Trasladado a http://movimientotransicion.pbworks.com/PADE
Kinsale 2021 – An Energy Descent Action Plan
Ya existe una traducción, que he subido a este wiki realizada por la "Entesa pel Decreixement": 
kinsale castellano.pdf
Desde su web sólo es disponible la versión en Catalán.
The report that you hold in your hand is a very important piece of work.
It is the first attempt at setting out how Kinsale, a West Cork town of about 7,000 people, could make the transition from a high energy consumption town to a low energy one.
The impending peaking of world oil production will lead to huge changes around the world, and Ireland will not be immune from this.
This report, prepared by permaculture students from Kinsale Further Education College, looks at how Kinsale could navigate this uncertain time by setting out a clear vision of how a lower energy future could be, and then identifying a clear timetable for achieving it.
This is, as far as we know, the first time this has happened in Ireland.
The report looks at most aspects of life in Kinsale, including food, energy, tourism, education and health.
Also described is the process that produced this report, in the hope that it can be rolled out in other towns across the country.
Acknowledgements
This document is the result of the hard work and commitment of a number of people, all of whom deserve our appreciation and recognition.
First and foremost, John Thuellier, principal of Kinsale FEC, under whose guidance the Practical Sustainability has taken root in Kinsale soil and been nurtured and allowed to flourish.
Without his care and vision, it would still be but a dormant seed.
Secondly all the students of the course over the years, all of whom have contributed in one way or another to its development, and to the document you now hold in your hand.
Their passion and zeal for implementing practical solutions has always given me a real hope for the future.
My fellow teachers at Kinsale FEC deserve recognition for their inputs into this project, namely Thomas Riedmuller, Paul O’Flynn, Phoebe Bright and Philip Ward.
Also to the people who gave their time towards helping to shape this work, Dr. Colin Campbell, Andy Langford, Graham Strouts, Tom Atkins, Dr. Stephen Gascoigne, Judith Hoad, Quentin Gargan and Clare Watson, Dominic Waldron, Caroline and Eddie Robinson and Xavier Dubuisson, as well as the thinkers who have inspired it, David Holmgren, Richard Heinberg, Bill Mollison, Howard Odum, Richard Douthwaite, David Fleming, Helena Norberg-Hodge and Patrick Whitefield.
Thanks also to James Casey-Ellis of www.smallgiant.biz for the graphic image on the cover.
Finally the people of Kinsale who have greeted this project with great enthusiasm, and for whom, ultimately, we have produced this document.
We would also like to extend our deep gratitude to Kinsale Town Council and Kinsale Environment Watch for their help with the publishing of this report. This document is dedicated to the memory of permaculture student and dear friend Andrew Long (1972-2004) and to peace in the world
“If you want to build a ship, don't herd people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work; but, rather, teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea”.
Anon
“Traveller, there are no roads, roads are made by travelling”
Spanish Proverb
The Practical Sustainability Course at Kinsale FEC
The Practical Sustainability course at Kinsale FEC is the first full-time 2 year permaculture course in the world.
Developed over the last 4 years by permaculture designer and teacher Rob Hopkins, it offers students the opportunity to study permaculture and related topics in an inspiring setting and with some of Ireland’s leading thinkers in the field of sustainability.
The course is run under the auspices of Cork Vocational Education Committee, and leads to FETAC qualifications, a maximum of 8 of which can be undertaken in one year.
The modules covered are NCVA Level 2 awards, and are as follows – Year One – Permaculture Design, Sustainable Woodland Management, Organic Production Principles, Organic Horticulture and Field Ecology.
Year Two – Applied Permaculture, Green Building, Starting Your Own Business, Community Leadership and Conflict Resolution.
The course is taught in a very accessible and student-centred way, with many site visits to projects of interest around Munster, and with a number of hands-on projects.
In previous years students have built a strawbale house, planted an edible hedge, planted a woodland, made living willow sculptures, put up a polytunnel, planted a forest garden, made a pond, built an earth bread oven and built drystone walls.
