Food is as important as the air we breathe and water we drink. So why can’t we talk openly about the real threat to Food Supplies?

Regrettably, I long since realised that whilst many of us talk about change, kick and scream about the need for change, and discuss how we’re going to get those in power to facilitate change, very few of us are actually prepared to do what it would take to embrace and create the kind of change that all of us actually need.

This leaves writers, bloggers, commentators and thinkers either massively frustrated and in some cases falling into the trap of sensationalising their messages to get attention. Or like me, just accepting that people aren’t yet ready to accept that an unsustainable situation can no longer be sustained.

My back catalogue therefore quietly grows. The upside is I can at least say that through the 29 books and the material now published and available to read on the internet, I’m pretty sure I’ve covered all the bases when it comes to attempting to shine some light on everything that’s wrong; what needs to change; what is preventing change; what will create change and of course what change might actually look like. Which is where I have just left the desktop, now.

I’ve been busy over recent weeks writing Our Local Future. Published as a free-to-read website, which is now available to buy as a book for Kindle too.

The reason change isn’t happening, isn’t because we don’t have the ideas, energy, guts, commitment and values present across our society to bring about significant change. It’s because we are too busy arguing over the first step; who’s right; who’s wrong and who should be in charge.

Because of this, I felt it was time to take a leap into the future and commit to writing what the world would need to look like, feel like, and how it would need to function, IF we were to open ourselves up to a way of living that genuinely works for the greater good and is beneficial to us all.

But doing so means dealing with some very uncomfortable truths, and those aren’t easy to convey without being open about where things really are today.

Our Local Future is, by design, abstract. There’s so much about the world we live in today that is out of balance – that we must leave much of it behind – including things that we think are good but are actually hurting us – rather than expecting that we can keep everything we like and simply leave the damage it causes behind.

We leave the damage in our wake each and every day. And it’s the problems that wider society and the environment we live in now face that are manifesting as a result.

What we fail to see is that taking everything for granted and as entitled as we have increasingly become, means that the basic essentials of life are now at significant risk.

The issue of Food Security and the growing risk that the UK population could go hungry or experience serious food shortages are what concern me as a former politician and community leader myself.

So much so that I attended and completed a postgraduate course in Sustainable Agriculture and Food Security at a well-known UK university earlier this year.

Acknowledging the role of so many stakeholders in the Food Security problem remains important. But it’s not enough, as almost without exception, everyone on the problem end of everything still believes that the usual suspects will have a lucid moment of realisation, then change their approach.

The truth is simpler, and I believe it’s correct to be open about the reality that the empty shelves we experienced during the COVID lockdowns could very quickly become normal in times ahead – especially when it comes to our access to basic, essential types of food.

Never mind the heavily processed and unhealthy stuff that many of us mistake as being just that.

In publishing Our Local Future, I have lent heavily on the opportunity to use an AI image generator, and after publishing nearly 100 created images to accompany every published page, I was alarmed to discover that no matter how I instructed the software to create an image, there was no way that the programme would produce anything to illustrate what empty supermarket shelves would look like.

The words and title used were clearly also ringing algorithmic alarm bells somewhere in the cloud, as Facebook then also rejected the post after I adopted a different approach to the imagery – within seconds of publication – telling me that I had committed a community violation and that the post had immediately been deleted.

We can only speculate upon why there is a refusal to allow open and honest discussion about the genuine risk to UK Food Security and how it is increasingly likely to affect the UK population.

The harsh reality we face is that the food supply and food production are quickly becoming a key method of societal control.

Increasingly so, as British Agriculture – the industry that provides it – seems to be in what can only be described as a form of terminal decline that looks remarkably deliberate. Even to the untrained eye.

Many who still trust The System may well ask, ‘How could it possibly be the case that someone wants to control access to what we eat, when food is as important as the air that we breathe and the water that we drink?’

To visit Our Local Future click HERE:

Food is as important as air and water 29Aug24 PDF_Vers1_21Apr26 Download

The Local Economy & Governance System | Online Text

The Basic Living Standard Explained

Our Future IS Local

Hi Everyone,

I’ve just published another free-to-read version of a booklet that I have put together as a website that you will find at www.ourlocalfuture.com

Our Local Future is available as a Kindle Book too, and runs through the key changes to the way society functions that would make everything work much better for everyone and create a happy, healthy, safe and secure environment for us all.

I’ve written this latest Book, because I’m fed up of listening to everyone who knows this or knows that, wasting valuable time arguing that only they know the next steps we, as a culture and society should take, to put everything right.

