Sarah J spoke with Christian Ecology Link

Locally produced Farmers Markets

Last year it was revealed that the Government had made either moderate or no progress on 22 of its 29 low-carbon commitments, according to an analysis published by the Green Alliance think-tank in conjunction with Christian Aid and other groups. With environmental issues never being far from the news, one Christian group is making strides in helping to change people's thinking.

Christian Ecology Link offers insights into ecology, the environment and Christian insights to the Green movement. Sarah J caught up with Barbra Ekling the Secretary for Christian Ecology, to find out more about their work and a new LOAF project, designed as a simple introduction to the issues of food security.

Sarah: Could you give us a quick overview of Christian Ecology Link?

Barbara: We've been going for 30 years and we're an ecumenical Christian organisation for Christians concerned about the environment. I guess that sums it up in a nutshell.

Maudie a free-ranging pig

Sarah: All the work that you do is about tackling the environment?

Barbara: It is. We're focused mainly on three areas. The first is food, which is where our LOAF idea comes in that we're going to be talking about. We also focus on climate change where we launched the Operation Noah campaign, which has now become a completely separate entity on its own. Finally we look at issues around bio-diversity in the natural world and how species are going extinct at an alarming rate.

Sarah: We heard you've launched the LOAF programme. What does that stand for?

Barbara: We launched our LOAF principles probably about 10 years ago now. We were thinking about the issues surrounding food that are still very relevant today and we came up with these four letters that encompassed the ideas that we were wrestling with.

Organically grown redcurrants

One was the idea of local food for local people. Of course climate change issues come in here with food miles; unnecessarily transporting food around the world, bashing up the greenhouse gases as we do. So that's the "L" of LOAF.

We were concerned about the way our food is being grown. The last 50 years has seen a huge rise in industrialised agriculture and the use of pesticides and so we were concerned and thought about organic farming where you're really looking after the soil in order to grow healthy plants. More recently we realised that more industrialised agriculture is based totally on fossil fuels - oil - and not only for transport. Not only are we running out of oil, but of course oil is one of the greenhouse gases. Organically grown seems like a good principle to aim at.

The A comes from the fact that being a Christian organisation we were very concerned about not only human beings, but also about animals. We are concerned about the way farm animals in particular are kept. We're not a vegetarian organisation. We have meat eaters, vegetarians and vegans all within our membership, but all of us whether or not we're eating meat or dairy products, we need to be concerned about how our animals on farms are kept; so the "A" is for animal welfare.

The "F" was for fair trade. We focus on fair trade for people producing things overseas and we wanted to say that indeed we support that, but also fair trade for our own farmers in the UK is important too, for example with milk. The price we pay for milk if you buy it from a supermarket is less than the dairy farmer is getting for that milk and that's not a sustainable way for them to continue, so "F" is for the people producing our food.

Fairly traded food

Sarah: So why it is important to do this?

Barbara: I think all environmentalists would say these issues are really important because we want to live in a sustainable world and we want our food to be grown in ways which isn't going to damage our planet. From a Christian perspective we're deeply concerned about the people we share this earth with and also God who we see as the all loving Creator who cares about all of His creation, not just people, not just animals, but the whole lot. Indeed with "LOAF" the other really important part, is the symbolism of bread in Christianity where you don't just have Jesus blessing and breaking bread with his disciples but he actually refers to himself in John's gospel as the bread of life.