This year’s has seen the completion of the cordwood amphitheatre, a beautiful new theatre built from local and natural materials.
It was opened in May 2005 with a performance of ‘The Merry Wives of Windsor’ by the college’s drama students.
The whole emphasis of the course is on giving students a toolkit that they can use in their lives to make their homes, their communities and their world more abundant and sustainable.
Guest speakers on previous years courses have included the organic writer Joy Larkcom, community housing specialist Jose Ospina, renewable energy consultant Gerry Cunnane, Anne B. Ryan, author of ‘Balancing Your Life’, local tree folklorist Ted Cooke, reedbed engineer Feidhlim Harty, permaculture gardener Dominic Waldron, Davie Phillip of The Village eco-village project in Co. Tipperary and many more.
The course contains assessed modules in all of the above areas, and also completion of the Year One Permaculture Design module will lead to the awarding of a certificate of permaculture design, an internationally recognised qualification in permaculture, the pre-requisite for doing the Diploma in Applied Permaculture.
The course is taught by the following; Rob Hopkins has taught permaculture design in Ireland for 7 years and has taught widely around the country.
He is a founding Director of The Hollies Centre for Practical Sustainability, and has become one of the country’s leading pioneers of natural building. Paul O’Flynn is an organic grower, landscaper and woodsman of over 15 years experience. Until recently he ran an organic market garden in Newcastle West, Co. Limerick, producing a range of organic produce for local Farmers Markets and restaurants.
Philip Ward is a local ecologist with an unrivalled knowledge of the ecology of West Cork.
Thomas Riedmuller of The Hollies Centre for Practical Sustainability teaches conflict resolution and community leadership, and has done much to promote this area in Ireland.
Phoebe Bright teaches Start Your Own Business. She runs Vivid Logic, a consultancy company which offers solutions on sustainable business, Information Technology, and website development. She is trained in the Natural Step which she also teaches.
To find out more or to receive an application form contact Kinsale Further Education Centre at kinsalefurthered@eircom.net or ring ++353 (0)214772275.
The Kinsale Energy Descent Energy Action Plan – an introduction.
by Rob Hopkins, course co-ordinator, Kinsale FEC
Oil
Oil is an amazing material. It can power aeroplanes, run cars and lorries, heat our homes and generate electricity. It can be turned into a huge array of plastics and other polymers the world has never seen before, allowing us access to a great diversity of products our ancestors could only have dreamt of – what Kinsale’s ancient mariners would have given to get their hands on fibreglass and silicon mastic! It can be manufactured into medicines; the vast majority of modern drugs are petrochemical-based. Oil is used to power the production of high embodied energy materials such as cement, aluminium, steel and glass, which we use to house ourselves. It has facilitated a huge growth in employment and economic wealth, created prosperity previous generations could only have dreamt of. It has allowed us to build an economy where we manufacture less and less and import more and more. We export butter and we import butter. We remove our native orchards and buy apples from the cheapest seller wherever that may be around the world. We have created a façade of wealth while at the same time wantonly discarding the very things that at any other time in history constituted real wealth - well managed diverse woodlands, local, vibrant, diverse food markets, local skills and traditions, local genetic diversity, breeds and varieties uniquely suited to local climate and soils. However, while oil has brought undeniable benefits, these have come with a price tag. The dangers posed to us all by global warming are known to all at this stage, but suffice to say we have altered the climate in ways that are already causing chaos around the world, and it is only just the beginning. We live in a world where oil has allowed us to create a huge range of chemical compounds never seen in the world before, many of which have been linked to problems in human health and environmental pollution. It is estimated that we all carry about 400-500 chemicals in our bodies that did not exist sixty years ago. It has also allowed us to create a lifestyle where we live faster - we drive to shop, drive to work, drive to be entertained. We are more stressed and unsatisfied, we sit down to meals with our families less and less, we have less and less time to relax with friends, there is a growing sense that “something is missing”.
