www.everythingsgonegreen.co.uk

Farmers Markets are a great way for people to find local producers and cut down on the usually unseen environmental costs that globalisation brings.

Whenever there’s a local farmers market on we go down to see what we can do to assist with “localisation”. Afterall, if there is an oil crash and we all end up being unable to travel, we’re not going to be able to get our flowers from Kenya and beef from Argentina, so it makes sense to rely on local producers.

Farmers Markets also boost the local economy and stimulate the sense of local community.

And saying all this we’ll be down at our own local farmers market in Milford, Surrey on Sunday 18th May. We’re helping out on a stall and rolling our sleeves up to get involved, so let’s hope the weather and attendance are good.

Milford Farmers Markets are held at the Secretts Garden Centre and Farm Shop which is in Chapel Lane, Milford, Surrey GU8 5HU (We even put in a link to the map for you there). The market is open from 10:00am until 1:30pm so get there nice and early to get the best of what Surrey’s local farmers have to offer.

The BBC’s speculatively-titled story “Chancellor looks to green budget” is pretty thread-bare, starting with the opening line:

Green taxes and measures to help people struggling to pay energy bills are likely to be among changes in the chancellor’s first Budget on Wednesday.

It goes on to speculate that the chancellor, Alistair Darling, might put a levy on larger vehicles like people carriers, putting their price up by £2000.

And that’s it!

Well, if that’s all the chancellor can do for green issues in the UK Budget on Wednesday then that’s pretty poor for helping people go green. Isn’t a people carrier a more efficient way of carrying 6 or 7 people than having to drive 2 vehicles? If there’s any truth in that rumour then it would be a right poke in the eye for people who car-share.

We understand putting taxes on the least fuel efficient vehicles, but isn’t that why some people pay more road tax than others and why inefficient vehicles cost more to run purely from the fact that their MPG is so poor?

Come on Darling, where’s the incentives to go green. Saying “you can’t do this” or “can’t do that” is simply negative. Why don’t you give us:

• Increased grants for home solar projects
• Increased grants for home insulation
• More green spaces for community allotments
• Increase tax on the most polluting vehicles
• Greater taxes on polluting businesses
• A stop on the expansion of any more UK airports
• Serious public debate over nuclear energy

etc etc

That would be a good start. He’s already effectively nationalised the Northern Rock bank, why can’t he part-nationalise some of our public transport to stop the greedy private companies from milking the public?

Let’s wait until Wednesday, aye?

Globalisation is a fascinating concept: you buy goods that are cheap because they were made in a country where the production costs are lower and then you wonder why the company down the road making the same local goods at local prices goes out of business!

Seriously though, that may be a bit harsh as there are (some) good sides to globalisation. Take, for instance, specialist software developers - we’ve had first hand experience that if you can’t find a local developer it’s OK that you go shopping in Australia and Holland if that’s where you find the exact skills you’ve been looking for.

But it’s the original opening scenario that is worrying and very topical - The United States, in desperate attempts to stave off a recession, is planning tax rebates to boost the economy. Individuals will get up to $600 and married couples up to $1200. Those couples with children will get an additional $300 per child.

Now this may seem surreal and a little sensationalist giving people back the money they paid to government, to the tune of $100 billion for households and $50 billion for business, so that they can spend more to then help their own economy. Will it boost the fortunes of the world’s (current) biggest polluter? Maybe, we’ll have to wait and see.

But what does this have to do with globalisation? The fact is that the tax plans have caused Asian markets to rally on the news. Why?

As somebody interviewed in that BBC news story remarked:

“The markets are reacting to news that Bush and Congress have agree[d] to accelerate tax rebates for US consumers so they can go out and buy more exports from Asia”

So it looks like the American economy does well by its own people buying boatloads of foreign goods. That seems to be a very precarious situation to be in and a huge green flag to encourage rampant consumerism in order to further even greater globalisation.

So what happens when the Asian economies develop to such an extent that their prices catch up with those in the West? Where do consumers buy their cheap goods? Does the economy stumble again? Is this a scary enough scenario to get everybody to buy local?