Food for Thought

Doffing our cap to the fact that we met because we were all trying to learn something, our get together a week ago - while MrsM and I were distracted by babies - included a (brief!) pre-dinner talk by a "Senior Researcher of Sustainable Food Solutions at the University of Oxford". No-one gets too profound on such occasions, but some intelligent questions were asked, and he was generous and fun. He has forwarded his notes for his talk which, in the glare of a superb autumnal day, include a few sobering bullet points:

- There is enough food to support a population of over 8 billion people, but more than half of the global adult population is either overweight or underweight
- one third of food production is thrown away in some form - this creates a buffer if [food production or delivery is interrupted, e.g. Covid] 
- power imbalances in the food industry [can have] severe societal consequences - e.g. quinoa, where availability and soaring price in places like UK have made it inaccessible in places that historically consumed it

He ended the talk with questions, not answers, which I suppose is the academic way of doing things: "What are you willing to give up, so that we can make some progress towards better food systems?" 

There are so many issues and questions wrapped up in this, that it's way beyond a blip, but it did strike me how much available food we simply ignore - things that in the past were eaten: deer, rabbits, pigeons, edible wild plants. In this case, the roadside chestnuts are not yet ripe, but I'll try to catch them when they are