The Peak
As Dr. Colin Campbell’s article below sets out, we are reaching a pivotal point in human history. At that moment, global oil production will peak, and from then on, demand will always exceed supply. There will never again be as much oil available as there is now. In short, we will reach (or have already reached) the point at which growth will become impossible. Our economies will need to make the transition to continual contraction rather than relentless growth. There will still be oil in the ground, but its extraction will become unfeasibly expensive and impractical, and our economies, designed on the fundamental assumption that they will always be growing, will have a traumatic period of adjustment to the new reality. The co-founder of permaculture, David Holmgren, likens our situation to being on the top of a mountain, from where we have views that no-one has ever seen before, but where the storm clouds are gathering. We have to navigate a way down the mountain while we still can, while we still have favourable weather and daylight. If we just allow the peak to happen, without planning for it, we will be in for a very rough ride.
Energy Descent – a planned way down
There is an old saying, “there are three kinds of people; one who watches things happen, one who makes things happen and one who says 'what happened ?'. We do have an alternative to just sitting back and allowing a deeply uncertain future to simply unfold. Our collective dependence on fossil fuels leaves us very vulnerable, and indeed is largely responsible for the instability we see in the world today. To quote Jan Lundberg of the Sustainable Energy Institute, “real peace in a petroleum-fuelled world means rejecting petroleum dependence in all ways possible”. As a country on the Western seaboard of Europe, far from centres of distribution or oil production, we find ourselves at the end of a very long supply line. Ireland imports over 90% of its food and almost the same proportion of our energy. Much of our building materials are imported, likewise our medicines and many other essential goods. Despite our great material prosperity and our ‘booming’ economy, we are very vulnerable to fluctuations in supply or international events. Given that we can see the unfolding picture as regards peak oil, it beholds us to act and to do something about it, but what? The late renowned ecologist Howard Odum coined the term ‘energy descent’ for the transition from a high fossil fuel use economy to a more frugal one, also coining the term ‘a prosperous way down’ to show that, if planned, this could be an opportunity for great inventiveness and abundance. This report is, as far as we know, the first time an Energy Descent Action Plan has been prepared for a settlement anywhere in the world. It is the first time a community has looked realistically at how it might manage this transitionary period to the benefit of all in a timetabled step-by-step way.
In his indispensable book on the subject, ‘The Party’s Over – oil, war and the fate of industrial societies’, Richard Heinberg invites the reader to take a trip to a city centre and observe how energy is being used. How does energy underpin the work people do, where goods come from, transportation, heating and so on? He then suggests imagining the same scene with 10% less energy, then 25% less, then 50%, then 75%. Once we peak, we can expect an annual decline of available energy of around 2% each year. This exercise is worth taking the time to do. The results are quite sobering, and it is what second year students at Kinsale Further Education College have been doing over the last year. It can lead to your asking some very uncomfortable questions and coming up with some very surprising answers.
Kinsale 2021
Students on the Practical Sustainability course at Kinsale FEC have spent the last year looking at what the realities of energy descent could mean for Kinsale, and what could be done about it. They have consulted with many of the leading thinkers in the field, and have researched the issue deeply. In February 2005 they held a one-day event entitled “Kinsale in 2021 - Towards a Prosperous, Sustainable Future Together”. To this event they invited many influential people in Kinsale, and began by showing them the recent awardwinning film ‘The End of Suburbia’. The rest of the event was designed as a community think-tank, to enable the community to discuss issues raised by the film and brainstorm ideas about what could be done in the town to address them. The event was a great success, and gave the students many ideas and a feel for the community’s hopes and fears. As a follow up to this, a conference is being planned for June 2005, called ‘Fuelling the Future – the challenge and opportunity of Peak Oil’, which will be addressed by many of the world’s experts on the subject and on creative ways of adapting to it. We feel that these, together with this report, constitute very firm first steps towards a more holistic way of approaching Kinsale’s future. Ideas from the community being recorded and displayed during the Kinsale 2021 event
This Report
The report you now hold in your hands is the result of the students’ endeavours over the last year. It is a bold and visionary piece of work. It offers a timetable by which Kinsale can begin putting in place the elements it will need in order to navigate the troubled waters ahead. It is a roadmap to sustainability, to localisation, to abundance. Some of the ideas it contains may have occurred to you before, many of them may never have. Put together they offer a way forward, with Kinsale leading the way for the rest of the country, setting an example as the first town that didn’t stick its head in the sand, didn’t hope the problem would simply go away if ignored. Kinsale could gain great advantage by being the first town off the blocks, the first town to begin this process. However, ideas are nothing if they just remain words on paper. To quote Joel Barker, “vision without action is merely a dream, action without vision just passes the time, vision with action can change the world”. We offer this vision as the first step towards the action that will we hope will follow.
