An Island Story Reversed: DeFood/GG19 Climate Solutions

[ For Web3Matters Matt Weekly 55th Special Issue]

In one of Fang Yu's papers, he mentioned how there once was a small island. Under the operation of powerful country policies, the people on the island gradually lost the ability to feed themselves.

Let’s take a look at the example of Inishbofin, a small island near Ireland in the book “Short Circuit” (Douthwaite, 1996). In the two hundred years from the beginning of the 19th century to the end of the 20th century, the island's population dropped by more than 80%; when the author Douthwaite visited in 1993, the island's population was only 180; the only primary school on the island had only 180 students left. 21 people. It is estimated that the island's population will fall below one hundred by 2001, and the government will face the possibility of forced relocation on the grounds that administrative resources are wasted.

The island's catch was once exported to Europe and Africa, including lobster and cod; but this prosperity began to decline in the 1920s, because with the development of offshore fisheries, larger ships and greater quantities of fishing and hunting, This has greatly affected the island's original offshore fishery. In the 1970s, due to the exchange of interests between the Irish government and other countries, the nearby waters were opened to modern mechanized vessels from other countries for fishing, which dealt a fatal blow to the fishery of this small island. The island residents who originally relied on fishing to make a living have become unable to make a living, and sending their children to study abroad has become the only way out for them.

Nowadays, almost all the necessities of life on the island must be imported from Ireland, such as sugar, bread, jam, flour, margarine, toilet paper and disposable diapers, etc., which results in a lot of garbage that cannot be recycled. Floating on the shore of the island with the waves.

But this small island once provided a large amount of eggs and cream to the main island of Ireland, and every household raised dairy cows and made homemade cream and cheese. This tradition is due to the fact that after the island gained universal electricity supply in the 1980s, every household had a refrigerator to store purchased cartons of milk, and no one was willing to work hard to raise cows anymore. Now all the meat eaten by the island residents must be purchased from other places, because the setting standards of the slaughterhouse are all designed for mass production, making the island unable to afford to build a modern and expensive one that complies with government regulations. Slaughterhouse.

So what is left of the island? Almost every household is composed of elderly people who can only make ends meet by receiving government subsidies. Many absurd and untimely large-scale local construction projects consume the last remaining value of the island, and the "tourism" industry is barely supported by the completely destroyed natural scenery.

Speaking of which, do you feel that these scenes seem familiar across Taiwan? ——Extended reading Qingshuigou 27: Simmel’s Rose—Money, Poverty and Social Work

Fang Yu's paper itself is very positive and actively proposes to eradicate poverty, which is to comprehensively regain people's ability to live a better life .

These two seasons of fundraising have made me more aware of the vitality of British Columbia.

First of all, the last time I knew that the Wet'suwet'en were the Aboriginal people of British Columbia, Canada, and they continued to successfully defend their territorial sovereignty in court (although it was only a small area, see the picture), but the independence and experimentation in these small areas were successful. It can best serve as a reference and encouragement to people in other places. Wet'suwet'en have been resisting the infrastructure of natural gas pipelines in recent years . Donations are accepted by credit cards, fiat currencies and virtual currencies. It was just the last project in their name the next day. They were removed from the shelves for unknown reasons, but they are still mentioned on the project pages of other collaborative projects such as Beyond Fossil Fuels - Supporting Indigenous legal efforts to STOP fossil fuel infrastructure .

This time, DeFood proposed two project goals, respectively in physical and virtual spaces. The entity is implemented on Salt Spring Island and aims to be a geographically distributed network of fifty CSA farms. CSA is Community Supported Agriculture/community supported agriculture , a business philosophy of " sharing ", "essentially a group of people and a piece of land" or a mutual commitment between a region of land. Farmland feeds people, and people in return support the farmland and share the inherent risks and potential rewards of the product.”

At the same time, this project will provide support and guidance to new farmers, as well as monetary support to struggling medium-sized farms.

The initial goal of using Salt Spring Island as a DeFood model is to ensure that 80 percent of the food we consume—including staples like grains, dairy, and meat—will be grown in Salt Spring or on our southern Gulf Islands in the near future. This is doable. Once we gain real-world experience overcoming obstacles, we can be a resource for other communities doing the same, because every city and town—including yours—is in the same boat. -- https://www.defood.ca/why-local

In the virtual space, it is like an experiment, because it is already known that the securitization of natural assets is a suitable model for forests. If you want to increase some additional income for food manufacturers, you have to see whether the so-called carbon market can really work. stand up.

Don’t forget to check out their homepage . The fixed camera lens on the homepage is quite cute.

GG19 project page: DeFood: Decentralized Food Security Network (DFSN)