Lynda Brown: Two weeks ago, out of the blue, I woke up in the middle of the night with a throbbing foot, swollen and painful around the big toe area. I won’t bore you with the details, but my GP – who took one look – reckons it’s probably gout. Moi? !!!! ( My diet is A1, mainly organic, don’t do processed food , hardly drink, am pretty skinny, and exercise regularly.)
21 May 2013 |
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Lynda Brown: M&S, the Co-op, Tesco, and Sainsbury's have announced that they no longer require their producers to use non GM feed for farm animals. The excuse is that there isn't sufficient non GM feed to go around and anyway, it's not detectable in things like eggs, milk or chicken, i.e. there's no need to worry, it's all perfectly safe sort of thing. So, forget all that you're worth it rubbish - we're clearly not.
14 April 2013 |
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Lynda Brown: Most people dream of holidays in exotic places staying in a luxurious hotel overlooking a sun drenched ocean; I dream of visiting Ode Café in Shaldon, Devon situated in Ness car park overlooking Teignmouth (which looks a lot more exotic by night than day). Last week my dream came true - burgers on the menu, yes, but not some dubious squashed greasy affairs with a seasoning of horse DNA, but a choice of either prime Riverford organic beef burger or extremely tasty home made local wild venison burger, both well under a tenner (£8 in fact) – and they come with French fries and delicious organic salad leaves, too.
05 March 2013 |
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Lynda Brown: When it comes to social media, I’m a real laggard (OK, so un-cool, but honestly I’d much rather go for a walk or dance tango any day than whitter and twitter my life away). But even I admit, it can be awesomely powerful, especially when it galvanises public opinion into a nice juicy petition with thousands of names on it; so much so, it’s fast becoming the peaceful and effective way to voice your concerns over a particular issue. And it doesn’t get more disgusting than the thought of salmon, genetically engineered to be obese (life is full of ironies, isn’t it?). The story so far is that the American Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved (on paper), GE salmon that will grow twice as fast as normal Atlantic salmon.
22 January 2013 |
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Lynda Brown: My brother rang last week to alert me to a feature on Radio 2’s Jeremy Vine Show about how because of last year’s atrocious rainy weather, veg hadn’t got any nutrients, and how it was worse for organic veg. What actually happened was that ‘leading scientist’, Professor Mike Gooding, Head of Agricultural Policy and Development at University of Reading was putting it about that fruit and veg and cereals maybe less nutritious and tasty (eg rain leaching out nitrogen means less protein – he was referring mainly to cereals here, less sunshine means less sugars etc). And that though organic growers were more resilient because they grew a more diverse range of crops, organic veg were potentially worse off because they hadn’t got recourse to quick fix artificials.
14 January 2013 |
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Lynda Brown: Like Ben Raskin, I kicked off the New Year with a bang by spending yesterday day at the Oxford Real Farming Conference, the new ‘hub’ for sustainable-cum-agro-ecological food and farming. This is the Brave New World of food and farming, and I love it. (PS It gets my vote for another reason: it’s cheap; that means anyone can afford to go. If you’re up for a heady dose of can do culture, I thoroughly recommend it.)
04 January 2013 |
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Lynda Brown: Last night found me at a great Christmas gig given by The Sustainable Food Trust. Great because it gave me a rare chance to meet and chat to a bunch of people who all share a common vision, namely making the world a more sustainable place (spent ages engrossed in discussing Joanna Blythman’s counter in the Daily Mail, to this week’s green light on GM foods by the Environment Secretary Owen Paterson, who not only seems to want to endorse GM foods and wants them grown and sold in Britain, but doesn’t see the necessity of labeling them, thereby robbing us of any choice).
21 December 2012 |
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Lynda Brown: As we know, thanks to pioneering fashion companies like People Tree, ethical fashion is now an everyday reality, and awareness of the supreme importance of supporting organic cotton farmers and industry is finally getting through (for why, look no further than the Soil Association's latest blockbuster campaign). But - and it's a big one, though we can now buy organic clothes and towels on the high street, that's not the case with organic fabrics generally, which once again means turning a blind eye.
07 December 2012 |
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Lynda Brown: I've just received an email from Slow Food UK about their eminently worthwhile Eat it or Lose it initiative, part of their Forgotten Foods campaign which is trying to encourage everyone to support our traditional foods and breeds. Good timing because It gives me the perfect opportunity to do two things I almost never do: praise supermarkets, or in this case, Waitrose; and wax lyrical about non-organic veg.
30 November 2012 |
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Lynda Brown: Don’t you just love it when you go to an event and it fires you up? That’s what happened to me last Saturday when I went to Frome’s first Town Centre Independence Day, and I’ve been buzzing ever since. Like many small towns, Frome (next best thing to a Hovis ad) has been battling against proposals for yet another giant town centre supermarket. The local pressure group, Keep Frome Local, organized the day to bring together 200 like minded campaigners from all over the UK to share their experiences, learn from each other, and discuss the bigger picture.
