From poppies to pips

From http://www.pforp.org/the-story-so-far/

"In 1999 James Brett founded Pomegreat the first commercial pomegranate drink in Europe. In 2004 in a newspaper article James mentions he would like to see things change in Afghanistan and that pomegranates could help. In 2007 James attended a horticulture seminar in Kabul Afghanistan and whilst there ran into a field of opium farmers and convinced a farmer to grow pomegranates. Two months later James returned to Afghanistan and erected a sign on the farmer’s land that read “this land has been acquired as an alternative livelihood from poppies to pomegranates. The next day James appeared on national television in Afghanistan and urged farmers to grow lots of pomegranates. So many farmers came forward that James realised something large scale could be achieved and was introduced to some elders in the tribal system in Afghanistan.

Plant for Peace was born and James organised seven tribal gatherings across Afghanistan. The gatherings known as Jirgas were a great success and over 55,000 elders attended across the country. International support started to grow and the Marquess of Reading organised a charity dinner at Kensington Palace in London for 144 guests including some key Afghans who had helped arrange the Jirgas.

As a pilot scheme James organised the planting of 40,000 pomegranate trees and distributed 25,000 “sign up forms” requesting farmers to sign up to Plant for Peace; 22,000 farmers signed up.

With so much support the Plant for Peace strategy needed developing into a national horticultural initiative."

The key to James' success was that he did some simple sums: Net value of opium leaving the farm was $240 per kg. The price of pomegranates was only $1. But a hectare of poppies yields 44.5 kg, whereas a hectare yields 21,450kg of pomegranates.  So, the value to an Afghan farmer can be double if he turned his poppy fields into pomegranate crop!

Not only is he helping Afghan farmers, he is also reducing the supply of opium. And, the added bonus is that pomegranates are credited with 11 health benefits - http://www.healthdiaries.com/eatthis/11-health-benefits-of-pomegranate-juice.html.  It's a win-win-win situation.

Anger over executive pay explodes

from the Observer: "Discontent over corporate salaries and bonuses has been growing for some time. Last week, at annual general meetings across the country, it escalated into a full-scale rebellion

For Catherine Howarth, "it's been a totally fabulous week". The chief executive of campaign group Fair Pensions, which has long toiled to persuade City investors to rein in the worst excesses of British listed companies, the unprecedented wave of investor rebellions over recent days represents nothing less than a revolution.

"There's this really long history of shareholders being unwilling to use the powers they have. The fact that this is changing at the moment is really something to celebrate," she says. Paul Hewitt of investor lobby group Manifest describes it as a "shareholder spring".

Just weeks after the Occupy protesters were chucked out of the City, the sharp-suited fund managers who picked their way through the tents to get to their desks each morning have staged their own protest against fat-cat capitalism.

On Thursday alone, five companies felt the wrath of investors and suffered revolts over their pay policies. For Aviva, the insurance company, the rebuke was so strong that more than half its investors rejected its remuneration report in protest at pay for underperformance, particularly in respect of chief executive Andrew Moss.

The revolts followed a string of protests at companies as diverse as Barclays and mining company Xstrata. Shareholders' fury has not just been directed against remuneration reports, but also against individuals. Sly Bailey has fallen on her sword at Trinity Mirror, and even a boardroom veteran such as Alison Carnwath has not been immune.

More than one in five investors voted against Carnwath's re-election to the board of Barclays as chair of the remuneration committee that nodded through Bob Diamond's pay; and she also faced a revolt at hedge fund Man Group, where investors feel she has been involved for too long to be truly independent. Advertising giant WPP and bookie William Hill also face protests.

Several factors have come together to make 2012 the most stormy annual meeting season in living memory. One is the government's vocal determination to tackle "rewards for failure". Business secretary Vince Cable has proposed radical reforms, including giving shareholders a binding vote on pay, rather than the advisory vote introduced by Labour, and forcing companies to disclose pay deals for departing directors.

Some of the measures have been fiercely criticised by business groups, including the CBI; but he is expected to stick to his guns when he publishes final proposals next month.

