Welcome to our West Oxfordshire Green Party blog on Food and Farming, which we hope you will feel free to contribute to as issues and relevant thoughts arise.
Three quarters of our constituency is covered by farmland (56% cereals, 30% livestock) with a population 687,466 (2019) largely residing between Witney, Burford, Carterton, Charlbury, Chipping Norton, Eynsham and Woodstock and villages in between. We have an appealing mix of access to pleasant green spaces and efficient business centres although this does not remove us from the alarming symptoms of climate emergency, some members will recount their personal experiences of repeat flooding and flash flooding of their properties since 2007.
Simultaneously we have been experiencing grave concerns about the water quality of our beloved rivers, Windrush and Evenlode. We know that the farming industry could make a hugely significant contribution to our carbon storage if we were minded to seize the opportunity. More recently, our changed status with the EU and Covid-19 has drawn our attention to where we plan to source our food from and indeed, how it is grown. How can we make a different use of the land that is on our doorstep?
The past years have been hugely challenging for the farming community, where they have depended on subsidies (from the EU) whilst needing to raise an income apart from the land in order to make ends meet. Margins are very tight, supermarkets and multinational cereal companies drive the hardest of bargains and conditions. Trends, guided by government post WW2 have persuaded farmers to push for higher yields at the unacknowledged cost to biodiversity. We presently have a situation where younger people can neither afford to set up in farming and are discouraged by the exodus from the industry and lacking the very considerable capital to get started.
What can we do? We know we cannot depend on importing so much out of season food, nor tolerate a society that has such a degree of food poverty as we have seen over the past year. Neither can we risk loosing any more of our top soil into the rivers, nor allowing these rivers to be further polluted with nitrates and phosphates.
Some of us grow some of our food and many have used lockdown to spend more time growing than ever before and found it more satisfying, the putting down of roots, caring for the soil and wildlife sharing our spaces. We are encouraged by the regenerative farming movement and its ethos of seven year rotation allowing roots of a variety of plants to become established rebuilding life underground, and Community Supported Agriculture set up by the Kitchen Garden Scheme enabling both local employment and opportunities for us to have supplies of vegetables on a regular basis within our towns and villages.
Perhaps we could have a discussion on these issues.
