Volunteers prepare first weekly veg boxes of the new year

Our pickers and packers dodged torrential showers and slithery mud to fill our first seasonal weekly veg boxes of 2011.

Many thanks to team members Anne, Charlotte, Jenny, Kim, Mike S and Trish F, aided by Arwyn (3) and Seren (1)

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Fixing the food chain

Members of Camel Community Supported Agriculture will be working with Camel Area Friends of the Earth this Saturday 29 November as they promote thriving, planet-friendly farming.

We’ll be in Molesworth Street, Wadebridge outside Barclays from 9am to 12 noon.  If you’re out and about in the town, please come and speak to us.  You’ll be able to have a look at one of our weekly seasonal veg boxes. 

At the same time we can tell you more about our pioneering community vegetable growing project at St Kew Highway.  This involves building strong, mutual relationships with small-scale farmers and growers in north Cornwall with the aim of reducing supply chains and making local food work.

Friends of the Earth’s Food Chain Campaign aims to change the way factory farm animals are fed.  Factory farming demands massive amounts of soy - a key ingredient in animal feed.  Most of this comes from huge soya bean plantations in Latin America. 

Vast areas of land have to be cleared to grow the soy.  This causes deforestation, greenhouse gas emissions and the loss of valuable wildlife habitat.

Watch FoE’s video -

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A is for apple… P is for pruning

Our volunteer growers will be pruning apple trees for a change this Sunday.

Landscape gardener Jeremy Simmons, a Camel Community Supported Agriculture member, will lead a training session on how to prune fruit trees in an old orchard at West End, St Mabyn.

The CSA has taken over the task of renovating a small farm orchard at this former smallholding.  In return, members will be able to enjoy all the fruits of their labours when the apples are harvested next year. 

The trees are a mixture of culinary and dessert types – including the familiar Bramley, as well as Lord Burghley(?), Gascoyne’s Scarlet, Tom Putt (cider), Emneth Early, Beauty of Bath and Lord Hindlip.  There are also unidentified trees, which may be cider varieties and are probably native to Cornwall.

If you would like to learn more about the finer art of apple tree pruning, please come along.  Sunday’s session lasts from 10am to 1pm.

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The price of cheap food

A new short film made in Cornwall questions the sustainability of current food production.  It’s the first part of The Price of Cheap Food project.

Kerris Farmers is about four Cornish farmers. It’s been produced by Barry Cooper, lecturer in digital media at University College Falmouth. 

The film’s being premiered at the Cornwall Film Festival in Falmouth this Saturday 14 November. Screening will be part of the Cornish Shorts in the Phoenix Cinema, Falmouth starting at 2pm.

Camel Community Supported Agriculture is pleased to hear that The Price of Cheap Food project will also look at experiments in alternative agriculture, local food and allotments.

Barry says:

“In this film four Cornish farmers and family say how things are in an environment where food often costs more to grow than supermarkets eventually pay for it.

“Jeffery was eventually paid 18p per packaged cauliflower even though each one cost him 34p to grow. In the supermarkets they sold at around 78p.

“Adding to the pressure on farmers is the rising cost of fertilizer, fuel and a shortage of labour; farmers are an ageing community. Alan, the beef farmer runs his farm on his own and is totally reliant on a fleet of machines which he has adapted to do all the work by himself.

 

“East European and other migrant workers did the work in recent years but now that sector seems to be shrinking. So eventually the film leaves us with a question, who will grow the food in the future?”

Further parts of The Price of Cheap Food project seek to explore experiments in alternative agriculture, local food and allotments, along with surviving Chinese and Bulgarian pre-industrial farming cultures and the strategies of the supermarkets to globalize production.

* Find out more here about the LoveWadebridge initiative in Cornwall.  It’s arisen out of concerns about the impact of another supermarket on Wadebridge in the north of the county.

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