Hi there, nice to meet you. Thank for checking out the about me section of my blog!
First things first, this blog is going to be discussing serious, scientific, political and complex issues revolving around climate change and food security. However, I am trying to currate an environment with my blog which is lighthearted and less formal as a way to make these topics easily digestable. Sprinkled with a mix of other interesting topics and posts about things I find interesting and think is worth sharing to broaden everyones knowledge of our world and the climate crisis facing us.
So to start I guess a bit about me. My name is Bozhidar but most people call me Bobby. I am a 24 year old who was born in Bulgaria and has lived in Ireland for the past 21 years. I’m fluent in both English and Bulgarian with enough Spanish to hold a conversation. I have spent most my life living in Co.Tipperary so I’m no stranger to agriculture and farming. However for the majority of my life I havent cared too deeply about farming or its relation to the food we eat and our lives. To get a bit more specific with the topic of this blog I think its important to explain what has led me to where I am and why I am so deeply concerned for food security and the threat of climate change.
My undergrad was in politics and international relations, my interest in politics sprang from my love of history and wanting to have a deeper understanding of how wars occured and the formation of countries and to understand how our history came about. Initially, I was very interested in working in international politics and either being a policy advisor for the european union – (probably the external actions office) or working for Ireland and the department of Foreign Affairs as a delegate in an embassy. Around my third year of the degree I started to get interested in climate politics and hearing more about climate change and the evergrowing threat it posed I started to take it more seriously than before where it was a passing fear of it and concern for the environment but not really engaging with it.
This led to me writing my final year project on climate change policy as I discovered Ireland is considered a laggerd in the EU with addressing climate change. This sparked my interest in where most our emissions come from and upon learning it was from Agriculture I decided to do my project on the relationship between the agricultural lobby in Ireland and the creation of climate change policy. From my research it became clear that the Irish Farmers association and other Ag groups in Ireland have very little interest in meaningfully mitigating climate change and ontop of that and worse the Fina Gael government from 2011-2014 had no interest in meaningful climate change policy either. As a result of the global financial crisis of 2008 Agriculture was on of the few sectors the government could fall back on after the collapse of the building sector and financial markets. This meant the government was relying on the AG sector as a golden goose to bring the irish economy back from the brink and since then has planned to go full steam ahead with intensifying and increasing irelands agricultural output as explained in foodwise 2025 and food harvest 2030, to the detriment of the environment and ensuring Ireland meets its climate targets.
Big rant over I was very quickly disillusioned with politics and very angry with the lack of will to address the greatest threat that humanity has ever faced. This has led me to where I am where I have become very involved in climate activisim, being more outspoken towards our leaders who sit by idally as our world falls apart. I have come a long way from 4 years ago. Now I am deeply interested in alternatives to globalisation, a focus on cooperatives, degrowth and how we can solve the climate crisis with a bottom up approach and how agriculture and feeding the planet plays a major role in that and is not nearly as discussed as issues like burning fossil fuels and the energy sector.
This blog will hopefully focus on alternative ways to grow our food that turns away from the intensive, destructive way we practice agriculture currently. I believe politics plays the most important role in this also and will be necessary to bring about the change we need. hopefully youll join me on this blog as we explore how we can achieve this goal.