The grim economic backdrop and the pessimistic public mood has also thrown some of the lavish rewards for top executives into sharp relief. George Dallas, director of corporate governance at fund manager F&C, says bumper pay packets have come under increased public pressure because many families are facing declining living standards. "There is a lot of austerity going round and the taxpayer is still feeling that the crisis hasn't gone away," he says.

A third factor driving the "shareholder spring" has been a concerted campaign by groups such as Fair Pensions, trades unions and green groups. They have worked to persuade small shareholders, including retail investors and workers with pensions or insurance funds – who between them hold billions of pounds' worth of shares – to ask how their money is being invested and demand a more active approach."

Free food, sharing and caring

From The Observer: " There is an extraordinary sign on the outside of a well-tended West Yorkshire vegetable garden: "Help yourself.

In the same town this summer, people will be helping themselves to sweetcorn growing around the police station. Compost and watering cans seized in drug farm raids find use in the local gardens. And come the autumn a trip to see a local doctor will be a pick-your-own free-for-all as the health centre's grounds have been turned into orchards.

Grieving families who want a rose bush at the graveyard are encouraged to think productive – in one case leading to a remembrance garden of broccoli.

Meanwhile, commuters can snip fresh herbs from the beds and pots outside the railway station. It's all kept weeded by an army of local people who give up an hour or so on the occasional Sunday.

With 40 volunteer beekeepers just trained up, there will soon be honey for all. Anyone inspired to start their own vegetable patch can borrow a community tool library at the community-run allotments.

In the next village, things have been taken even further. The local community are attempting to take over a pub and have already taken over the cinema, the theatre and even the town hall.

In a fold of the wet hills of Yorkshire, the communities of Hebden Bridge and Todmorden are at the vanguard of a movement that is picking up momentum across a UK disillusioned with corporate business, government and cuts. It is neither hippy nor New Age, but is made up of ordinary people, old and young, from both affluent homes and social housing.

Call it a sharing revolution. "Community empowerment, social enterprise, co-operative, it has various titles, but it's quietly getting huge," said Mike Perry of the Plunkett Foundation, a thriving national organisation supporting such enterprises nationwide. "I don't think it's about the recession as such in financial terms; it's more that it's made people think about what's important to them.

"It starts with food, then it's taking over a shop that's closing. Then it's getting fired up about broadband and renewable energy, taking over infrastructure of their community. We're at the start of what could be a significant movement."

There are nine community-run pubs and 300 such shops in the UK, but those numbers look set to grow dramatically, not least because they show staggering resilience in tough times, but also as people power reacts against closures that fundamentally affect their lives. It may not create many jobs, but it does glue communities together and keeps money circulating locally.

And it's not just in the countryside; there are many web schemes across the UK where people can arrange to swap or give away items to others in their area. Tool libraries and bike sharing are growing. In London, Streetbank.com has begun organising people to share everything from a lawnmower to a DVD with others within a mile's radius. Some 3,000 people have signed up in its first few months. DIY retailer B&Q has a pilot scheme in Reading on tool sharing, to ease the environmental damage caused by millions of people buying power tools they may use only once or twice."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/may/06/lifestyle-communities-hebden-bridge-todmorden

You and I are not blameless

In earlier blogs, I blamed the state of the world economy on governments, banks and big business. Sadly, you and I are not blameless.

I did an inventory recently. I have 5 watches, 
innumerable clocks apart from those embedded on PCs, phones, TV sets etc; although retired I still have 6 serviceable suits and who knows how many shirts and ties; I have a dozen pairs of shoes, including trainers and golf shoes; 
and I could go on. I am sure if you did an inventory you too may find yourself surprised at how much you possess that are surplus to requirements. I am told women accumulate even more than men and I can believe it given the number of newspaper/magazine articles, Webpages and TV programmes on it - shelves full of handbags 
and shoes, racks and racks of clothes, some which have never been worn.

Similar excess applies to food. We are now more careful. but even so each week we are throwing away food that has gone past the due date. At least, a minor consolation is that the waste food no longer goes into the general rubbish bin but into a food recycling bin for the council to re-compost.

