Dear all,
After a very long hiatus of moving house and job, I am back into blogging again. I have missed it sorely. My time hasn't been completely un-eco-bris though! I've been reading Raj Patel's Stuffed and Starved - Markets, Power and the Hidden Battle for the World Food System. For anyone interested in where food comes from, who grows it and who ends up with the profits, this is a fascinating untangling of food economics, history and control. One of the most profound examples he uses right at the start of the book hooked me. I had to know more. While Ugandan coffee growers earned 14 cents per kilo when Stuffed and Starved was written (2007), and the miller processes it for an additional 5 cents per kilo, and the Ugandan coffee exporter makes a profit of US $10 a ton, or 1 cent a kilo, the story is rather different when it enters the gates of Nescafe at $1.64 per kilo, and emerges at $26.40 a kilo. Things just get incredibly difficult for growers when you open a local market to a global one.
Makes you think about buying fairtrade coffee huh?
I'm lucky enough to work across the road from an Oxfam shop, so am able to get my fairtrade from them.
Black Star Coffee in West End is another source of a wide range of blends from around the world.

Living on the Southside has brought the benefit of being closer to the Rocklea market. Here's a little something we picked up there a few months ago...
There's a whole lovely range of pots and tins and baskets full of assorted herbs (ours is oregano, parsley and chives with some tomatoes that have snuck out of the soil recently). A great mini-garden for our apartment!
I'll be back to post more soon! Snake