General ideas

Ok, so I have been thinking of this for a few days without doing anything. Quite a big topic. I'll cover some basic thoughts in the following:

Language: I suppose in these global times it is going to be English. It's not my mother tongue so you'll have to excuse me for misusing the language. Of course the anglophones need to understand that there are a lot of other languages out there and not all relevant discussions are in English. I hope people from all languages can participate and I apologize for not choosing your language (well - I'm not writing in Finnish either).

Knowledge base: I am an agronomist by education but most of my career I have been an entrepreneur in the organic food business, lately mostly in international trade. So I am by no means the best expert to tackle the problems in question. But my background should mean that I can avoid crude misconceptions about food production and my business background should mean that I understand also some of the manufacturing  and business part of food. I have no experience at all about food production in developing countries but I have been interested in that topic since the times I studied agronomy and followed related subjects keenly. Anyway, food production in Finland represents an other extreme compared to conditions in the tropics. Also politics is not a strong area for me although this topic is highly political.

I have given this quite a lot of thought over the years and I have tried to follow some of the discussions: But certainly I must be unaware of a lot of ongoing discussions and research. I hope to spur more discussion as I go - part of it on this site - and to learn more. I will try to follow a philosophy of just writing what I think is true and correcting the facts later. The scope is simply so wide that I cannot check all the facts. Of course I might get it wrong but hopefully I will be corrected.

Organics: I have a background in organics so I certainly am somewhat biased but I am by no means claiming that organics as we know it today is the solution to global food crises. I became interested in biodynamics and organics already in the late 1970's before my studies and my main interest as a youngster was in the holistic way of thinking, ecology and ethics. I was not that interested in health apart from thinking that it is crazy to think that eating pesticide residues and additives is good for you.

I'll cover my basic thoughts on ecology and sustainability in the next posting and ethics and health in following after that.