It is for this reason that the appendices of this report include an article exploring the concept for the Kinsale Sustainability Centre. This sets out how a Sustainability Centre could be established and what its functions might be. The Centre would have the broad remit of implementing this plan in the town, initiating many of the projects and initiatives set out here. We include it here in the hope that its inclusion might contribute to its realisation. We offer this report as a first step on a long, exhilarating and fascinating journey.
Rob Hopkins is course co-ordinator of the Practical Sustainability course at Kinsale FEC. He is a founding Director of The Hollies Centre for Practical Sustainability and has taught permaculture and natural building widely around Ireland. To find out more visit www.theholliesonline.com.
p.8, 9 y 10 not copied (on peak oil)
please do add them those who have energy for this work!
The Scenario of This Report
Rob Hopkins
This report takes the scenario painted by Dr Colin Campbell in his article as its opening premise. If he is right (and many believe his predictions to be by far the most reliable currently available), by 2021 Kinsale will have only about one half of the fossil fuel available to it that it currently has. This has implications for every aspect of life in Kinsale.
The headings below hopefully cover most aspects of life in Kinsale. Each section follows the same format. It begins with a brief look at the current situation in Kinsale with regards to the subject in question. This attempts to summarise the issues involved in a way which is both succinct and relevant. This is then followed by the Vision. This is our idea of how Kinsale could be in 2021, if the steps suggested have been taken. This aims to give you an idea of the potential result of the recommendations, and how it could actually be a step forward from where we are now rather than a retreat.
Then come the actual recommendations. These are laid out in chronological order, from the present day until 2021. The proposals are practical and realistic, and where their implementation involves the input of a particular body this is included. The proposals are laid out in a clear and easy-to-read format so that they are easy to follow. Each area is then concluded by a section of resources, places you can find out more about some of the ideas that have been discussed. These include books, websites, organisations and so on. Please do follow up any areas that interest you, you never know where they might lead!
This report is not intended to be comprehensive, please view it is a first draft being put out into the community for consultation. It is not the work of professionals. It may occasionally be guilty of naivety, being misinformed or overly optimistic, but it is our attempt at starting this process rolling. You can look upon it as being the first step in a long process, offered to you warts’n’all for discussion, rather than a comprehensive document. It will be used as the basis for next year’s students to revise and add their own updates to, based on further and deeper community consultation. If you have any thoughts or views on what you have read, you can either write to the college, or post your thoughts on our website, www.fuellingthefuture.org. There you will find a bulletin board where you can post your views, and these will be taken into consideration when we revise it next year. We hope that you will enjoy this document and that it may lead to the change to which it aspires.
Further Peak Oil Reading
Darley, Julian High Noon for Natural Gas Post -Carbon Institute Douthwaite, Richard (ed.) Before the Wells Run Dry- Ireland's transition to Renewable Energy Ed. Feasta 2003 Hartmann, Thom The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight Three Rivers Press (US) 2004 Joplin, John and Douthwaite, Richard (eds.) The Feasta Review Green Books/FEASTA 2001 Kunstler, James Howard The Long Emergency- Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the 21 st Century Atlantic Monthly Press 2005 Mason, Colin The 2030 Spike: Countdown to Global Catastrophe Earthscan 2003 McKillop Andrew (ed) The Final Energy Crises Pluto Press 2005 Savinar, Matt, J.D. The Oil Age is Over- What to Expect when the World Runs out of Cheap Oil 2005-2050 Morris Publishing 2004
Further What-We-Can-Do-About-It Reading...
