The UK government is at last waking from its long complacent slumbers and asking serious questions about food security. After enjoying an abundant supply of ever cheaper food for the last five decades, the developed world is beginning to realise that we can’t take the essentials of life for granted indefinitely.
Posted in food in politics, food matters | Also tagged agriculture, British, defra, environment, food security, fruit, london, meat, oil, resilience, Sustainable food |
Early August and the harvest of the winter sown oilseed rape (Brassica napus, its edible varieties also known as canola) is well underway in the UK. Rape is combine harvested to yield its tiny black seeds, destined to be crushed to produce oil for food, industrial uses and, increasingly, biofuels. A growing number of farmers are cold pressing the seeds themselves to produce extra-virgin rapeseed oil.
Cherry plums are back in season, ripening on hedgerow and garden trees across Britain. The fruit are versatile and delicious. Taste and texture, like the colour, vary between trees, but most of the fruit are excellent eaten raw. They can be substituted for plums in jams, chutneys and other recipes, or pressed for their sweet juice.
An essential field guide for anyone who wants to know about arable crops: their identification, cultivation, history and uses.
The intense gold of cold-pressed rapeseed oil (otherwise known as canola oil) reflects the yellowing spring fields of oilseed rape. A few farmers are now producing distinctive cold-pressed rapeseed oil, with clear provenance, from their oilseed crops, but the oil itself deserves more attention.
No crop dominates the British arable landscape quite like rapeseed (Brassica napus, also known as oilseed rape, the edible variety as canola).
From the very beginning of April, previously mundane green fields of this member of the cabbage and turnip family suddenly erupt into luminous flower.
Across lowland England, great swathes of countryside are painted yellow. [...]
The arrival of the cherry plum blossom in late February marks the turn of winter, the first promise of summer fruits
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