6·
12 hours agoUnavailable Due to the UK Online Safety Act
Great.
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Joined 1 year ago
Cake day: March 7th, 2025
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1·4 days agoI fear this is descending into a classic internet argument where we each write longer and longer pieces, to convince the other of a position neither of us are likely to budge from.
So instead, I’ll give this article as a final adieu and wish you well with your capsicums and alliums.
https://www.unsustainablemagazine.com/home-gardens-vs-farms-efficiency/
The average onion is about 50kcals. The average carrot is about 30 kcals. The average aubergine is about 50 kcals. Getting 200kcals out of a garden, particularly in the growing season, is not that difficult. Especially as I’m talking about a community patchwork, where people share their overabundance of squash for someone else’s potatoes.
I have a tiny garden, and yet I’m able to make a decent dent in my grocery bills from it. Not just in calories but in cost, because I can priorities growing crops that are more expensive in the supermarkets. Chard for example is £2.55 for a small bag in Tesco. I can grow a bags worth every day for weeks in summer. Without the plastic, without the refrigeration, without the labour and fuel of packing, transporting, shelving, and accounting.
Farming has its place, but it shouldn’t be the only source of our food. Especially when it’s dominated by capitalist agrochemical profit over people ideology. Destroying soils and biodiversity, and ultimately our ability to grow food in future decades. The UN Sustainable Development Goals have several categories dedicated to the changing of farming practices because current practices cannot go on indefinitely.
The professor emeritus of food policy at the Centre for Food Policy, City St George’s, University of London seems to agree with me as well.
Finally, we need vastly more allotments and for gardening organisations to help (re)skill consumers. The Royal Horticultural Society’s (RHS) 2025 State of Gardening report found that while 2.5 million people had participated, more than 14 million wanted to. Growing a bit of food for yourself and others is good for collective wellbeing and health. Gardening organisations “get” it but need a new land strategy to deliver. When Dig for Victory, the national campaign to get Britons to grow food during the second world war, was launched, the RHS was asked to help organise it. Today, academics, metro mayors and regional councils should be asked to ascertain what land across the UK could produce diverse food produce and then facilitate growers to get growing.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/apr/09/uk-food-security-iran-war
Aye, that’s why I said entirety. Grains for example are just not feasible on a garden plot. I’m not saying we stop using farmed foods. I’m saying we don’t rely on it 100% for the entirety of our food, as most in the West do. If even just 10% is from elsewhere it reduces the power supermarkets have, and increases our own autonomy and community.
Reducing meat intake is all well and good, but it doesn’t aid biodiversity like a patchwork of gardens does. It doesn’t prevent soil erosion. It doesn’t create community. It doesn’t improve mental and physical health through exercise and sunshine. That’s not to say we shouldn’t reduce our meat intake, of course we should. It just doesn’t provide the pros that widespread community vegetable gardening would.
2·5 days agoRelevant song from 2007, Hussel by M.I.A.:
We do it cheap hide our money in a heap
Send it home and make em study
Fixing teeth, I got family, a friend in need
A hand to throw the gasoline
A mobile phone hooked up to the scene
Hello my frind yes it’s me
Dont be scared there’s somethin going on
Im gettin money since I grown
Could be dash go out and hussel em
But I hate money coz it makes me numbHussel hussel hussel
Grind grind grind
Why has everyone got hussel on their mind?Hussel hussel hussel
Grind grind grind
Why has everyone got hussel on their mind?[AFRIKAN BOY]
You think its tough now,
Come to africa,
Out there we are grinding like pepper,
You can catch me on the motorway,
Selling sugar water and pepper,
I rep Africa not Miami,
Hustle hustle with m.i.a,
I’m broke I’ve got indefinite stay,
You can’t touch me like leprosy,
I hustle tough from here to sri lanka,
My mum told me to be an accountant,
Bun that I wanna work in a corner shop,
Contact sugu he’s got the contacts mayne,
I’m illegal I don’t pay tax tax,
EMA yes I’m claiming that that,
Police I try to avoid them,
They catch me hustling they say deport them,Hussel hussel hussel [2x]
Grind grind grind
Why has everyone got hussel on their mind?Hello my friend, hello my friend
Yes it’s me
4 by 3 ,3 buy 3 , buy 1 song get 1 free
Maybe me, a bootleg cd colour tv or dvd
We got barrels in the sea
Its big enough to take a whole family
We drum on it
Jun cha cha gegujun cha
Jun cha cha gegujun chaCome sit by me, let me tell u we
Don’t do bling but we do white tee
Up some jungle up some tree
One second , my phones ringing
Its my friend habibi
He then went drop called me
Cheap moroccan got no credit than me
Ya’ll got less credit than me
I keep that tab at a shop like a gee
Coz without me there’ll be no chocolate hersheyHussel hussel hussel [6x]
Grind grind grind
Why has everyone got hussel on their mind?
Careful! Adding sand to your soil can make the problem worse.
This video explains why: https://youtu.be/aWcU8r6sxVo
Unless you’re willing to put in a lot of sand then you’re probably best just adding organic material on top and letting nature do its thing.
Something I think should also be added to the article is an encouragement for people to grow their own. Reduce reliance on farmers for the entirety of our diets. Have a patchwork blanket throughout villages, towns, and cities of gardens filled with organic vegetable gardens.
There’s precedent, in WW2 the population was encouraged to grow some of their own. To increase resilience.
It has multiple benefits. From the obvious like food supply resilience, to increasing biodiversity, reducing floods by improving soils (and therefore their ability to absorb water), improving community (getting people outside together and sharing surplus food), reducing fertiliser and fuel use (therefore reducing costs), and improving people’s mental health (by getting them outside playing in the dirt but also getting them to learn and be creative).
deleted by creator
There’s no conclusive evidence it was Russian. It could just as likely be American, Chinese, Israeli, French, etc
Dìreach sgriobh! 😄
Well hello there.
You could try this new hip place ;)
2·22 days agoI see what you did there!
Aye, I thocht this was a place for everything Scotland whereas Solarpunk Scotland has a particular focus. But if you post something relevant to Solarpunk here, then please feel free to crosspost to Solarpunk Scotland! And I’ll do the same to here if you’re (as community mod) happy with that?
7·2 months agodownvote proponents are just saying, “Yeah, well my way is better. Lemmy is only for people who do it my way.”
If anything you’re the one being obtuse and saying your way is better and that people must adapt to your way. Downvotes are the default behaviour of the software and the “reddit-like” experience of Lemmy
Looks like your comment is receiving downvotes just fine…
Maybe this thread is a lesson in how downvotes have a purpose and why instances turning them off is silly puritanical nonsense that serves to aid bad content more than anything else it purports to achieve.
2·3 months agoThere’s around 30 million homes in the UK. So this would cover 40% of homes in the whole country!
3·5 months agoHell, even flat structures seem to trend towards an informal elite of psychopaths.
The average person doesnt have the energy or desire to be constantly vigilant against overreach of power, but psychopaths do, to figure out weaknesses.
The only effective combat against this that I’ve seen is nonnegotiable time limits on positions. You get your chance in the sun and then you need to find another role, otherwise tendrils get planted and power gets consolidated.
The smaller the group or more complex the roles however, the harder that is. That’s why education and skill sharing is so important, so that no one person becomes indispensable.
7·6 months agoTo clarify, when knowone says “that’s not a fun time” they don’t mean “oh it tastes bad”. They mean it’s really not a fun time, avoid going anywhere near giant hogweed!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heracleum_mantegazzianum
NSFL (if you’re squeemish):
Thank you!