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Name: Mark
Location: Aberdeen, Scotland
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Quote: It is good to know about the Truth and to talk about it, but it is better to know about the Truth and to talk about palm trees. Persian proverb...
Blog
Costing the Earth: The New Diggers
February 8th 2010 by standfree
In 1649 the chaos of the English Civil War inspired a group that declared our land to be a common treasury and began to plant fruit and vegetables on common land in southern and central England. It was a response to a shortage of food and what the Diggers saw as the misuse of productive land by the large landowners. Alice Roberts meets the new Diggers - groups and individuals across the country determined to tackle the looming food crisis by making the wasteland grow. In Todmorden in West Yorkshire locals began by secretly planting up the gardens of their derelict heath centre. Today the whole town seems to throb with fertility; new allotments fill the retirement home gardens and feed the residents, an aquaponics growing system is being built behind the secondary school and pak choi self-seeds through the cracks in the town centre pavements. Near Gateshead a National Trust-owned stately home has cleared its enormous Georgian walled garden and invited local people in to create their own allotments. Meanwhile, a farming estate in Oxfordshire has decided that a reliance on arable farming leaves it vulnerable to world markets. New farmers and growers are being invited to rent small plots of land to try their hand at making the tricky transition from amateur grower to real farmer. Alice Roberts asks if this grassroots revolution will produce enough food to feed Britain. Will it transform the shape of our countryside and the look of our towns?
Comments
Message from motherveggie
Posted on 15th February 2010
Realy hope they do a tv show about it ..I for one would be glued to the box ..
Message from 007
Posted on 15th February 2010
oldfool come to bodelwyddan allotment project in a couple of weeks you will see the birth of a brilliant project thanks to BODELWYDDAN ALLOTMENTS ASSOCIATION AND BODELWYDDAN TOWN COUNCIL !
Message from standfree
Posted on 13th February 2010
007 - click the underlined Radio 4 Documentary text. Either here or in my blog.
Message from 007
Posted on 12th February 2010
if only if it was on tv, i agree time and date for the radio would be nice !
Message from standfree
Posted on 08th February 2010
motherveggie - I know, and they said 'the revolution will be televised' 
Oldfool - I don't think it would be too difficult to start up something similar. Although in up here in Aberdeen there isn't too much wasteland. The thing that would be tough would be having to give it up once the bulldozers came in.
Drew - no worries buddy!
Message from Drew
Posted on 08th February 2010
Great link thanks Standfree.
Message from Oldfool
Posted on 08th February 2010
The Todmorden initiative is brilliant. there was a brief article on the lady who started it (can't remember her name and, stupidly, I seem to have recycled the article) in the saturday Torygraph a couple of weeks agp. She is (I think ) Chairman of the Forestry Commission and obviously a person of sme vision.
How can similar schemes be set up / co-ordinated throughout the country.
Any Ideas?
Message from motherveggie
Posted on 08th February 2010
this looks fascinating ..but wouldnt it be even more wonderfull on the TV ..so we could see this Revolution ..
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