We waste too much food
The world’s population continues to grow inexorably at the same time as its natural resources are being degraded at an alarming rate. It’s an unsustainable situation that is being exacerbated by the food waste crisis (America’s food waste shame, 15 July). Apart from the other sensible strategies highlighted in the article, we should also remember that food waste starts at the farm. Eighty percent of the food in developing countries is produced by their half-billion smallholder farmers, and it is they who should be supported to stem the rot.
Smallholders are typically in need of greater access to technologies that can enable them to produce and store agricultural products in environmentally friendly ways. The often neglected vital input, made crucial by the relentless migration of rural young people to urban centres, is farm power and mechanisation options for sustainable production. With increased access to these essential tools, rural communities will be better equipped to produce more. Modernising the sector has the potential to transform the livelihoods of rural communities and help feed the burgeoning populations of cities.
Brian Sims
Bedford, UK
• Compounding the waste of wholesome but slightly blemished market garden and orchard produce is the market incentive to develop and grow varieties that have a long shelf life and appealing appearance in preference to luscious flavour. The produce is picked long before it is ready and then ripened in ethylene gas close to the point of sale, a process that sometimes renders it inedible.
Here on the Sunshine Coast of Australia, local strawberries almost as large as apples are on offer, but inside they are often woody. I grow as much as possible in my small retirement village garden, not so much to save money as for the juicy sweetness, particularly of bananas and tomatoes. Gone are the days when one would be invited to sample fruit at a market stall before buying: more’s the pity.
Ted Webber
Buderim, Queensland, Australia
Blair’s legacy
Martin Kettle (15 July) is right to compare Tony Blair with the 16th‑century monarch Philip II of Spain. Taking the UK into a disastrous war despite the failure to secure a second UN security council resolution against Iraq undermined the authority of the United Nations and has helped to send it along the same path to oblivion suffered by the League of Nations.
Another damaging legacy of the Blair years has been to accelerate the drift towards a presidential style of government. His press conferences were dominated by use of the first-person pronoun, as though the rest of the cabinet were irrelevant. When Harold Wilson rejected all entreaties from the US for Britain to send troops to Vietnam, he did so on behalf of a united cabinet at a time when collective responsibility still meant something.
Prime Minister Theresa May appears to have little in common with either Philip II or Tony Blair, so there is reason to hope for our politicians to be better informed and for wiser decision-making in future.
Graham Davey
Bristol, UK
The future of polygamy
Reading the article about polygamy (15 July) took me back to our neighbours at the University of Maiduguri, Nigeria, where we were living at the end of the 70s. At that time it was a peaceful place where those of various religions and nationalities were living happily together and Boko Haram had not been invented.
Our Muslim neighbour Major Kim, who was the security officer for the campus, had only one wife; she spoke some English, we became good friends and she told me some of her life story. She had married Kim when quite a young girl as his third wife, and did not get on well with the other two, who conspired together against her. Najah had a very strong personality and asserted herself so much that eventually the two older women divorced, leaving her with all the responsibilities.
When I knew her she was begging Kim to take on a second wife and had various friends in mind; he, however, was quite firm that one wife was trouble enough. As far as I am aware, he never took another, so servants had to be employed to do all those extra jobs. Things are not always as straightforward as we might think.
Pat Stapleton
Beaumont du Ventoux, France
• Shocking words indeed. I’m referring to the last sentence on the back page of your 15 July issue, which reads as follows: “the future of British polygamy is beginning to look promising”. If Brexit is a return to xenophobia for some, then this latest kowtowing to unchallenged male dominance, ostensibly to restock populations, reaches even further back, to the Old Testament. With world populations reaching critical mass, at a time when there are more and more fatherless families and children killed or indelibly marred by being trapped daily in the crossfire of wars and marital disputes, this proposed expansion of megalomaniacal patriarchy sounds like just another ill-advised quick fix.
Richard Orlando
Westmount, Quebec, Canada
Racism diminishing in US
Your 15 July article, America’s racial tensions boil over, and subtitle referring to a “divided nation”, wrongly implies that the US is awash in race riots. Police brutality against African Americans is probably lower than it has ever been, but today we are more likely to hear about it. Black Lives Matter is rightly focused on revealing racial disparities in law enforcement and insisting that justice be colour-blind. We still have a long way to go. Racism will never disappear entirely, as Donald Trump’s popularity has proven, but in most parts of the US it has diminished and will continue to diminish as we whites lose our majority status.
Catherine Wiley
Denver, Colorado, US
Briefly
• I was astounded to see a science journalist referring to a centipede as an insect (8 July). The defining feature of insects is that they have six legs. Although centipedes don’t have a hundred legs, they do have a lot more than six. But just as unacceptable is the value judgment that the creature in question is “startlingly ugly”. Not to its own kind, it isn’t. This might sound pedantic, but it undermines any claims to factual reporting – about centipedes or about anything else.
Ilona Bossanyi
St Sardos, France
• The news from Caracas (8 July) witnesses the efforts of the traditional white elites to recapture the government after the Chavist revolution. They tried a coup (2002) that failed. They have destroyed the economy, along with the lowest oil prices in this century. They may well succeed. But the 1970s are long gone. If the traditional white elites form a government, they will soon discover that Venezuela, as they attempt to see it, is quite ungovernable.
Jordan Bishop
Ottawa, Canada
• I thoroughly enjoyed Mark Cocker’s column (8 July) as always, but this time with added piquancy. Though now in New Zealand, I lived for many years at the Crask of Aigas, a tiny hamlet close to Aigas House – the field centre that Mark Cocker visited – and where pine martens were regular visitors to our garden. In fact, the Crask had been part of the original Aigas estate, the cottages and a smithy built to accommodate estate workers. This area of the Highlands is exceptionally beautiful and is, indeed, replete with wildlife. Thanks to Mark Cocker for reviving these memories so vividly.
Trish Nicholson
Awanui, New Zealand
• Will Hutton’s anti-Corbyn piece (8 July) illuminates the author’s shocking distaste for democracy: Corbyn enjoys exceptional majority support from the Labour party membership. One wonders what Hutton has in mind with his repeated emphasis on the importance of “British values”.
Howard Millbank
Bristol, UK
• Gary Younge is wrong (15 July). It is not laughable that the National Rifle Association considers itself the oldest civil rights organisation in America – it is both pathetic and tragic.
Keith Sayers
Charnwood, ACT, Australia
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