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Here is some information lifted straight from The Real Seed Catalogue's website. I think you will agree they support Transition aims!
Until recently, every gardener in the world saved their own seed. And every gardener was, therefore, a plant breeder. They simply saved the seed of the plants that did best for them, and which they liked most. Although simple, this was efficient. Each gardener was maintaining a slightly different strain of each vegetable, and this made for a huge living genebank that was very resilient against disease or climate change. If things changed so that your cabbages didn’t do well, someone down the road had a slightly different one that would cope.
This has worked very well for the past 11,000 years. That includes the Bronze Age, the building of the Pyramids, the rise and fall of all the major empires. Every year, without even thinking about it, millions of people added to the achievements of their ancestors to maintain and improve the previous years’ varieties. Because their seed was real, open-pollinated seed, every seed was a bit different, so it was widely adapted, but also adaptable - it could cope with all sorts of change.
Now, we have thrown this all away. In the past 40 years, almost all these adaptable local strains have been lost. Gardeners have forgotten how to save their own seed. They are sold hybrids, where every seed is identical, in every packet, year after year - no adaptability for different soils, or for changes in climate over time. And because these hybrid seeds are all the same in every field in every country, people have to bludgeon the environment into some sort of ‘standard’ growing medium with fertilisers and chemicals, to grow their standardised seeds. Should the climate change, or the supply of cheap oil (to make all these chemicals) dry up, then these hybrids will do badly, and there will be no real seeds left to breed from.Profits for the seed companies now, but disaster in the future . . . real farming is a project that has been ongoing for millennia, but now in the height of our tiny period of cheap oil, we think we know better and have turned it into just another industrial process. Peoples food should represent stored sunlight and water, but 90% of its calories come from oil these days – for the ploughing, spraying, fertiliser, transport. When the oil runs out, who will have the real seeds that can grow without it?
Seed-saving is easy. You'll get better seed, better food, and help preserve 11,000 years of work for the future! Anyone who knows someone who may be interested, please pass on my details.
Nick, Marshland Permaculture Interest Group.
What we now call the Cattle Market has been a place for markets and fairs since time immemorial. And before that it was a quarry. The charters granted by Tudor and Stewart kings to hold markets and fairs on this piece of common land specified that the use was ‘forever’. Forever is a long time and it is not within the gift of East Lindsey District Council to shorten it.
About two centuries ago when much of the common land, including Louth’s South Field, was enclosed by Act of Parliament, the site of the Cattle Market was left under the administration of the Warden and his Assistants, later the Corporation and the Borough, the Town Council and eventually ELDC, always as stewards of the land and guardians of the rights of the citizens to enjoy their pleasures and businesses, including the right to hold markets and fairs, on this land. Forever.
Thus the Council do not own it with a right to sell, even to Tescopoly, but have a custodial duty to maintain the land for all our benefit. The land has been used for a many purposes beyond the sale of livestock and while the medieval need for archery butts may now have given way to the desire for a skateboard park, or whatever, the overarching requirement that the land be used for the common good in common ownership, overrides any ephemeral desire by a council to raise cash by a transfer to private ownership.
East Lindsey District Council have neither legal nor moral right to sell the cattle Market.
So what should be done with the Cattle Market?
Of course it may continue as a cattle market, but we hear that there has been a decline in sales, the pattern of farmers’ business changing towards more direct selling with the remaining trade concentrating at fewer, larger markets. One has to admit to animal welfare concerns, where cattle are taken from farm to market and then from market to slaughterhouse. A one-step trip from field to abattoir would seem more appropriate. That may be an argument for the establishment of an abattoir in Louth, which certainly be compatible with Transition Town thinking, reducing food miles and making the locality more self reliant. A new abattoir might perhaps be sited on the Cattle Market site, but that would fall foul of the same arguments against selling the common land to a private enterprise, and it might actually make more sense to site a new combined abattoir and market on the trading estate.
In deciding alternative uses for the land, we need to keep in mind the overriding principle that the use should allow its continued common ownership forever, and its continued benefit to the town.
Here is an extract from Louth Town Council’s report of the Public Meeting on Flood Alleviation at Louth Town Hall on the 3rd of October 2008.
Ian Russell, Environment Agency Area Flood Risk Manager, said that it is important that the benefits of an option easily outweigh the costs and he reported that the preferred option to come out of the feasibility study was that of upstream flood storage, at an estimated cost of £6.8million. He explained that this option would involve two flood storage reservoirs upstream of Louth bypass (similar to those protecting places such as Lincoln and Market Rasen) and in large events like last summer the reservoirs would hold flood water back and only allow safe flows through the town. He cautioned that the success of this option is subject to available funding, landowner and other agreements. However, he was pleased to report that the EA have bid for funding to progress the scheme further and they will be carrying out further detailed feasibility and land owner discussions. He cautioned that the scheme will be compared against other schemes seeking national funding and a decision on funding will not be known until Spring 2009. He said that if funding is approved then detailed feasibility and design, together with obtaining approvals such as planning permission and landowner agreement, could commence in Spring 2009. However, it could take 5 years to develop the scheme.
The full report of the 3rd October is available here
So the EA is proposing creating a couple of potential lakes which would get filled up in wet weather to regulate peak river flow through the town. It’s a very sensible idea, in my opinion, and a quick glance at the contours on the OS map reveals suitable locations for the two reservoirs upstream from the by-pass, one 30 metres higher than the other.
But, as a flood prevention measure, it would only be called upon once in a blue moon, historically, in 1920 and 2007 (twice!). Most of the time the sites, with the £6.8 million investment, would lie idle (though might provide a marshy nature reserve).
If a pumped storage electricity generation scheme were to be included in the project the investment would have a continuous payback as well as providing flood protection. It would work like this. Two lakes would be created one at a higher level than the other. During windy weather when the local windfarms are generating a surplus, or at other times when electricity is in plentiful supply, the spare electricity is used to pump water from the lower to the upper lake. During calm weather, or other times when electricity is in short supply, water is allowed to run down through the turbine to produce electricity.
Obviously there will be a significant capital cost to such a scheme but it will be £6.8m less than would be the case if the flood alleviation work was not being done. This electricity generation scheme would, effectively, be subsidised by the necessary flood work. Or, to think of it another way, building a pumped storage scheme would provide flood alleviation for free.