Society determines FED. Human institutions drive food, ecology and diet from supply chains to governance. Society is also about people, how they think, behave and their emotional responses. Feeding everyone needs...
Solutions within society
Solutions to feeding everyone have to leverage and even disrupt society with all its psychological and institutional complexity. Science is the easy part. The real inspiration is needed to tackle the man-made institutions that can and perhaps should be replaced, restructured, or reformed. This will need courage, care, and a healthy supply of evidence.
Be bold and throw your ideas into the real world of people with all their wants, needs and constraints.
CharlieSociety Topics
Degrowth because the planet is finite
Growth is what we are sold as the only way to make our lives better. Here we utter blasphemy with two additional letters.
Mark
Why we love soil carbon
We know that soil carbon is essential for food production from sifting through the science and from our practical experience working with soils from Nairobi to Narrabri. Here is a summary of that logic.
Comment | Feeding everyone well means dealing with an elephant
If the world's farmers grow enough food to feed everyone well, why are 800 million people hungry, a billion obese, and 2 billion people with nutrient deficiency?
Producer or keeper. Pastoralists chasing the dollar and the sheep
Humans could only live in certain parts of the world because we domesticated animals, our partners in global expansion and world domination. When we got there, we also had an eye for profit.
Remember, not everyone is wealthy
A great fortune is bestowed on those born into a time of plenty. We are blessed with wealth that can distort our worldview. Sometimes another one is required.
The right to life
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights set an agenda for the common achievement of all peoples, a worthy aspiration that should be at the front of everyone's mind. Here we ask what it means for food.
Intensifying land use has consequences for humanity
Agriculture is essential to humanity. We cannot live in cities or choose not to grow food for ourselves without it. But the current version of agriculture has serious consequences.
The technobabble is out of hand
Plough through the policy technobabble to get to the interesting bit…
Why do we believe what Sir David says?
Sir David Attenborough is a living legend, a UK national treasure. His documentaries inspired generations from the comfort of their armchairs and we believed everything he said.
How to avoid the classic blah, blah, blah
Infuriation, that feeling of extreme anger and impatience, can get the better of anyone. We suffer from it almost daily but find ways around some of it…
Obsession with top down
Sometimes you read a well-meaning research article and all is well until, boom, it hits you. The authors are from somewhere beyond the Orion nebula, over 1,300 light years away. Here is evidence that the aliens have...
The irony of naturalness
We are so far removed from nature we cannot touch, see or smell it—but we still prefer the nature-friendly option
Why Greta Thunberg said “blah, blah, blah”
Youngsters are often fearless, courageous individuals with the ability to see through the fog. We need them to keep calling us all to the task.
What the market needs
Who needs a dozen types of eggs and over 30,000 products in the supermarket?
A consumer’s take on food security
What could we expect the average shopper to know about food security or why the experts are nervous all of a sudden.
10 keys for a new commitment to nature
The UN is good for a few targets, goals and the occasional pledge. The latest one for nature might just be better than most.
How to predict the future
The COVID pandemic rattled our perception of the future. Should we even try to predict what happens next?
Comment | Is ecocide a crime against humanity?
Genocide is one of the four mass atrocity crimes alongside war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing. Ecocide is about to become one too.
In land management, always tackle the social issue first
It amazes me how much knowledge humanity has accumulated. Even more baffling is how we fail to use it.
Why are we failing to adapt to climate change impacts?
Emission reduction is essential against the threat of climate change, but it might not be enough.
CEOs won’t do anything that hurts the bottom line
Bullshit all you like; the bottom line is singular
Please mow your lawn — the challenge of additionality
Markets are only a tool to reduce greenhouse gas emissions if they change business as usual
Broad-scale land clearing is just lazy
Farmers are not lazy. They are some of the hardest working people on the planet. So why imply that they are?
Eccentric until they aren’t
People with ideas are more valuable than ever, even the eccentric ones.
Cats eat mice — Is this evidence or inference?
We know that cats eat mice because we all watched Tom & Jerry cartoons. But how do you know for sure if the cat killed the mouse?
Hedging on the future
Carbon in the soil is a good thing all around. But is it enough to hedge our emissions future?
Carbon footprints
Did you know the idea of a carbon footprint goes back to the 1990s? More than 30 years of calculating how much a person contributes to greenhouse gas emissions.
Don’t give the climate change deniers any air
Climate change denial is still with us despite all the evidence that makes deniers look foolish. The real problem is that the believers don’t quite get it either...
71% of people prioritize environmental protection over job creation
Yep, hard to believe isn’t it but a clear majority of the people in mature economies are concerned about the environment. Their intuition is telling them something that politicians don’t seem to get...
Why we fail to meet international biodiversity targets
Humanity has taken over the world. We like dominion. But this all-conquering species also likes to set itself targets only to fail when the accounts are in...
