Food projects
'Think Global Grow Local' sounds obvious, but isn't what is practiced. We will support community owned and run farms which sequester carbon, produce locally grown food and deliver high social value for communities. An often forgotten but incredibly important food is human milk. The carbon and health impacts of not breastfeeding are huge and needs addressing.Â
Regenerative and Community Farming
-
The UK imports 40% of its food which creates carbon emissions and take jobs out of the UK.
-
We will support small-scale regenerative and community farms, especially those that use permaculture principles as these are especially good at sequestering (drawing down) carbon into the soil.
​​
These projects are doing great work to create an environment that works for everyone, produces mostly organic low carbon footprint food and add huge social value, yet go unrecognised.
​
There are many opportunities to grow more food in the UK and in urban areas where the need to connect with the earth is greatest.
​
The acceptance of Food Banks as part of the normal landscape needs questioning. They themselves want to be redundant. Being more self suffcient for our food is a step towards this goal.
Breastfeeding Support
We work with grassroots community groups to make sure they are funded to supply the support that women need to reach their breastfeeding goals. This includes funding breastfeeding charities to train more counsellors or fund spaces where more breastfeeding support groups can take place to help create a breastfeeding normative culture.
​
We will support the setup and running costs of human milk banks, providing a source of human donor milk for babies whose birth mothers cannot - for whatever reason - produce their own milk.
The more babies that are bottle-fed, the higher the emissions resulting from the manufacturer of formula milk and associated items and processes.
"For the UK alone, carbon emission savings gained by supporting mothers to breastfeed would equate to taking between 50,000 and 77,500 cars off the road each year" Source: Environmental cost of formula milk needs global attention, argue scientists
The UK has one of the world’s lowest breastfeeding rates. There have been calls to support breastfeeding from the British Medical Journal to help curb the emissions impact but in reality, there is a lot of work to be done to return the UK to a breastfeeding normative culture.
Balance Carbon will approach this in 3 ways:
1. Fund the people who want to offer support to train.
2. Market human milk as the optimum first food for human babies.
3. Fund the start-up and running of human milk banks.
​
