guerrilla gardener Still growing your own vegetables?
THE GUERRILLA GARDENER REFLECTS ON THE DYNAMICS OF GYO AND EDIBLE GARDENING FOR 2011.
I am writing this piece in mid– January when we have already seen the inevitable ‘predictions for 2011’. The gardening/lifestyle pundits who deal in the subject claim that GYO is no longer fashionable! However, market data contradicts this view; hobby gardening seed sales continue to show an annual increase with the general consensus somewhere between 5 and 10 per cent. Some seed companies have recorded increases as high as 13 per cent during 2010.
P
utting aside the vested interest of garden writers (who see personal mileage in
GYO), seeds aren’t big-ticket items such as water features, timber structures and outdoor kitchens etc, and as such there are much bigger influences at play. The base line is we need to eat to survive and the percentage of income spent on food has a direct impact on money available for non-critical expenditure. Food falls into the same category as water, light, heat, essential transport and of course taxes, all of which are rising, meaning GYO will offer consumers value for money and could mean a better quality of life in 2011.
ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT Official inflation, whether taken from CPI or RPI, is between 3-5 per cent, and food inflation is much higher. At its base lie increases in labour charges, fuel, transportation, fertilizer and pesticide costs, making the shopping trip more expensive. UK consumers tend to have a misguided reliance that all fruit and vegetables will be available every month. This concept exists despite the food miles and the increasing cost of transportation from the four corners of the globe. The environmental impact of this and other macro influences
at work have lead to some predictions of food inflation reaching 18 per cent in 2011. So leaving behind the subjective views of GYO, objectively what are the influences? A drought in Russia in 2010 and fires in the autumn have resulted in Russia banning cereal exports for the foreseeable future; floods in Australia’s east coast will affect mind-boggling amounts of land from within the Australian food-basket area; then there’s a frozen Northern Europe, with temperatures physically destroying crops or reducing yields, a week pound against the dollar, the international currency of food, increasing demand for foodstuffs from growing economies such as Brazil, China and India, and the increasing cost of fuel driven by demand as car purchase and use increases across the globe. Add to this the land usage
switch from food crops to bio fuels and the attractive option to farmers of switching to cereal crops given global demand, increasing prices and highly attractive returns on cereals then the phrase ‘perfect food storm’ comes to mind. Home- grown food will increase and that will be a ‘standing’ increase as the food inflationary pressure conditions are only set to rise. If we add in gardening as a healthy lifestyle hobby, a family activity that is inexpensive, which fosters family unity, it has benefits; it will not be “Dig for Victory” but more ‘Dig Well and Eat Well!’ However, there are currently 330,000 allotments in the UK of which 66 per cent are held by tenants of more than 10 years standing. 40 per cent of allotment tenants have to wait more than a year from application, with the longest waiting list in the UK is currently six years. In the National Allotment Survey carried out by Derby University (for the Department of Local Government and Communities), 75 per cent of
36 Garden & Hardware News - Retail Plants & Shrubs
councils give preferential allotment allocation to pensioners and the unemployed. So where will the fruit and vegetables be grown? Back gardens, patio pots or containers or even window stills, there is a groundswell of demand for information and a need for public ‘food growing’ education. But will media our programmes reflect this? Will we see growth of sales of forks, spades and trowels increase? Will there be a growth in plastic containers and compost sales to match the increase in seed sales? Will sales of young vegetable plants
increase? Will the sale of propagators increase, maybe even garden glasshouses? There will be sales opportunities for switched on retailers, garden centres and internet entrepreneurs. An early indication of this is the new Edible Garden Show on March 18- 20 at the NAC Stoneleigh, where a minimum of 25,000 visitors are expected. This move is the recognition of a trend, a prediction for the future that is more tangible than a poorly researched comment that GYO is not a hot topic!
“The environmental impact of
rising costs and other macro influences at work have lead to some predictions of food inflation reaching 18 per cent in 2011.
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