People who should really know better are focused only on the journey and who controls it. Instead of considering the destination and what the outcomes will be that solve all our problems and create a world and culture where Balance, Fairness and Justice can be experienced by all.

Meanwhile, the constant debates over who or what is to blame; whether problems like climate change and the need for Foodbanks are real; or who is right vs who is wrong are just making everything that’s already wrong exponentially worse.

More often than not, these ‘blockers’ who let their egos get in the way, are the very same people who hear a new idea or proposal and immediately say ‘It won’t work’. Usually, because they only want change for everyone else, IF they can be certain that they will gain in some way, or at the very least don’t believe that they could lose.

Change is no longer a choice. It’s happening around all of us right now. And the difficulties we face are going to get worse before there’s any chance that things will get better.

The unspoken truth or secret ingredient that we all have to accept is that by embracing change that will help to make sure everyone has the best experience of life that they can, we will all end up with a system of governance and way of life that works in every good way that we could possibly wish for ourselves.

Best Wishes, Adam

Is Poverty invisible to those who don’t experience it?

The fact those with power and influence don’t understand what Poverty really is makes the ‘solutions’ they come up with potentially more harmful to those in need, rather than making the genuine difference that so many who have been left behind now need.

As someone who experienced poverty as a child, a research project for a Postgraduate Course project in late 2023 enabled Adam to compare the realities of living in Poverty in the UK today, to the experiences from the 70’s and 80’s that were his own.

In his own words, ‘The experience was sobering’ and the brief paper he wrote for assessment based on his question ‘Is Poverty invisible to those who don’t experience it’ is contained within this short Book.

Today, Adam often states: “You have to experience or be touched by Poverty to understand it.”

Will you agree?

Is Poverty Invisible PDF_vers_1_Oct24 Download

I’m a fan of Clarkson’s Farm. It’s doing a lot for farmers and consumers. But it could do even more

Like most people whose comments I’ve seen, I am a big fan of Clarkson’s Farm. I don’t think there’s one episode of the 22 I’ve already watched that hasn’t ticked all of the boxes for good, all-round entertainment in a field which isn’t exactly full of other big beasts.

In case it’s important, I’ve watched 6 of the 8 episodes of series 3 and the final 2 will probably work their way into the weekend schedule as some kind of diversionary treat.

Just as I’ve previously tweeted in responses to comments and thoughts by the Farming Press and some of the Farmers I follow, my view as someone who has maintained links with Farming whilst I’ve worked for charities, run my own businesses and was an elected local councillor for 12 years, is that the series has done a massive amount in breaching the gap between farmers and the food chain, and the public or consumers. Something that’s very important bearing in mind that it’s where the strongest and most meaningful relationship in the UKs food chain really should be.

Whether we consider Clarkson’s ‘Let’s test everything I can think of’ approach to farming 1000 acres in the Cotswolds as contrived or planned, or quite literally as anyone new to farming with enough money to experiment in every direction might behave, the fact remains that there is real public benefit to this show and what it shares.

The money spent and the honesty, transparency or insight being provided hasn’t failed to demonstrate just how complex and bureaucratic UK Farming has become, and how difficult being a Farmer in the UK really now is.

What is more and perhaps most importantly, Clarkson’s Farm openly demonstrates that UK Agriculture is at massive risk.

British Farming simply doesn’t generate the income for landowners and agricultural workers that an industry providing one of the most essential and non-negotiable parts of our daily lives really should.

Meanwhile, the shops that sell everything ‘on their behalf’ are achieving billions in profits as a return.

Whilst I’m not sure the leaps in thinking made by Amazon Prime subscribers will have yet reached a point where everyone recognises that there’s probably an equivalent to Diddly Squat in the form of a farm gate farm shop that’s much closer to home, Clarkson’s Farm is shining a light on real-World or rather real-UK Food Security issues that no other rural-life programme has or could.

If there’s anything annoying about the programme at all, it’s the attitude and approach on the part of so many involved, who have probably stood in the way of this very popular series doing a whole lot more for us all.

The reality that not only Jeremy Clarkson, but all UK farmers have to face is that whatever the level of government, whether it’s a local council in Oxfordshire, DEFRA or any department in Whitehall, the whole of the public sector system works in its own particular way.

There is a way of working with everyone who sits within the processes where decisions are made and few Civil Servants and Government Officers will value anyone telling them how anything they have control over or responsibility for, should work. No matter who those telling them are or who they might be.

Wrong as it may be, its just the way that things work.