Hargroves, Karlson & Smith, Michael. The Natural Advantage of Nations – business opportunities, innovations and governance in the 21 st Century. Earthscan 2005 Holmgren, David. Permaculture – principles and pathways beyond sustainability. Holmgren Design Press 2003 James, Sarah & Lahti, Torbjorn. The Natural Step for Communities – how cities and towns can change to sustainable practices. New Society Publishers 2004 Whitefield, Patrick. The Earth Care Manual – a permaculture handbook for temperate climates Permanent Publications. 2004
Food
Deirdre Barry, Rob Hopkins
The Present
Kinsale is known widely as the Gourmet Capital of Ireland. While it does indeed host many fine restaurants, it is as dependent on imported food as anywhere else in the country. Over 90% of the food consumed within Kinsale comes from outside the area, and this percentage is rapidly increasing as imports become cheaper. Farmers are being paid to let their land do nothing, whereas it could be growing food for local markets. In the near future, when the reality of Peak Oil makes itself increasingly apparent, we will discover that food security is not only a Third World issue. As the recent fuel crisis in the UK showed, supermarkets only contain 3 days worth of food at any given time, as the old saying goes ‘civilisation is only 3 meals deep’. Much of what we consume has travelled great distances, is saturated with pesticides and other chemicals, and is grown in ways that deplete rather than build soils. Even if we choose organic, there is a very high chance, if we shop in Kinsale, that the organic food we are buying has been grown overseas, with the resultant environmental impacts of transporting it over long distances to reach us. Food is one of the basic cornerstones of life, as oil prices steadily increase, we will discover how dependent we have become on a totally undependable system.
The Vision
By 2021, Kinsale has made the transition from dependency to self reliance. Food growing has become an integral part of life in the town. Lawns are a thing of the past, lawnmowers now hang in pubs as old ploughs did in 2005, relics of a bizarre form of land use that people used to practice in the dying days of the Oil Age. All landscaping in the town comprises of edible plants, fruit trees line the streets, all parks and greens have become food forests and community gardens, and every back garden contains a food garden. The resurgence in food production had great benefits for the community. People rediscovered old varieties, and began once more to save and exchange seeds. As peoples’ diets improved with more and more fresh vegetables, and people enjoyed the exercise of making a garden, so health increased and common illnesses decreased. People are now more aware of the seasons, and a vibrant local economy in local honey, vegetables, fresh fish and poultry and fruit has now replaced the monoculture of the supermarket so popular in 2005.
Practical Steps:
2005
• The Kinsale Sustainability Centre appoints a Local Food Officer, with the brief of promoting local food. His/her first job is to organise an Open Space Think Tank event, inviting all those involved in food in Kinsale to discuss the recommendations in this report and to add new ones
• A Local Food Partnership is formed as a follow up to this meeting. Made up of interested parties and representatives of the various sectors in Kinsale with an interest in food, the Partnership serves a few roles. Firstly it is useful for ongoing discussion about food issues, secondly it facilitates the design of local food networks, and thirdly it gives profile to this work.
2006
• The Local Food Officer, together with the Local Food Partnership, produces a Local Food Action Plan for Kinsale, which sets out practical steps towards local food in Kinsale. A summary of this report is produced, together with a Directory of Local Food, listing all the local producers and growers in the Kinsale area.
• The Local Food Officer works with the local schools to change their procurement policies as regards food. Schools undertake to purchase 60% of their food from local producers, of which 40% is organic.
• The Local Food Partnership forms a Steering Group to begin to move Kinsale towards being a Slow Food town. They arrange a trip to existing Slow Food towns elsewhere in Europe to get a feel for their experience.
• Kinsale FEC adds a module to the Practical Sustainability course in Organic Market Gardening, so as to give people the commercial as well as the practical skills needed for making a living growing food within Kinsale.
• Identify a number of sites for orchards around Kinsale, and plant them with local school children, using rare West Cork varieties where available.
