Vegan Organic Network

The latest publication from the Vegan Organic Network (VON) is a collection of the writings of Dave of Darlington, the thinking man’s farmer.
 
Dave was one of the pioneers of organic vegetable box deliveries from his market garden and workers’ cooperative Organic Growers of Durham.
 
His writings were published in VON’s magazine Growing Green International over a period of many years and always attracted a huge amount of interest, due to their diversity, their erudition and, perhaps most of all, to the inherent humanity of their writer. Dave’s enthusiasm for sustainable farming shines through, whether he’s talking in technical terms about green manures, chipped branch wood, rotations or soil science or whether he is tackling the global, ethical and environmental issues too often ignored by most commentators on agriculture.
 
Readers of this fascinating collection of essays and letters will be able to trace the evolution of Dave’s market garden project from small beginnings in the early 1990s to a 150-strong customer base, at which point new members were only accepted for the waiting list if they lived within 5 miles of the market garden.
 
As well as running a successful veg box scheme, the cooperative carried out invaluable research in the vegan-organic sphere. Dave developed a zero tillage system using mulching and a separate permaculture hayfield with a blend of lucerne and tall fescue.
 
The book is a treasury of useful information for gardeners and farmers, gleaned from Dave’s long experience and enhanced by well-informed thoughts on the ethics and politics behind farming. Dave died in 2008 but it’s a fitting memorial to him that anyone who reads his work immediately finds themselves echoing a sentiment expressed by Ben Raskin of The Soil Association: “I’m sorry I never met him.”
 The Growing Sustainability book costs £10.50 (inc. P & P)  Please send cheque payable to VON to: VON Publications c/o John & Ziggy, 50A Macnaghten Road Southampton SO18 1GJ. Please mark your envelope PR 1032

 For review copies, contact  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Growing Green International’s Summer 2011 edition is packed with news from around the world of stockfree organic growing.

Stockfree organic differs from conventional organic in that, as well as avoiding synthetic chemicals and artificial fertilisers, growers also avoid animal inputs, relying instead on green manures, mulches, undersowing and crop rotation to maintain soil health and fertility.

The magazine demonstrates the success of these techniques and includes reports from UK growers and gardeners in Cambridge, Cheshire, Lancashire, Southampton and Yorkshire and as far afield as Kerala (India), the French Pyrenees and Ontario and Quebec in Canada.

There’s also news of a proposal to set up a Participatory Farmer to Farmer Low-cost Inspection Scheme. The plan is to set up a pilot in North-west England and North Wales which will operate through a link between Stockfree Organic Services and Climate Friendly Food, enabling more small-scale growers to afford reliable certification for their stockfree organic produce.

With articles on subjects as diverse as Human Diet Choice & Climate Change, Animals as Biotechnology No-Dig, No-Till Methods and Balcony Composting, there’s something to interest a wide variety of readers.

For a copy of the magazine, contact This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it   Better still, go to the www.veganorganic.net website to join VON and receive your copy.

To find out more about growing in different countries, climates and soil types, in protected and open environments on both field and market garden scales, take a look at the website www.stockfreeorganic.net or contact This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it   A panel of growers is available to offer help and advice.

“Growing Green – Organic Techniques for a Sustainable Future”, the remarkable handbook of stockfree organics written by Jenny Hall and Iain Tolhurst is now in its second edition and is available through the VON website www.veganorganic.net

Individuals and groups representing vegetarians and vegans up and down the country have been responding to a recent article in New Scientist magazine.

VON (Vegan-Organic Network) welcomes Bob Holmes’ article “Veggieworld: Why Eating Greens Won’t Save The Planet” (issue 2769 14 July 2010) as part of the increasing debate about the future of food but was disappointed by its muddled logic and several omissions.

Holmes gives figures for  the greenhouse gas emissions of beef, chicken and pork but omits plant protein from his comparison. He quotes a 21% reduction in land use if the world went vegan, yet later talks about marginal land as if it could not be re-forested, used for energy crops etc. He omits to mention the environmental damage caused by the tanning of leather, avoiding the comparison with a pair of shoes made from a renewable crop such as hemp.