Thanks to 'forum' friend John Calloway or johnnyc1959, wonderful photographer and blogger par excellence . . . . .for his latest update Always fascinating in my experience but this entry made me think and stopped me in my dumbest tracks. . . . .

Returning to the UK last year after two years of living in Nepal, I wrote that one of the things that had the greatest impact upon me during my time there was the relationship between people and the land. In the west that relationship appears somewhat tenuous with food increasingly being seen as just another consumer good. In a food system increasingly driven by the logic of the market, there is an increasing belief that food has to be cheap, regardless of its intrinsic value.

“The system has broken the bond between the people who produce food and the people who eat it, leading to a decreased sense of mutual responsibility; the dwindling of a vital store of knowledge; and the impossibility for consumers to access information”. [Source: Slow Europe]

The fact that a Dutch scientist has been paid to develop a burger from stem cells extracted from cow muscle tissue which are cultured with growth-promoting chemicals to help them develop and multiply suggests yet another break in the bond between those who produce food, and those who eat it…

Fresh Meat by John Calloway © 2010

Klaus Pilcher on Food Waste

 

The dilemma is best summed up by John Vidal.  “The two visions of feeding the world could not have been more different. The laboratory burger served up in London by scientists proposes patented, heavily processed food that has been developed at a phenomenal cost in hi-tech laboratories and is shipped to the world’s poorest people to keep them alive. The other proposes that agriculture reconnects itself with small farmers and once again becomes a way for countries to develop and to offer better lives for their populations”.

Check John's wonderful pages here 

Images from Portsmouth and Beyond . . .

 and artist/photographer Klaus Pilcher here

Klaus Pilcher

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