Filed under: Delia
I just heard Delia Smith on the Today programme (Feb 15th), promoting her new book (which apparently recommends the use of tinned meat and shop-bought mash, by the way). She was asked about her commitment to organic food, and her reply was refreshing. “I don’t get into food politics”, she said. She chooses food that looks fresh and tasty (apart from the shop-bought mash, presumably), and she doesn’t agonise over whether it might have a hint of fertiliser about it. Then came the killer line: “Besides, if we switched all our agriculture to organic, there wouldn’t be enough food to go round, and half the world would starve”. A point to remember when you pop into Waitrose for the organic carrots.
The she was asked the inevitable question, “Do you care about the planet? Do you worry about food-miles?”. Dismissing this with the contempt that it deserves was too much, even for the great culinary diva. Nevertheless, her answer was a masterpiece of good sense clothed in diplomacy. Yes, she did worry, but she was confused (despite, as she disingenuously added, listening regularly to the Today Programme). What about those lovely crisp green beans flown-in in December from Kenya? Should she abandon them for seasonal local parsnips? What would that do to the livelihood of poor farmers in Kenya who desperately need the business?
And she could have added that fresh produce flown in from Spain or Africa frequently has a lower carbon foot-print (if you worry about such things) than equivalent produce grown in heated glasshouses at home.
It was extraordinary to hear such opinions in the BBC. I can only assume that the censorship department was nodding off and couldn’t hit the “Cut” button in time. But thank Heaven for Delia! We need to put the food fascists back in their box. Like Delia, we need to choose food that we fancy, food that looks good and fresh. Above all, we need to hear less hectoring advice from the bien-pensants, and a good deal more common sense.
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You’re way off the mark you old wind bag. Tbe excessive use of fertilisers and the carbon footprint of our food is something we should definitely be concerned about. Otherwise hundreds of thousands of people may end up starving because of climate change!
Comment by Nick February 15, 2008 @ 4:18 pmNick – or maybe people will starve as that much agricultural land is bening turned over for the mad dash towards biofuels?
Or maybe if you are saying people will starve – that the planet has a set amount of inhabitants it can feed – so that means you are advocating population control?
Comment by Sceptical February 15, 2008 @ 9:08 pmNick, The Sunday Telegraph today reports that despite clement weather conditions in North West Europe, this last January had the lowest average global temperature for a hundred years. You may recall the disastrous disruption of the Chinese railway system with unprecedneted snow falls. But you may have missed the deaths, and the limbs lost to frostbite, in Afghanistan? And the deaths from Arctic weather in the American mid-West? I suppose that was just a blip?
Many scientists believe (as I do) that the Sun is the primary influence on global climate, and they are concerned that unusually low sun-spot activity could herald a new “Maunder Minimum”. It could well be that global cooling, not global warming, is the new threat.
Comment by Roger Helmer February 17, 2008 @ 12:37 pmTo Feed the World. September 2008.
Gone are the farmers of yesteryear,
That ploughed the fields and scattered.
The corn, the wheat, no longer stand proud,
For the farmers faith was shattered.
For strangers came to sell new seeds,
To feed the whole world at small cost,
Genetically engineered to resist disease,
And the true caring farmer was lost.
Money became the root of evil,
And profit the most precious gift of all,
Yet along came another idea too good to miss,
Growing bio-fuel-yet man was due for a fall.
Food became short with high prices too,
For on bio-fuel alone, man cannot survive,
Yet to save the planet had been the call,
It did, but no man was left on it, alive.
As time goes by there are many lessons to learn,
And lack of experience adds to confusion?
For in one way or another, truth at last will out,
For cheap GM food was just an illusion.
arbon Footprints. 5.4.2007.
If you worry about the environment
Look up at the sun in the sky,
Politicians would have you think of CO2’s
Environmentally, I don’t know why.
Perhaps we take for granted
The sun that shines each day,
Even though at times it hides
Behind those clouds of grey.
But what if the sun burnt itself out?
What would warm us up then?
What if it exploded? Blew itself up?
Turned the day into night again?
Just suppose it fell right down
Out of sight of our earth one day?
To warm up another planet
What would politicians then say?
As the earth started to freeze right over,
In a permanent kind of way,
No more ‘hundred year’ cycles
We knew of, in ‘global warming’ days.
What happened to environmental tax
We paid to save our world?
Where is the “global warming” now?
As my story starts to unfold?
There is no doubt we need to recycle
In this easy come and go world we live,
We take resources out of the ground
But nothing in its place we give.
But to be spied upon, bugs in bins?
Be watched and tagged is no fun,
Make a mistake, an on the spot fine?
Its what a dictator would have done?
I have read the CO2 calculator,
Comment by Anne Palmer September 12, 2008 @ 10:46 amWorked out what is expected of us,
The importance of greenhouse gases
Of dry-ice, and the need to fuss.
But without our sun, moon and stars
The earth will surely die,
These tales of carbon emissions
Surely it wasn’t all a lie?