My point is that if you and I wasted less, then the retailers would sell less and the manufacturers would produce less, and the earth's resources would deplete slower.

Banks at fault

A large part of the problem with the world economy lies with major banks. I don't mean domestic banks offering current and savings accounts for consumers; but commercial and investment banks who lend money to businesses and governments and - at the same time - buy and sell shares and offer all manner of so-called financial instruments.

When they first formed, banks were there to lend money to those who needed it - such as farmers with a poor harvest, parents needing funds for a good wedding, or a merchant who needed to buy stock to sell - and charged a fee or interest. In Europe, many bankers were Jews as due to religious prejudice they often not allowed any other 'respectable' trade. And lending was associated with usury and deemed below the dignity of the upper classes who could have afforded to operate them. Soon banks were lending to kings to fight expensive wars, such as the crusades. Where possible, banks demanded security in the form of assets: a cow, a house or future tax revenues. Initially, the flow of money was largely the initial capital supplemented by the interest charged or the defaulted security.

Later, bankers wanted to lend more than they had, so 'financial instruments' were invented. The recent (2008) financial disaster was laid in the 80s when domestic mortgages were 'securitised'. That meant banks could bundle mortgages and trade them with each other. Initially, it increased the amount banks could lend.  But, as with the US Fannie Mae, many bundles of mortgages included large percentages of so-called sub-prime, high risk mortgages. But as the bundles were re-bundled and sold on, nobody had the time to read all the documentation (which presumably spelt out the risks) much less take them seriously  The net result was: 
1. A large number of Western banks ended up owning a lot of high risk 'assets'
2. The total value of these so-called assets were n times the face value, never mind the risk-discounted real value.
3. When some mortgage holders started to default; the whole 'pyramid' scheme was exposed for what it was and the whole house of cards (pun intended) collapsed.

Roll forward to the Euro crisis. Many countries borrow up to a high % of their GDP. But some countries borrowed well above a single year's GDP, including Greece, Spain and so-forth. How did this happen?  The same investment banks were involved. They encouraged the finance ministers by offering what looked like cheap money with long life cycles. Once again, it took one country to look like it couldn't meet the interest payments and, once again, the pyramid started to collapse - though for the short term it is being propped up.

So, my bottom line is that whereas banks were and are a valuable institution, they have been allowed through various national and international deregulation to become gambling houses, where the stakes, risks and rewards are high. Not only are they now endangering world economy but also subverting things like - in the US and UK - causing the best and brightest from universities to go into banking disproportionate to the value add, instead of into engineering and manufacturing.

Marks & Spencer with longer lasting fruits

from: http://www.businessgreen.com/bg/news/2135806/-lasting-strawberries-reduce-food-waste

"Marks and Spencer will today unveil new packaging that promises to keep food fresh for up to two days longer and as a result reduce food waste.

A small strip inserted into punnets of strawberries uses a patented mixture of high-tech minerals and clay to remove ethylene, a hormone that causes fruit to ripen and turn mouldy, a hundred times more effectively than current material.

The retailer said that during in-store trials the strips "showed a minimum wastage saving of four per cent", which in effect means that 40,000 punnets a week could be saved during the peak summer season, equating to roughly 800,000 strawberries."

Marks & Spencer clothes swap

from: http://www.businessgreen.com/bg/news/2170547/-introduces-swap-shop-tackle-waste-clothing

"Retailer Marks & Spencer is aiming to prevent over 350 million pieces of clothing going to landfill by encouraging customers to hand in an unwanted item when buying new clothes.

The new "Shwopping" initiative was launched in London this morning in a street made from almost 10,000 items of clothing – the amount Marks & Spencer estimates is thrown away every five minutes in the UK alone.

Overall, that comes to over two billion clothes a year – one in every four purchased – which adds around 500,000 tonnes to the UK's landfill sites.

Over 1,200 cardboard boxes – dubbed Shwop Drops – are expected to be rolled out across the UK alongside till points. ..."