Tonight before our main course we had a small salad. This in the main came from a bag that I think cost £1.19 at Booth's. I had already used a handful of the leaves in my wife's packed lunch, with a few different bits and bobs added to that and the evening version to make sure she didn't feel she was getting the same thing twice.
Factor in the half a chicory head, few slices of cucumber, and a grated beetroot (plus a few drops of dressing) this evening and it would still not have set us back anywhere near £2. A chocolate bar each would have cost more by my reckoning, and we're not talking Green and Black's 70% cocoa either.
That bag is in fact a bit lazy, and even in proper austerity terms an extravagance, a lettuce going further.
Of course in about three months we will be back on our own salad ingredients. Growing your own salad provided you have a little patch of ground, or even a sunny windowsill, is ridiculously easy, incredibly economical, and provides you with leaves and roots that put supermarket or even greengrocer stuff in the shade.
I still keep turning over in my mind the relative health benefits of the Olympic Games which cost £13 billion, and say spending a third of that on land to provide allotments. So that's £4.3 billion. Arable land costs £6,500 per acre, being generous. The £4.3 billion would buy 660,000 acres, again erring on the safe side. An acre would give a manageable plot (125m2, half the normal size of an allotment if there is a normal size) to 32 families or individuals (you can tell I'm not a politician, I didn't say 'hard working families). Say you lost a whopping 25 per cent of usable space for access, paths etc. That still leaves more than 15 million allotment plots. Allotments, btw, are more productive than commercially farmed land as there is no need for tracks for machines, you can intercrop more easily, have quick crops like radishes while slower ones like spuds are on the way, etc etc.
Of course farmers may not want to sell all that land, and arable land tends to be away from the centres of population. And it is unlikely that 15 million families would want an allotment suddenly. But I bet you could get a million interested at the drop of a hat. Give them the full-size plot and let them build a summerhouse shed on it so the kids can play and have shelter, and it becomes a British dacha. If my sums are correct, you could give (lease or rent for a small amount is more practical, so people don't sell them on instantly) a million families healthy food and exercise for less than £600 million.
Instead of which we make national heroes of a very few people who can swim backwards fast, jump quite a long way, throw pointed sticks, and not bomb when they dive into swimming pools. We got lots of goldish medals though. Try eating them in a few years' time. Or another comparison: we intend spending £33 billion making it a bit quicker to get between London and Manchester by train (and Birmingham, and Leeds...). We know that our food security will be affected by climate change; is almost certain to be threatened by political events around the globe; by population growth; and by the growing demands (quite reasonably) of developing nations. Have we got our priorities right?
No comments:
Post a Comment