It was a delight this morning to attend the opening of the innovative Woolworths 'greenest store yet' at the new Palmyra Junction shopping centre in Claremont, Cape Town.  This funky green space is surely the greenest foodmarket in South Africa.

The potential entry of Walmart into the South African retail space has raised a number of concerns about how this may impact on local food producers and the potential compromises that may be forced upon the local food supply chain.

...any fresher and pigs might fly.
Porter's is a fresh food market, no mistake. The smell of moer koffie and bacon greet you. 'We styled it after old European markets where people come to hand-select fresh produce and catch up with friends,' said Gail Coetzee, the market manager, in a polo-neck jersey with her hair in a pony tail. 'About a quarter of the stalls are organic ' our policy is 'as natural as possible.'' The market is in a woodsy setting that attracts urbanites like flies. It's interesting how we long for Nature and to feel that we are getting out of doors and out of town. But even if it's the new urban shopping trend, and a little bit pretend, it's a positive move. Gail and her restaurateur clan started Porter's 3 years ago when they began having kids and wanted a place in Nature to take them. They leased a field on the Porter Farm in Tokai and put up the infrastructure ' wooden stalls, rustic tables, and a huge sandpit. Today cyclists are having a health breakfast, people are browsing with dogs and children, and everyone is choosing home-made food for a cold weekend.

If a peer reviewed article states that genetically modified plants are harmless, there's a good chance they are knowingly or unknowingly lying. Research published in the leading scientific journal Science Direct, concludes that commercial interests help shape the findings of peer reviewed articles about the health risks of genetically modified plants.

Since 1981, World Food Day is celebrated on October 16th of every year to raise awareness of the issues behind poverty and hunger. The facts are still shocking: According to the 2010 Global Hunger Index 925 million of the world's population do not have access to sufficient food and drinking water. Consequently, every day 24.000 people die of hunger. To showcase and explain existing policies that can help solve this tragic global failure, on World Food Day 2010 the Hamburg-based World Future Council Foundation will launch a new 'Agriculture and Food' section on their policy solutions website www.futurepolicy.org.

On Sunday the 4th of July, a group of customers, suppliers, friends and interested parties celebrated the official launch of AFRIKARA Co-op, a new style consumer-producer association. The founding of Afrikara was spearheaded by Aletta Venter, Francois & Henriëtte Malan, Gustav van der Merwe, Liesl Haasbroek and Louis le Roex, all of them passionate supporters of a new social order in which active communities and healthy environments form the foundation of sustainable living and prosperity.

More than 233 000 children across the Western Cape who receive their main meal of the day at school will no longer be eating mostly soya content 5 days a week, but from May are enjoying lots of fresh fruit and veggies.

Although soya mince will still be on the menu twice a week, the new menu will also include pilchards in tomato sauce and Breyani lentils.
'We are excited about being able to offer the children a more nutritionally balanced meal,' said Andy du Plessis, Director of the Peninsula School Feeding Association (PSFA). 'And we really hope that our donors will continue to support us through the increase in costs which are inevitable with the new menu.'

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the European Marketing Research Centre (EMRC) will jointly host the AgriBusiness Forum 2011 entitled 'Engaging the Private Sector for Africa's Agri-Food Growth' from 16th to 19th October 2011 in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Ancient Heirloom seed gardens provide the same nutritious and delicious foods that humanity has relied and prospered with for untold thousands of generations. Heirloom plants provide productive seeds that you can share with others or keep for the following year. The plants give you intensive flavor, intensive nutrition, and spectacular color in your cooking.

Prolonged drought, aseasonal cold spells and extreme temperature highs in occasional years all negatively impact farmers by reducing agricultural production through a loss of livestock or crops. What then, are the possible impacts of global climate change; which predicts temperature increases of between ~ 2 to 4oC and more variable rainfall by the end of the 21st century?

