Own Grown Gardening

How can we balance our demands for food production against the necessity to conserve biodiversity? This difficult question is often debated by Conservation Biologists sitting on two sides of a great debate elegantly expressed as Sparing verses Sharing . I'll define each of these in turn so we can compare and contrast the two. I'm hoping, this will allow us to see how we might utilise both concepts in unison to manage the use of our precious land sustainably.  Sustainably. What a loaded word! I'm using it here in it's purest sense, as a way to describe a land management technique which maintains a stable state of ecosystem health and food production. A sustainable environment protects the health of the Earth and Humanity at the expense of neither. What a pleasant thought! So, the debate. To begin, what is Sparing? This photo actually sums it up nicely: It is the widely practiced concept of setting aside parcels of land as conservation zones (the forest in the background)...

I guess I better start with my gardening and food growing philosophy. I consider my outlook dynamic and evolving so I'm sure to return to this subject in the future. Everyone should have the right to grow at least some of their own food. Food is, of course, the literal sustenance of life keeping us healthy and happy. Equally, everyone has a social responsibility to grow at least some of their own food. Each of us, after all, are fundamentally responsible for our own wellbeing when it truely comes down to it. Since food sustains our health, we should logically each be responsible for food production. What are the consequences of this way of thinking? Well, if we as a society made a concerted effort to embrace this philosophy, we would grow far more food within cities because the world's population is already predominantly urban. Today, well over 50% of the world's population lives in urban areas, and the United Nations expects this proportion to rise further, to 68% by as s...