Food Forest Ecotava: Our Philosophy
The world changed in giant strides with the invention of the steam engine and the industrialization that began with it. One technical invention followed the next, entitlement and consumption increased. The next technical revolution was the Internet, and information technology was associated with it. The associated globalization did the rest. We at Food Forest Ecotava do not want to ignore this development, but rather react to it.
Where are we today?
supply bottlenecks
With the doubling of the number of people on earth in the 1970s and 1980s, there were serious shortages of fruit and vegetables. Above all, in the western industrialized nations, these were counteracted with the use of artificial fertilizers, land management and monocultures (“Green Revolution”). This is accompanied by the use of pesticides. Today we lament the extinction of the insects that are responsible for pollination and thus for crop yields. The soils are depleted worldwide and we can only manage the existing crop yield with increased use of artificial fertilizers. On the other hand, humanity continues to grow and consumer habits change. Food is becoming scarcer, healthy food is becoming a luxury item.
Experts now see a solution in the looming supply shortage a second green revolution with new plant varieties. They should increase yield, be resistant to pests and diseases and also tolerate salty or dry soil.
Monocultures were the agricultural
panacea of the 1970s: associated with
the use of pesticides, herbicides, etc.
The worldwide cultivated areas are distributed .
However, the majority of the cultivated land is available for the production of animal feed.
“Agricultural land covered a total of 4.8 billion hectares on Earth in 2019. Almost 1.6 billion hectares of this was agricultural land, on which cereals or animal feed, for example, were cultivated. 3.2 billion hectares were used as grazing land. Since 2000, the total area available for agriculture worldwide has decreased slightly.”
Heinrich Böll Foundation: Meat consumption worldwide
Cheap food
China was a developing country around 70-80 years ago, but has managed to become a leading industrial nation to this day. This extreme development was at the expense of today’s largely contaminated and heavily polluted soil in China. An extremely high proportion of cheaply produced food on our supermarket shelves originates from China. With the continuation of the Chinese economic miracle, the food quality of these foods will continue to fall.
World of Wonders: Food from China: Can This Apple Poison Me?
“33,000 square kilometers of Chinese land are so badly contaminated that it is forbidden to use this area for agriculture – that corresponds to a quarter of Germany’s arable land. “The situation will only get worse,” says Cheng Wang, an organic farmer from Anlong village. “Air, water and soil pollution is constantly increasing. And all of those problems become food problems.”
Climate change/ migration
The climate is changing. This is not a modern phenomenon, but a development of our planet over the last millions of years. However, mankind has done its part and greatly accelerated development. This development will continue to accelerate as the current number of people continues to increase their appetite for consumption and the number of people continues to increase. Regions that are currently just habitable in terms of climate will become uninhabitable in a few decades. The number of migrants has risen steadily in recent years and will continue to rise at least linearly. Land and soil, so that living space will continue to rise disproportionately in price.
Climate change from pollution
Destruction of cultivated areas due to drought
monetary system
In the years 2007/2008 we experienced a worldwide financial crisis, which was absorbed with gigantic subsidies and an indescribable inflation of the money supply. Money that was just freshly printed. The money supply has increased sevenfold (!) since these years, without corresponding equivalent values being created. The aid because of Corona 2020/2021 was conjured up just as easily, as was the support for Ukraine’s war costs. Current inflation (as of August 2022: 7.9%) is expected to increase to over 10% in the coming months due to rising energy prices. New financial compensation packages are intended to bring relief to people. Ultimately, however, the compensation packages will again be financed with “fresh money”, ie the spiral of inflation will turn faster. Unions will go on strike for wage increases, which companies will pass back to consumers, further fueling inflation. So the spiral will increase in speed.
We stand at the crossroads of humanity.
Food Forest Ecotava: Our Philosophy
We can’t turn back the clock, we can’t even stop it. But we can and must prepare ourselves for the consequences. And that applies above all to the younger generation. It is part of our philosophy to show interested people the importance and value of food. Possibilities of how considerable amounts of valuable fruit and vegetables can be produced in the smallest of spaces. Alternative but still ecological farming methods To pass on new knowledge, but also the tricks of cultivation, harvesting and conservation of our mothers and grandmothers.
For this we work in the Food Forest Ecotava.
Food Forest Ecotava
Der Food Forest Ecotava ist ein nicht kommerzielles, ökologisches Projekt im Norden von Teneriffa und finanziert sich durch durch Privatkapital. Wer an einer Führung, Austausch oder aktiver Mithilfe interessiert ist, findet hier weitere Informationen.
