Vegan Organic Network

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.

He posits that the wealth=meat scenario will continue, with intensive rearing of animals being the least environmentally damaging solution. However, if the U.S. and Europe were to go vegan, given that the rest of the world frequently follows the West’s lead, particularly in dietary matters, a reversal of the paradigm could happen very easily.

The Vegan-Organic Network (VON) marks the 25th edition of its fascinating magazine Growing Green International with a bumper issue full of encouragement and sustenance for vegan-organic (stockfree organic) growers everywhere.

From Arizona to the French Pyrenees, from Cheshire to Florida, from Essex to New Mexico, from Sri Lanka to Cornwall: all around the world, vegan-organic growers are sowing the seeds of progressive agriculture and finding the time to write about them for the vegan-organic movement’s most enduring publication. The history of the movement is given prominence in an interview with pioneer Mary Bryniak, a member of the Dalziel O’Brien family, who established one of the first vegan-organic (and indeed one of the first organic) market gardens in Leicester during the 1940s and 50s.

Others look to the future with articles by Susan Morris, David Stringer and John Walker about growing your own healthy food, community food production and the use of plastic in gardening. Student Jane Fanshaw reports on her Organic Horticulture & Project Management FdSc course at Glyndŵr University, where stockfree organic standards and principles are integral to her studies.

Windowsill Gardening,
by Pauline Lloyd
From Growing Green International 9

Don't worry if you haven't got a garden or allotment! For a surprising amount of food can be produced indoors, vegan organically, either on your windowsill or on a well-lit kitchen surface.

The following plants will all do well indoors:

Salad greens are easy to grow and can be produced all the year round indoors, ever so cheaply. So, the next time you buy fruit and vegetables, save any empty plastic punnets as these are ideal for this purpose. You will need to line the base of the punnet with several layers of paper kitchen towel and this should be dampened with water before sprinkling on the seeds. Try using rape, mustard or cress seeds which should all grow well.