Not picnic weather

A blustery day today, and cold with it. The kids pitched in to help me with a picnic blip though, for Oxfam's global picnic. Rather appropriately, they are gazing out over a field of barley, which at the end of June will be harvested for pig food, to feed our obsession with meat.

The shops today showed no sign that people were thinking more about food, production and equity - more about stocking up for the long weekend ahead. And while I feel good momentarily about the lettuce harvested from our garden, and the tomatoes and chillis we will be enjoying later in the summer, I know I can't be complacent about my place in the mess we've made of food supply around the world. I have long struggled with the balance between supporting communities trying to trade their way out of poverty in Africa and elsewhere, and with encouraging sustainable local (to me) production of food and thereby avoiding diversion of local (to them) resources into industrial food rather than what will best feed their families, along with the transport pollution which is inevitably a large part of our global market.

I'm not going to solve anything in this blip, of course, but I will get involved with interest in Oxfam's campaign. Something has to change.