Around the world one thing that unites all of is food. In today's super consumerist world of mobile phones, laptops, foreign holidays and high fashion it's easy to forget that some things are significantly more important than others. Food is different from all other commodities, we rather obviously cannot do without it, yet it is often too easily taken for granted.

With Oil hitting the $100 a barrel mark for the first time ever and global demand surging ahead, oil doesn’t look likely to fall in price significantly anytime soon… but what does this have to do with food?

Fact is, the global market place has developed to such an extent that we have become used to eating foods from around the world, fruit and veg that never seems to be out of season and a choice that is ever growing. Whereas kids growing up in the 40's and early 50's famously didn't know what a banana was, kids of today are more concerned with obesity bought about by cheap calories than shortages.

Modern food production is a high tech business, long gone is the simplicity of local markets and seasonal foods. More than simply our reliance on imported foods and feedstuffs for animals, even our own produce can travel huge distances before reaching the shops. One seemingly mad example being Scottish farmed prawns being flown to Thailand to be shelled before being returned to the UK for local markets. Everywhere you look it is apparent that we have developed a food system that is dangerously reliant on oil.

Let us not forget of course that all our agricultural inputs, like fertilizers, pesticides and the machinery to apply them are all reliant on oil and natural gas for their production. Gordon Brown has initiated an inquiry into the security of our food supply only last month, I fear it will make grim reading. The UK's own oil and gas wells have already peaked in production and are in irreversible decline, suddenly this oil based food production system seems very fragile. An of quoted statistic is that we are currently burning 10 calories of fossil fuel energy for every single calorie of food delivered to our plates via the global supermarket system.

A low carbon, eco friendly economy will simply not be able to sustain this system of production.

Get an allotment! That's my advice to anyone, just learning how to produce a small contribution to your diet is a triple benefit. Saving energy, giving you really nutritious food and making a real contribution to community building, compositing and recycling, its all good for the environment… I imagine a sort of 21st century dig for victory campaign… if you remember your WW2 history. These are skills I have a feeling we are going to be needing again and that we have lost significantly in the years since. I can't help think that we will all have to re-forge a much direct bond with our own local environments, literally getting your fingers in the soil.

I like to plant fruit tress everywhere I go. I work with schools, communities and my friends; you'd be amazed how many opportunities there are to introduce edible plants into your locality. There is so much unutilised public spaces, verges, hedge rows, traffic islands and most of all roof tops. In terms of a creative solution roof gardens is a great idea to bring the green back into our cities. Don't get me started because this is one of my pet subjects of the moment but there so many ways we can make huge contributions to reducing the impacts of our eco-destructive lifestyle's and roof gardens is one of them.

LivingRoofs
www.livingroofs.org
Promoting living roofs around the UK and the world

Reading International Solidarity Centre
www.risc.org.uk/garden
A great example of growing food in cities – a roof top edible garden in Reading city centre.

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