EAFL's purpose is to help to build a food system that will continue to feed humanity as well as possible in the face of a number of increasingly urgent threats. The problems are relatively clear, the solutions more tentative. However, inaction is not an option so this website discusses our best current understanding of what a Resilient Food System looks like. We go on to describe What EAFL is doing and What You Can Do to help to bring about such resilient food systems.
East Anglia Food Link's news
Taking a break
Due to a temporary gap in our funding, we are not currently delivering projects. Our team are available to discuss potential projects etc. We are not currently using the office at Long Stratton.
Norwich Food Projects
We hope that by Spring 2010 we will have funding in place and will have commenced work on 4 projects that we're delivering with and for Transition Norwich. These projects are:
- A Community Supported Agriculture Scheme, to be based at Postwick and supplying vegetables to members in Norwich, Thorpe St Andrew etc.
- A School Farm - a 3-acre market garden based at the Hewett School, Norwich
- A new flour mill for Norwich
- A project to broker local, organic beans, oats, barley etc for wholefood shops in the Norwich area.
Norwich Food Plan
The Norwich Food Plan, prepared by EAFL with and on behalf of Transition Norwich, addresses the question of how Norwich can feed itself in the wake of peak oil and other constraints on our food supply. Its analysis is based on a spreadsheet that enables the user to specify an organic crop rotation, and applies yield data to estimate the resulting quantities of various crops. It then calculates the nutritional content of those crops in order to establish what patterns of food production might produce enough food to feed Norwich.
Of course, there are many variables to consider. For example, how much land is Norwich's "share" of the UK's land? How do we allow for the fact that Norwich is in a productive arable area, while other cities are nearer to less-productive land suited mainly for grazing? What assumptions to we make about how much wood we might want to produce for home heating - and how should tree production be located in relation to food production?
One thing that the spreadsheet makes very clear is that we can greatly reduce our demand on land by choosing a diet much lower in meat and dairy produce. For example, the spreadsheet demonstrates that the "hinterland" of Norwich - that is, the parishes closer to Norwich than to other market towns - could provide enough food to feed everyone living in Norwich and in that Hinterland, provided that everyone limited their meat and dairy intake.
A draft of the Plan can be downloaded here (pdf, 193kb). Please remember that this is a work in progress! We are interested from hearing from funders and/or partners interested in completing this project with us.