it like to set off, shod only in a pair of flip-flops, with only as much “stuff” as you can fit in a rucksack, to spend months walking the land in search of Tales of Transition? In 2010, through wind and rain, sun and sleet, Steph Bradley journeyed forth, and she has now gathered the experience into a new book called ‘Tales of our Times’. A book given physical form by artists, bookbinders, printers, and even felters. We caught up with Steph to find out more:
So Steph, you set off around England, visiting Transition groups, to gather and tell stories. Can you tell us how this walk came about?
Well, whilst I was working with Transition Network from 2008 -2010, I became very inspired by the stories pouring in on a daily basis from people all over the country, having fun, doing Transition. I’d been down to visit my parents for a weekend and quite literally had a dream in the middle of the night that mapped out the whole journey for me. The dream was very precise; to hear the stories for myself by walking from initiative to initiative, visiting a wide range of settlement types, and talking to different groups of people at different stages of Transition.
Once I’d collected the stories they were to be written up in such a way as to inspire people of all walks of life all across the world.
What was the over-riding impression you came back with?
That what people love, more than anything else, once their basic needs have been met, is to be of service to something greater than themselves. I discovered they are happiest when given opportunities to be generous, spread abundance evenly, and to work towards creating meaningful changes in situations and environments to which they have developed a connection. They feel most empowered and thrilled to do this when they have a sense of having, or being able to access, the skills and resources (both inner and outer) to be able to act effectively.
What were the main challenges you had to overcome during the journey?
It was a journey of few challenges, to be honest. There is something timeless and simple about walking with hedgerows as your companion each day. It is a very powerful experience and the challenges of everyday life fade into insignificance very quickly. I can remember a few occasions when I had to work hard at remaining in the moment with my walk though; mud, when a foot deep, is definitely a challenge for flip flopped feet (it only happened once; I soon learnt to avoid heavily trampled paths), and cows, inquisitive souls that they are, frightened the life out of me, on occasion.
They may be gentle in nature, but in physique they can be plain insensitive and clumsy, and they are bigger than us! Poor transport planning was probably the most challenging aspect of the walk. Leaving Leicester city centre on foot is not an experience I would care to repeat. I think the final thing that did have an impact on me was lack of contact with like-minded people in the stretches I walked where I had not identified a Transition, or similar group, to present their views of the area.
What did you take with you?
I carried one small green rucksack with a change of clothes; waterproof trousers, a netbook for writing up my blogs, a tin of Lush nettle all purpose soap, (it’s amazing for showers, hair, and clothes washing). I also wore a bumbag with my second hand blackberry, a pen, hankerchief, purse, & notepaper inside. I was lent a wind shirt, (an incredible 100g light windproof top that fits into a bag the size of a fist), and a pair of walking sticks, given a whistle, and bought one pair of knee length rainbow coloured socks along the way, because they reminded me of someone. I wore everything else, layering up skirts and tops when it was chilly and keeping the extras in my rucksack when it was hot. I walked in a pair of flip flops, and had a spare pair in case of emergency, along with a pack of sorboskin blister plasters.
Our theme on the website this month is ‘stuff’. How did living for months with just what you could carry on your back affect your relationship with “stuff”?
It’s funny, I was just talking about this the other day. I found walking with everything I needed to be a very freeing experience. It made me really hone down what I could comfortably carry. It was very satisfying learning how little I needed and I loved not having the pressure of buying “stuff”. It was liberating to walk around town centres observing rather than being drawn by the consumer magnet.
It changed my way of approaching shops for good. I now go out with very clear ideas of exactly what I am looking for and I search for that; nothing else distacts me. If there is something unusual and worth my while, I can identify it, rather than being overwhelmed by the sheer volume of “stuff” on offer.
One of my favourite games if I am in a town centre nowadays is to count how many kinds of chain stores I no longer have any need for and would not miss if they simply disappeared overnight.
You’ve just published your reflections on the journey, ‘Tales of our Times’. How was the process of creating the book, and what are your hopes for it now?
Publishing “Tales of Our Times” has been a journey in itself. From the decision to self-publish to ensure the use of local artisans, and retain control over presentation, design, content, and materials, to actually having 200 books to sell, took 6 months. I learnt so much; I wrote about the process of printing a book in my blog “A visit to the Bookmakers”. The real learning, though, came in the first hand experience of understanding the true, and often hidden, cost involved in creating anything; the creatives’ (writer, illustrator, cover designer) and the artisans’ (printers, stitchers and binders) time coming in as an-also-ran as the cost of materials and any associated costs pushed the cost of producing the book up into the sorts of figures that immediately put its purchase out of reach for many.
The finished book has been described as a real treasure and a modern classic. To quote NEF’s Perry Walker:
“The book is a delight, a work of art, and a pleasure to hold and to browse.”