22 November 2012 |
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Lynda Brown: I've not being having a good time of it of late. My blog on badgers got rejected, and a Living Earth reader took me to task for encouraging people to eat meat. May as well make it a hat trick. You see, I loathe baking cakes. I so totally know I'll never go to heaven, and Mary Berry and Nigella would think I'm the pits, but I really cannot understand why our ability to love depends on making heart-stopping bakes.
08 November 2012 |
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Lynda Brown: Sitting in one of my favourite places (Sophie's in Minchinhampton), thinking I must get back to blogging, and have just caught the magic word 'damsons' wafting across from the next table. Yes, it's that time of year again - when every walk means scouring the locality for brambles, crab apples, wild damsons, elderberries, and, if you're lucky (or brave enough), mushrooms.
14 September 2012 |
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Lynda Brown: I do sometimes wonder, don't you? Last week the Soil Association president and presenter of Gardeners' World, Monty Don, found himself at odds with the BBC, who, without it seems asking him, had re-assured pesticide manufacturers that he would be "more even handed in his discussion of organic and non-organic techniques". I see it's run over to this week, too - by the way, Geoff Hamilton (see below) did not die of organic food, as one anti commentator implied but from a heart attack whilst on a charity bike ride.
06 June 2012 |
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Lynda Brown: One of the many reasons I'm committed to organic food and farming is its stance on GM: it forbids the use of GM crops and ingredients in organic farming systems and food. It's always seemed to me to be an incredibly noble and brave stance. A dozen or so years after the first furore over 'Frankenstein Foods' engaged the nation, nothing has happened to make me change my mind. Newsnight this week and the Independent yesterday morning gives you the flavour of this well worn debate going nowhere. So, what have we learnt in the intervening years?
25 May 2012 |
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Lynda Brown: Like most people, I'm passionate about supporting smaller family farms: they're the living backbone of our landscape, rural life and food culture. If only, then, it were as simple as supporting them with your purse power. But it isn't. Tuesday's online Guardian ran with a story about Vion (no, I'd never heard of them, either) that illustrates the sort of stuff that goes on behind the scenes that we generally never hear about, but which could affect the future of small farmers much more than you think.
03 May 2012 |
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Lynda Brown: Me and my keffir have finally moved - yes it was utterly cathartic; yes, I ate a lot of organic chocolate (if only I had known about the latest award winning raw choc superfood, Pulsin Beyond Organic Bars); no, I'm never, ever, ever, moving again; and yes, of course I've moved to Stroud, or rather Box, a tiny village nearby. Which is why yesterday finally caught me having a milkmaid moment walking to my local organic dairy, Woefuldane Dairy in the centre of Minchinhampton, swinging my very own mini milk churn to fill up with their delicious full fat organic milk straight from their Shorthorn cows. Cost? 90p a litre (try finding that in your supermarket). Plus I can buy their own butter, cheeses, cream, yoghurt and eggs. Needless to say I'm in organic dairy heaven.
11 April 2012 |
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Lynda Brown: Good News – I have a new love affair: kefir, that strange but miraculous sponge-like substance, which ferments milk and transforms it into a super- dooper 100% natural probiotic yoghurt- like miracle cure. A friend gave me some fresh kefir grains and I've been besotted ever since.
It's been around for over 2000 years, originating from the Caucasus Mountains; traditionally, the grains, considered a source of family and tribal wealth, were passed down from one generation to the next. The word originates from the Turkish 'keif' meaning good /long life/state of feeling good, and I can quite understand why.
13 March 2012 |
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Lynda Brown: Spent the last few days digesting the conference and catching up on what I missed via the website. I usually come away fired up; I didn't this time - I'm still trying to work out why. The highlight for me was Prof. Hans Herren, President of the Milennium Institute. No spin, just plain speaking delivered with conviction of what the major problems are, how and where organic farming is contributing positively to the solution, and what needs to happen next. It helps that he has a world view (increasingly I find the Brit view is too skewered) and his phrase "no soil,no anything" hit the spot precisely...
07 March 2012 |
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Lynda Brown: I've just caught up with the feature on the latest gloom and doom of the organic industry on last week's Countryfile. To be fair to Countryfile, given it's telly - for which read dumb down big time - they covered the ground well, and did a reasonable job; the chap from the Co-op, for example, acknowledging the huge contribution the organic movement has made not only in bringing food production issues and the environmental impact of growing food firmly to the table, but in raising awareness and effectively paving the way for ethical consumerism.
Not that that stopped me fuming at how organics is dealt a raw deal by the media: it's a long time since I've seen or read anything which is other than biased against organics. ......
13 February 2012 |
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Lynda Brown: Trying to do the right thing, I've concluded is a tough call, whether it be buying and selling houses (where being economical with the truth is so ingrained in the system if you try and be honest, you're considered odd) , or buying something as mundane as loo paper. I've done both this week, but as the house milarky would take a book's worth to tell, I'll confine myself to loo paper. ....
02 February 2012 |
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