The problem is made significantly worse because so much of the legislation and directives set at the centre or in London are left ‘open to translation’ at local level. And interpretation can go either way, depending upon many things under consideration which often fall way outside how any logical explanation or understanding would suggest everything works.

Like it or not, Clarkson was pretty much on a date with destiny from the start. It was inevitable that there would be a clash of cultures when it came to working with any formal body.

As a councillor, I experienced and at least tried to console the distress that the feeling of unfairness and injustice of the government system visits on people who are morally correct in their position, but nonetheless feel very let down by the way the technical legality of the system works.

I really do wish that Clarkson might have taken a different approach. He almost certainly could have demonstrated that for both Diddly Squat and an entire Industry that’s now in deep trouble, real success and long-term benefits are achievable, just by stepping back, counting to ten and approaching ‘the game’ in a very different way.

Is the 2024 weather a bigger threat to long term food security and the future of farming than it is to this next years’ food supply?

It’s nearly the middle of April and 2024 has been a washout. You don’t need to be a farmer to know there’s little that feels normal about the wet weather and I know I’m not alone in feeling like it’s been raining nonstop since Christmas.

Is there a conspiracy at work? Is the weather being manipulated? Is this all part of some concocted grand plan?

Well, in terms of the things we should really be worried about, getting lost in the debate over whether Mother Nature or some malevolent force is behind the growing threat of a failed harvest this summer is the only real rabbit hole there is to fall down.

Hopeful as I am for our struggling farmers, that the weather will turn around and put everything back on track, the sober way to start thinking about issues that should really be concerning anyone looking at the wider U.K. food security and production situation is to question how decision makers will frame what may soon be recognised as the 2024 harvest crisis and how they will then respond.

Of all the food security issues we are facing today, which include but are not limited to deglobalisation, climate change, retail profiteering, political ineptitude and anything that falls under the manufactured problems that need a logic defying solution too, weather should never have been the one problem that has the potential to end up making our fragile food security situation even worse.

The reality that we and our farmers face, is that a failed harvest across in 2024 will play straight into the hands of those who believe and advocate that the U.K. doesn’t need to grow its own food.

There is an unsettling belief at work within the establishment that our food supply can always be guaranteed to come from somewhere abroad, and that new technologies and factory foods – like ground up insects, lab growing and warehouse production – will solve all problems. This mindset results in the fallacious idea that there is little reason to continue pandering to farmers who can only be productive when they are a) told what to grow, and then b) are paid for doing so.

Farmers are being set up to fail

For an essential industry already in crisis and under attack from an establishment that views food security and all of the highly beneficial add ons that U.K. produced food can give British people as trivia they can do without, the ongoing storm is one that couldn’t have landed at a less helpful time.

The real risk to U.K. farmers is that government will make token gestures, but in truth do very little to help the industry in the immediate aftermath.

This is likely to lead to many more business exits for what should really be thriving farming businesses, and a situation arising quickly where the U.K. becomes perilously close to losing the ability to feed itself, even at emergency or wartime levels, using recognisable farming methods that are beneficial for everyone involved in the food chain.

Whilst there is growing unrest among farmers, a belief that the powers that be will eventually step in and save the day still regrettably persists.

It is regrettably fair to say that the misconception that government understands the risks to an already critically vulnerable food supply is easily dismissed when we consider that the equivalent of around only 54% of the food we eat is currently grown in the U.K.

Decision makers either don’t see the risk or they don’t want to see the risk. And whichever it is, the result for U.K. farmers, U.K. food production and U.K. food security is pretty much the same.

U.K. farming, the infrastructure that supports it and the legislation that facilitates it might not be anywhere near able to feed the uk population without help today.

But that doesn’t mean that it cannot. It certainly doesn’t mean that the industry shouldn’t redirect, reform and repurpose where needed, so that U.K. food sovereignty is no longer viewed as being pie in the sky.

The wide range of green, environmental, climate, food quality, nutrition, transparency and other farm and food related issues, that have different activists fighting each other for air would all be resolved by getting behind U.K. farmers and food production to refocus. U.K. agriculture will only be saved by moving away from the Globalist/EU production models to one that puts locality and traditional methods at the centre – albeit in a 21^st century form.

The power for change sits within the hands of our farmers themselves and the trades that align around U.K. agriculture.

Although many still don’t see it this way, it would be wise for anyone and everyone with an interest in being able to grow or eat a regular, sustainable supply of good, healthy and nutritious food to watch carefully what the establishment does and how it responds if the realities of a 2024 harvest crisis begin to unfold.