Ballarat Community Garden is holding a community cooking event - learning how to make Passata. Please join in!

Picture above from here
together with how to make passata if you can't get to the class
listed below at Ballarat Community Garden.

The post below is from Better Together -  Passata Day

Saturday 28nd February 2015, 9 a.m. sharp-till ?

Once more into the Red! Ballarat Community Garden will be hosting a passata (tomato bottling) day on the 20th of February. Come learn how to preserve tomatoes and enjoy a day of work, fun and community. We'll have a meal and share a good time! Participants will take home approximately 6 litres of tomato puree.

The cost will be $20 dollars which will include a 10kg box of tomatoes, tea & coffee. Please bring a plate to share for lunch. Payment must be received by Deb Ramsey (0401 824 110) by the 16th of February. Numbers will be limited, but children, friends and family are all welcome to come and help. You will be responsible for bringing glass jars or beer bottles. You will need to have your own safe, undamaged lids for jars, but we will provide bottle caps for beer bottles.

Things to bring:

• Plate to share for lunch.
• Large pots will be vital so please be sure to bring those. Vital! (Stainless steel please, as aluminium may leach.)
• Anyone who has a camp stove or gas burner and bottle please bring those along.
• cutting boards and knives are vital
• aprons and pot holders
• funnels
• large stirring spoons
• ladles
• pouring jugs
• Stick blenders would also be very welcome.

Consumer question of the day --- do you do know what FMCG stands for?

Fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) or consumer packaged goods (CPG) are products that are sold quickly and at relatively low cost. Examples include non-durable goods such as soft drinks, toiletries, over-the-counter drugs, processed foods and many other consumables.^[1][2]

In contrast, durable goods or major appliances such as kitchen appliances are generally replaced over a period of several years. The term was coined by Neil H. Borden in The Concept of the Marketing Mix in 1965 (1996, Prentice-Hall, Inc.).

FMCG have a short shelf life, either as a result of high consumer demand or because the product deteriorates rapidly. Some FMCGs, such as meat, fruits and vegetables, dairy products, and baked goods, are highly perishable. Other goods, such as alcohol, toiletries, pre-packaged foods, soft drinks, and cleaning products, have high turnover rates.

Though the profit margin made on FMCG products is relatively small (more so for retailers than the producers/suppliers), they are generally sold in large quantities; thus, the cumulative profit on such products can be substantial. FMCG is probably the most classic case of low margin and high volume business. (This information is from Wikipedia)

To be a pro-active consumer has always taken quite a bit of thought. 

Consumer boycotts have a long history:

1.   Boycotts as we know them today began in the nineteenth century and had quite an effect.

• Boycotting goods produced by slaves
• Blood-stained goods: the transatlantic boycott of slave labor

2.   In modern times, we are concerned about what is being added to or put into the food we purchase. As well, we are concerned about chemicals in our cleaning products and our cosmetics.

3.   We are concerned about animal welfare - cruelty, experimental research etc., lack of humane guidelines for industrial animals.  

4.   Some of us, but not enough, want to purchase Australian products.  The time has long since gone (probably late 1960s/early 1970s) when a consumer could purchase in a supermarket a trolley full of products which were produced wholly in Australia by Australian labour employed by Australian-owned companies.  

5.   Labelling is often far from truthful and/or transparent.  Major powerful food and grocery organisations such as the Australian Food & Grocery Council lobby strongly against simpler and easily understood labelling which is honest about point of origin.  So one is left to think that in the confusion there is profit!  Perhaps even an escape from Australian standards?

6.  Consumers in the 21st century have now to be conscious of Fair Trade and trade in goods produced by forced, exploited and/or slave labour --- even when those goods are made in Australia.
Major corporations are not necessarily cleanskins on this issue.  Some of these are multi-national corporations who do one thing in Australia and another in countries where they can get away with less stringent watchfulness and where consumers are unable to demand high standards.

Like this case involving Nestle. 

This corporation has a significant production presence in Australia, including in Victoria.

There are no consumer visits to the Nestle factory in Tongala.
The person interested in how these well-known commonly used products
and would like to see how they are produced -
well, you won't get past the reception office and the security there.
Considering that generations of Australians have been supporting
the Tongala community, this seems a bit rich.

You can't eat coal for breakfast

Read the background to all this here.

If u want to help, Liverpool Plains farmers

are asking u to email/ring PM re Shenhua coal mine 

(details in the link below)

https://t.co/sn9g4a7fQB pic.twitter.com/JjLwr2Lc2r

— HRH Terry Australis (@AustralisTerry) July 8, 2015

Let's get down and dirty - 2015 International Year of Soils

From http://csironewsblog.com/ 
Please take a few minutes to reflect on what has been imposed on our world class century old scientific organisation.

World Soil Day: 

a chance to worship the ground we walk on

Posted: December 5, 2014 | Author: Nicholas Kachel | Filed under: collections, Environment,Farming and Food, News, Things we like | Tags: international year of soils, soil, soilgrid, world soil day |Leave a comment

By Leon Braun
 

It’s downtrodden, underfoot and often under appreciated, yet so crucial to our existence that one of our scientists describes it as “the complex natural medium that supports all life on Earth”. It holds our crops, stores and purifies our water, and provides habitat for amazing creatures like the giant Gippsland earthworm, which can reach up to 3 m in length. But most of us only think about it when we’re trying to get it out of footy socks on laundry day.

It’s soil – and today (and all next year) it gets a bit of long-overdue recognition. December 5 is World Soil Day, and the United Nations has declared 2015 to be International Year of Soils. That’s a good thing, because globally, soils are under threat: from erosion, poor land management and urbanisation. At the same time, we need soils more than ever to produce the food we need for a growing population, to help manage climate change and to ensure ecosystem health.

Cracked soil at Chowilla, South Australia.

Luckily for Australia’s soils, they have CSIRO looking out for them. We started researching soils in 1929, published the first soil map of Australia in 1944, and have been working hard ever since to improve our understanding and management of soils. We’re looking at ways to make agricultural soils more productive and to ensure they’re used sustainably, so future generations can continue to reap their bounty. And we’re working internationally too, so it’s not just Australia that benefits.

Our latest achievement (with allies from around the country) is the Soil and Landscape Grid of Australia, a digital map of Australia’s soils with two billion ‘pixels’ of about 90 by 90 metres, down to a depth of two metres below the surface. It contains information such as water holding capacity, nutrients and clay, and has applications for everyone from farmers deciding where to plant their crops to conservationists looking for habitats for endangered native species. You can read more about it here.

We’re also home to the Australian National Soil Archive, which has just gotten a new home in Canberra. The archive contains about 70,000 samples from almost 10,000 sites across Australia, the oldest dating back to 1924. Each sample represents a time capsule of the Australian landscape at the time it was collected, so we can measure things like caesium dispersal from the British nuclear tests at Maralinga and the impact of phosphate-based fertilisers on agricultural land.

The archive is a vital national asset for soil researchers and industry, and has even been used by the Australian Federal Police to examine the potential of new forensic methods. Finally, data from the archive powers our first official app, SoilMapp, which puts information about Australian soils at your fingertips. This is incredibly useful, whether you’re growing canola on a farm in Western Australia or planning a major roads project in Victoria.

So as you go through your day today, eat your lunch, wipe your shoes, just remember: it takes 2000 years to form 10 centimetres of fertile soil suitable for growing our food, but just moments for that soil to blow away or get covered in a layer of asphalt. Something to think about next time you sit down to a meal – or do your laundry.