My ambition for the book is to see a copy in every Transition Initiative, to inspire new ideas, to re-awaken those feeling bogged down in challenging situations, and to remind every Transitionista everywhere that they are a Hero of Our Times; a living part of our history, which is why I have chosen to retain what is essentially an oral rendition of the tales as the style of the book.
What is the role of storytelling for Transition do you think? What does it bring that other approaches can’t?
Without doubt, for me, Transition is all about storytelling. Not only are we creating new stories for a paradigm shift, but also remembering the old stories, passed down to help us to retain connection with our roots.
Oral storytelling has always been the most effective way of ensuring certain essential truths are passed down through the ages. What I discovered as I walked and shared stories from one initiative to another was that people were not only enchanted by the folktale rendering of the stories, they were remembering them in a way that is often not possible when presented with a set of facts and figures, graphs and charts. For many, often those with more dominant right brain activity, the stories were able to teach things a powerpoint presentation or a report could not.
For me, one of the reasons for Transition’s worldwide appeal is the positive ‘it’s- fun- and- everyone-can-be-a–hero’ message. Capturing this element of Transition is something that storytelling can do as effortlessly as people are discovering it is to make Transition projects begin to happen when they are passionate about them.
From seeing Transition in so many different places, what’s your sense of why it matters, what it brings, what people get from it?
Without doubt, Transition empowers people. It’s a creature of its time. As old structures show their cracks, and fear and apprehension about the future rear their heads, the idea that anyone can make the changes we all want to see, sets us free from the bondage of the hierarchical system we have lived as part of for so long. It’s a collaborative process being created as we go along. It challenges out moded ways, questions deeply held beliefs, and offers opportunities for everyone to shape the future, together. It aims to ensure no one’s voices are left unheard, and that we take with us into the future everybody’s skills and resources in such a way that all feel they can serve their community in a meaningful way.
People are enlivened by the process of working together towards needs meeting goals that are personally satisfying, as well as life enhancing for their communities, for the global community, and potentially paradigm shifting.
What’s next for you?
Well, I have 180 beautiful limited edition hardback books left to sell, and I am writing my next book. It will be a paperback version of the tales. I am in discussion with the publishing cooperative Vala in Bristol, and am also going to be crowdfunding its production. I feel strongly that my walking project will not be complete until the paperback book is widely available.
So why go for the limited edition when there is a paperback version coming out?
The hard back book which is already available from my website and from Arcturus bookshop in Totnes, has been written in honour of all those Transitioners who were active in and before 2010; a lasting testament to their work, something to share with their grandchildren. Every person who I came into contact with on that walk is mentioned, many with a story character name, and with all the people and groups listed in the comprehensive thanks pages, and handy information boxes that pop up here and there throughout the folktale telling pages, it also serves as a valuable resource for those new to, and/or researching Transition. To this end one copy has already gone winging its way across the ocean to inspire the good folk of Transition Vermont, and another is in the hands of a PhD researcher from the University of London.
The paperback, though it will take the “Tales of Our Times” as its structural backbone, will be altogether a different book. Its aim is to fulfil the last directive of my dream; to spread the tale of Transition across all walks of life and in all directions, reaching people who might otherwise never consider picking up a book which they might perceive as having a green agenda. It will be much shorter, have a tighter novel like storyline, be multifacted in the layers of meaning that can be understood, and designed to be picked up and enjoyed as simply a good read; an antidote to what Sarah Bird of Vala Publishing describes as ‘that perennial problem of only preaching to the converted.’
Lastly, how can Transitioners support this project?
[Here is the video from Steph’s recent book launch event in Rattery Village Hall]
All proceeds from sales of the hardback book, once the costs I incurred during publication have been met, will go towards funding the writing process of the new book. I am passionate about making this dream come true, and am believing in the possibility of receiving the support I need to make it happen. For anyone who feels they are in a position of being able to offer some of this support, I have set up various payment choices on my website ranging from sponsoring me a one off or regular amount, buying their copy of the limited editon collection of all the tales, to investing in a £2 raffle ticket for a draw to be held at my next storytelling event in Totnes on the 18th December.
Also for those who would like to hear me perform my tales in their area, I am planning a storytelling tour for early next summer. I will raffle a book at each venue. I can be contacted on transitiontales@googlemail.com.
Read more»
When we were writing the new record, we programmed it as 2 halves, so it wasn’t just a case of “that’s about the half way mark and which side does the last track fall on, that’s the first five and that’s the second five”. Traditionally always the track 7 is the strong track because it’s the flip, it’s the first track on the B side. You do have to programme things in a certain way. I know a lot of my friends and peers who are in bands actually write in the context of 2 sides, or 4 sides if they’re on a slightly more affluent label! Not to suggest my label aren’t, it just doesn’t require 4 sides.
