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?’
Adam Tugwell 