Composting is the ideal winter activity. While the garden is resting, you can be busy preparing fresh nutrients, a concoction of vitality to add to the garden during the growing season. I like to add compost in two different ways: firstly, with new gardens I dig in a lot of compost before planting. As we saw in the last article, this improves the consistency of both clay and sandy soil types. Secondly, I add compost around the plants by placing it on the top of the garden throughout the growing season. This acts as an insulating mulch and the nutrients seep into the soil and feed the plants.

My bookcase groans with the weight of green literature. Permaculture for idiots, double digging for novices, you get the picture. You see I am passionate about gardens, food and the planet. My garden should, in theory, be prolific with delicious organic food.

Despite my cerebral imbibing of all knowledge organic, I have never been able to translate that knowledge into a food producing garden. Apart from some herbs and sometimes lettuce I have never found much favour with food gardens.

Last month we started this series with an article on how to plan and design your vegetable garden. This month we move on to the most important ingredient in a successful garden, the soil. We will look at the various soil types and how to enrich it. Composting is an important part of enriching the soil, so come back next month where we will cover how to make your own compost and how to use a chicken tractor.

The European Parliament today voted to strengthen a draft EU law giving member states a new right to ban genetically modified (GM) crops from being grown in their territories.

Greenpeace welcomes this positive outcome, but warns that national bans are no substitute for thorough safety testing at EU level.

Greenpeace EU agriculture policy adviser Stefanie Hundsdorfer said: 'The European Parliament today added real punch to draft laws to protect our farms and food. But let's not forget that GM contamination doesn't respect borders. National bans are no substitute for thorough safety testing at a European level, something the EU is failing to do so far.

Conferences are known to be uptight, impersonal, tense and boring. Not the biodynamic conference. Biodynamic farmers have none of these qualities. The conference, hosted by BDAASA (Biodynamic Agriculture Association of South Africa) on 16-18 of June was held at a wet and muddy Bloublommetjieskloof in Wellington ' one of the first biodynamic farms in SA.

Welcome to THE STOEP HARVEST, an exciting new addition to the Green Times. Once a month, Sam Adams will be writing an article that looks at how to design, create and maintain a successful organic vegetable and herb garden. There will be information for both first-time gardeners as well as those more experienced.

The bagged organic baby mixed greens on sale a Whole Foods Market in Bethesda, MD, USA are not very "green" at all. To grow the lettuce, vast amounts of water must be moved from the Colorado River to California, the most hydrologically altered landmass on the planet. The lettuce is picked, packaged, washed and shipped in refrigerated trucks (because it's perishable) roughly 2,800 miles across America. The cost? $3.99. If you believe that the demand for water and oil are going to grow, this five oz. bag of greens will only get more expensive.

When Simon Gear studied palaeoclimatology they looked at data sets harvested at glaciers as significant, but never before had he seen or touched one. Until he accompanied Justin Smith, sustainability manager at Woolworths, and their team up Kilimanjaro last month.

'For me it was a big deal and I was elated to find how strong I felt at the top. I was worried along the way,' said Simon during an interview with Elma Pollard from the Green Times.

They were on a mission to learn more about the impact of climate change on Kili's melting ice cap and the resultant impact on the organic coffee farmers who are dependent on the water from the caps for their coffee plantations on the slopes. About 68 000 coffee farmers are organised into a cooperative, the Kilimanjaro Native Cooperation Union.

On the day of the release of annual industry-sponsored figures, a new report from Friends of the Earth International reveals that the cultivation of genetically modified (GM) crops across Europe continues to decline ' with an increasing number of national bans, and decreasing numbers of hectares dedicated to GMOs [1].

All commentators agree that food production will have to increase substantially this century to meet the future challenges and demands in the global food system. But there are very different views about how this should best be achieved.

Sustainable agricultural intensification is defined as producing more output from the same area of land, while reducing the negative environmental impacts, and at the same time improving natural resources and the flow of environmental services.

The UK Government Office of Science Foresight project on Global Food and Farming Futures commissioned 40 case studies of existing projects from 20 countries of Africa where sustainable intensification had been developed, promoted or practiced during the last ten years.