Can something better emerge from difficult times?
Well, that’s pretty much the message from the SolarPunk movement.
For example: there’s what seems to be bad news coming from today’s Mail on Sunday:
Fruit and veg faces 30% price rise in latest cost of living crisis: Striking Spanish truckers disrupt supplies of tomatoes, lettuce and peppers – while sunflower oil is ‘running out’ putting production of crisps and chips at risk
- Fruit and vegetable prices could rise by a third amid Spanish lorry driver strikes
- Comes amid warning UK has only a few weeks’ supply of sunflower oil left
- It has left food manufacturers desperately searching for alternative ingredients
- But that means a price rise, with rapeseed oil already jumping ’50-70 per cent’
- And new figures this week showed food inflation rose 5.3 per cent year-on-year
All rather depressing – but if this desperation is seen from a different perspective, then perhaps opportunities can be grabbed.
As suggested by a correspondent:
Thoughts:
If we have less sunflower oil then perhaps:
a) there will be less deep fat frying
b) people won’t pour used oil down the sink causing fatbergs but instead reuse it.
c) there will be less commercial pastry and cakes which use oils not hard fats.
If people get used to not having out of season veg because of Spanish strikes then we can become more sustainable by eating local, we really don’t NEED salad veg in winter.
If we are not getting Spanish fish then perhaps we will eat what we catch rather than exporting it to Spain.
Given recent research into resistant fungal infections on fruit from India (apples especially) we might stop the storage practices which create antibiotic resistance, and eat local and seasonal.
And if food goes back to the relative price it was was before the 70s started making everything cheap then perhaps people will stop eating too much and also wasting food.
I can only see such things as positive for our health and the planet.
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