To coincide with Clonmel Transition Town’s “Feeding Clonmel” event this weekend and as a follow-up to our own “Sound Bites and Food for Thought” learning lunch, I have posted this lecture on food security given by Bruce Darrel of Feasta at the New Emergency conference earlier this year.

Bruce began with an observation that given our recent experience of famine on this island it is bizarre that Ireland is not at the vanguard of sustainable food production. Indeed without a rapid transition away from industrial agriculture it is likely that the experience of the Irish famine will be repeated on a global scale.

Citing a report called “Food Futures and Rethinking UK Strategy” Bruce described in detail how our current food system will come under multiple coincident pressures in the years ahead. This include population growth, increased meat consumption, decline oil supply and increasing costs of fossil fuel based fertilisers, land use change and biofuels, fresh water availability, labor and lack of skilled growers, climate change impacts on food productivity and finally, lack of credit.

Although there are no solutions presented here it is a good primer for understanding the bigger picture and why local food systems such as allotments and community supported agriculture are long over due.

You can see other recordings from the New Emergency conference here.