Podcast: Sid chats about transition towns

While at the recent Biodynamic Agriculture Australia Conference, I had the pleasure of interviewing Sid Hazel. Sid is a tutor of Organic Horticulture at Coffs Harbour TAFE (Technical and Further Education Institute) and is involved in some great environmental initiatives in Bellingen, on the mid-north coast of New South Wales.

In this podcast Sid discusses the advent of  Transition Towns, which are part of Rob Hopkins’ (UK)  proactive response to the question, “Can you imagine your  town beyond oil?”  Rob’s vision is a town that incorporates resilience, sustainability, and environmental responsibility through growing food where people live (zero food miles), thereby reducing the CO2 emissions generated by the distance food currently travels. Rather than waiting on governments to provide answers, communities decide their future, and indeed their children’s future.  Australian Transition Town initiatives are currently underway in Hervey Bay, Armidale, Bellingen, Bell, Newcastle and on the Sunshine Coast.

In Bellingen, Sid is involved in a community garden, a local food network, and efforts to create community supported agriculture enterprises. Sid says the Bellingen Local Food Network is about “local food for local people”, which reflects a growing  trend for food sovereignty which emerged from the peasant  farmers’ movement, La Via Campesina, and offers a community empowering and environmental alternative  to the global food production system.

Community-supported agriculture (CSA) is a socio-economic model of agriculture and food distribution. A CSA consists of a community of individuals who pledge support to a farm operation so that the farmland becomes the community’s farm, with the growers and consumers providing mutual support and sharing the risks and benefits of food production. CSA’s focus is usually on a system of weekly delivery or pick-up of vegetables and fruit. The CSA movement began in the early 1960s in Germany, Switzerland and Japan as a response to concerns about food safety and the urbanisation of agricultural land. Groups of consumers and farmers in Europe formed co-operative partnerships to fund farming and pay the full costs of ecologically sound, socially equitable agriculture. In Europe, many of the CSA style farms were inspired by the economic ideas of Rudolf Steiner and experiments with community agriculture took place on farms using biodynamic agriculture.

CSAs are yet to catch on in Australia, with just three that I’m aware of:  foodconnect.com.au, purplepear.net.au/csa.html, and biodynamic-food.com.

Purple Pear Garden with chicken enclosures

Community  gardens are “about taking back the ability to produce food for ourselves. At the supermarket, you not only don’t connect to the food system, but the money goes out of the region. People are looking for a sense of community, and they find  it in their local community garden” (Claire Cummings). Find Australian community gardens and community supported agriculture  at communityfoods.org.au.

Hear what Sid has to say by clicking the play button below.

Listen to wise words

John Priestly

We are very pleased to bring you a podcast of Eileen Kaufman’s interview with John Priestly, an expert biodynamic citrus grower and consultant from the Hunter Valley in New South Wales. Recently, John was a guest speaker at the Parsifal College Applied Biodynamic Course, of which Eileen is one of the main tutors. To listen to the interview, click the play button.

John packs seven topics into this 13 minute interview, including:

• his philosophical background
• ecology of the soil - keeping it healthy
• foliar sprays and tonics
• recommendations to treat spray-contaminated soil
• alternative nitrogen sources (instead of animal manure) for home composting
• ecologically safe snail control methods
• deterring fruit eating birds.

John brings a wealth of information through a lifetime of experience in sustainable farming and land management.  His past clients have even included an airport and a racecourse. John takes an ecological approach to solving pest problems, explaining “All pest and disease problems originate from the soil”. For example, weeds are dynamic accumulators - they accumulate particular minerals that are present in very low concentrations in the soil. Over time, weeds balance out nutrient deficiencies. By applying the deficient nutrient to the soil the weed gradually disappears. For instance, yellow dock accumulates iron, so iron chelate is used to treat the soil to reduce this problem weed.

John also explained his method for tree planting. He doesn’t put compost in the hole and this forces the tree to send out roots in search of nutrients. After a year, once the tree has established itself, compost is applied.

Eileen will be attending  the National Biodynamic Agriculture Australia Conference this weekend so you can look forward to hearing more interviews from biodynamic experts. She has also promised to send a post from the conference (too much biodynamic wine and it could be a very interesting post! Just joking, Eileen is way too professional for that…).