2007
• The Slow Food Steering Group formally applies to make Kinsale a Slow Food Town. This change means that the focus for Kinsale’s restaurants stays on good quality food, but shifts subtly to add an emphasis on local, organic and high quality food. It also puts an emphasis on local recipes and delicacies, and helps reconnect people to their food heritage. The Slow Food group introduce a Kinsale Slow Food label, which restaurants which meet the criteria can be awarded. The scheme is launched with a Slow Food banquet in Kinsale Town Hall.
• The energy behind Kinsale’s becoming a Slow Food Town leads to the obstacles to a Kinsale Farmers’ Market being overcome. The Farmers Market is held every Friday, and brings local food to the community, and is a celebration of local food culture. As has been the experience of many other places, the Farmers Market creates many niches for small growers and is a real social focus for the town.
• Kinsale Town Council introduces reduced rates for businesses using more than a stated percentage of locally produced food.
• Kinsale Hospital introduces a Local Food Procurement policy, sourcing as much of its food locally as possible.
• Kinsale Town Council brings in new guidelines for its grounds maintenance staff. They are all required to undertake a permaculture design course. Wherever new trees are to be planted, they must be productive tree species. Especially recommended are nut trees such as walnut and sweet chestnut, as well as the wide range of fruiting trees. New guidelines are also introduced for developers, all new planning applications must be accompanied by a full edible landscaping plan. The new guidelines create employment opportunities for students from the Practical Sustainability course at Kinsale FEC, who are uniquely qualified to do this work, a number of whom set up design consultancies in order to serve this new demand.
• Students from Kinsale FEC begin working with local schools to design and install food gardens in each school.
2008
• Kinsale becomes recognised as Ireland’s first Slow Food Town. A Slow Food Festival is held to celebrate. The high profile of being the first Slow Food town allows the Town Council to source funding to initiate a number of urban food growing projects. These include;
• A community food garden in the garden in front of the town hall
• A 1601 Fruit Trees for Kinsale initiative, which makes free fruit trees available to residents of Kinsale, as well as an aftercare advice service for people in how to take care of them.
• A proposal for the current Supervalu car park site to transform it into a mini-Eden Project, a glass dome incorporating a ‘Living Machine’ waste water treatment system, a café, a subtropical fruit arboretum, and food growing. This structure would become a major attraction, and would be a ground breaking example of a tourist attraction designed to bring great benefit to a town beyond simply attracting tourists.
• An ‘EasyGarden’ scheme, where salad and vegetable plants are propagated in trays at a central point and then passed on to people to plant directly, saving them the perceived ‘hassle’ of growing their own plants from seed.
• A programme to seek out any rare apple or other fruit varieties in Kinsale so that cuttings can be taken and the varieties can be preserved.
2009
• The Slow Food is label rolled out to include B&Bs. By meeting certain criteria they are allowed to call themselves a Slow Bed and Breakfast (or Bed and Slow Breakfast... (!)). Criteria are established for how they would qualify. One is that they provide local breakfasts, with all the components of the breakfast being sourced locally. Switching all of Kinsale’s B&Bs over to the Slow Food label would create a considerable market for local produce.
2010
• By 2010, the various changes in procurement from schools, the hospital and B&Bs and also the now well-established Farmers Market have begun to create significant market opportunities in Kinsale for people to produce local food. Polytunnels start popping up on open ground around Kinsale, and the sound of chickens is once again heard in the town. West Cork LEADER make grants available to people starting up small scale food production, and also offer business support.
• As part of the Slow Food process, and in the interest of promoting Kinsale as a Sustainable Town, Kinsale Town Council bans the use of herbicides along road sides in the town.
2011
• Groups of farmers with land around Kinsale get together and form an organic local food co-op. With the help of Teagasc, they convert their land to organic, and work together to grow food specifically for the local market. They focus on bulkier crops such as potatoes, carrots and parsnips, to complement the salads and more easily transported crops being grown nearer to or in the town.
