Thread: There is not need to go hungry

Originally Posted by Chucaro

Hungry, bad nutrition and obesity is some of the things that we read very often and there is no need for them.
Have a look this foodscape in Geneva, Switzerland, it is beautiful and serve a very important purpose, eat cheap, fresh and healthy.
I guess that with proper education at school level we can hope to see something like this in Australia in the future.
Ah! and there are no excuses, the weater in Geneva is not as nice as here.

One picture doesn't sum up the whole country. Might possibly be because the cost of living is so high.

Cost of living - Switzerland - Information


Colin

Remember there are a lot of bare hills/mountains in Switzerland with nothing but grass and the veges would have to be harvested by abseillers.

The other aspect is that most food has to come over or through some very tall mountains, making transport costs quite expensive.

BTW: I love how they enhanced the green with optical filters.

Originally Posted by gromit

One picture doesn't sum up the whole country. Might possibly be because the cost of living is so high.
Colin

I think that you have missed the point, it does not have nothing to do with the cost of living, it have to do with the willing to put a bit of an effort to have a good nutritious food and help to stop the bad nutrition and obesity in Australia.
There are a total of 50000 ha of backyards like the ones in the photo which it is a lot of food in Switzerland and I cannot see why we cannot have the same here.
If you take into consideration the cost of living there are thousands of unemployed people or with very low income here in Australia to whom the "cost of living" is so high that hardly can afford good food if they do not cultivate the back yard or plant their veggies on the community gardens.

Originally Posted by Lotz-A-Landies

Remember there are a lot of bare hills/mountains in Switzerland with nothing but grass and the veges would have to be harvested by abseillers.

The other aspect is that most food has to come over or through some very tall mountains, making transport costs quite expensive.

BTW: I love how they enhanced the green with optical filters.

What have that to do with educate people to grow their own fresh food and eat well?

Nothing if you want to be subsistence farmers.

Many people living in the city wouldn't even have a space for the shovel, let alone anywhere to grow the vegetables. Economically it can be cheaper, more efficient and to ensure regular supply to earn money in a non-agricultural industry and use the money to purchase all the fresh produce you require from efficient producers (farmers).

keeping my costs down is one thing but i just like the idea that i did it myself. sort of the nutritional equivelent of landy ownership and doing as much maintainence at home.

Many cities in Europe have these communal plots as do some cities in UK.
The main reason they are necessary is that a high proportion of residents live in apartments with no back yard, so the plots enable them to grow home grown veges, mainly as a "hobby". If they tried to do it for a living on those plots they would soon starve.

I don't know how it compares but many people in Sydney Melbourne etc have big back yards where they grow stuff. Think of the Stavros ! Stavros! the cockies are eating your veges ad on TV.

However this is a pretty inefficient way of growing things and the extensive Chinese and other market gardens around all of our capitals would outproduce them by a large factor per unit of land.

I do not see the connection between obestity etc as anyone in Australia can afford good quality fruit and vegetables .It is a question of the people CHOOSING to eat junk food that causes obestity etc.
Regards Philip A

There may be no need to go hungry, but the costs can be high. The impact of such intensive (urban) agriculture practices can have significant environmental impacts.

Switzerland is not a paragon of virtue. It has a particularly bad record as far as its native flora and fauna goes. Worldwide, 330 land and freshwater taxa have been confirmed extinct; this represents 1 per cent of all species assessed by the IUCN (around 33,000). At 2 per cent, the proportion of extinct species in Switzerland is twice as high. These figures clearly demonstrate that the disappearance of species begins at regional level in that individual populations die out and the global range of the individual species becomes increasingly fragmented. If this process continues, the species eventually becomes extinct at global level.

255 species on Switzerland’s Red Lists are classified as Extinct in Switzerland. The proportion of nationally extinct species would be considerably higher if it were not for the fact that, after a period time, some previously extinct species have either returned of their own accord or – like the Bearded Vulture and the Eurasian Lynx – been actively reintroduced under species recovery programs.

554 species in Switzerland are considered Critically Endangered (ie very near extinction). Such species tend to have an extremely restricted or fragmented range in the country, have significantly reduced population sizes or are only represented by a few individuals.

I am not suggesting that intensive agricultural practices are the cause of the demise of Switzerland's flora and fauna. I have no doubt that the utilitarian attitudes that are exemplified by such urban agricultural landscapes, have contributed to that demise.

You can find out more about Switzerlands threatened and extinct species here: FOEN - Publications - Threatened Species in Switzerland

Cheers
KarlB

PS My grandfather was Swiss!