• The farmers co-op also turns its dairy herds organic, and begin to value add the milk they produce by making cheese and butter on the farm for local markets. The co-op also, with all its member farmers, takes a fresh look at all of its practices in the light of Peak Oil. This leads to lower stocking densities, and a widespread adoption of the practice of Foggage Farming, as developed at Fordhall Farm in the UK (see Resources). In this system all livestock are 100% Free Range and graze the species-rich chemical free pastures all year round (there would be a certain conversion period to reseed pastures and to build up the required root mat in the sward). No routine antibiotics or growth hormones are used. Stock is not housed through the winter, so there is no need for any additional concentrates. Hardier cattle varieties are used.
• The Farmers Co-op and the local growers get together to design a Community Supported Agriculture Scheme, whereby customers can order food directly from local sources. A box of mixed produce is delivered on a weekly basis to homes in the town. This also allows the customer to make a direct link with the growers, so they know where their food comes from.
2012
• A ‘Tasty Towns’ competition is introduced as a national challenge to towns to see which town can grow the most food in the most imaginative way within its town boundaries. Other criteria looked for are the most imaginative ways of incorporating the widest cross section of society in food growing and the revival of old varieties and traditional techniques. It is co-ordinated and run in a similar way to the Tidy Towns competition, but does a great deal to promote local food growing in Ireland. Its central office is based in the Sustainability Centre in Kinsale.
• Training is offered to the Kinsale community on innovative niche markets for food production. These include organic mushrooms such as shiitake, unusual vegetables, and innovative ways of growing grains. These workshops are hosted at Kinsale FEC and funded by Bord Bia and West Cork LEADER.
2013
• A laboratory is set up producing spores for gourmet and medicinal mushrooms, modelled on the Humungous Fungus company in the UK (see Resources below). They sell spawn and also set up a series of growers around the region growing mushrooms on. These mushrooms have amazing health benefits, indeed the majority of medicines in China and Japan are made from mushrooms.
• In order to make it easier for individuals to grow their own food, the ‘EasyGarden’ scheme links with the Community Composting Scheme, and offers a whole package, teaching people how to very easily make no-dig gardens as well as providing them with the plants to fill the beds.
• Apple Day begins to be celebrated as an annual festival in Kinsale, celebrating Kinsale varities and reconnecting people with the history of the apple in Kinsale.
2014
• In the interests of energy efficiency and also of promoting local food growing, grants are made available for people to put lean-to conservatories on their houses, provided they meet certain design criteria, for example they are not to be heated, they are to the thermally isolated from the rest of the house, and they should be on the south side of the house. Help is then given with designing food growing inside and identifying suitable species.
2015
• A ‘MatchMaking Service’ is set up to get around land access issues in Kinsale. A number of younger more physically able people live in flats and in houses with no gardens, while many older people live in houses with gardens they are no longer capable of looking after. Many of these older people would love to see their gardens being used in a productive way, perhaps in exchange for a ‘vegetable tax’, a small proportion of the produce. The Matchmaking Service would co-ordinate this, make introductions between people and working as an intermediary in the case of any problems arising. 2016 • An aquaculture system is designed for the town. Being a natural bowl, Kinsale is in many ways ideal for an urban sustainable aquaculture system. Water is channelled into a series of ponds which are used to raise freshwater fish, such as trout. This is carefully designed so as to also allow for other uses such as recreation and the production of other crops such as watercress and water chestnuts. • The orchards planted in 2007 begin to come into regular production. A press is set up in the town to facilitate the production of apple juice, cider and cider vinegar. 2016 – 2021 • Assisted by the various organisations now in place and the highly visible benefits of local food growing, the move towards a culture of local food growing is well under way. Kinsale is well ahead of the rest of the country in not only having put in place the infrastructure of a local food economy, but also holding a number of events to celebrate it. The ecological aquaculture system is put in place, bringing the sound of running water to the streets of Kinsale as well as high quality fresh fish. The glasshouse project for the Supervalu car park site in Kinsale is granted planning permission and also funding, and work begins on its construction. Kinsale now has an in-built resilience to enable it to deal robustly with shocks and shortages in the food supply system.
Wiki
Plugin error: That plugin is not available.
Comments (0)
You don't have permission to comment on this page.