This an amazing book that we hope will help to usher in new paradigms in thinking about food in an increasingly precarious future. Here’s a review I wrote for the fascinating journal Self & Society.
This an amazing book that we hope will help to usher in new paradigms in thinking about food in an increasingly precarious future. Here’s a review I wrote for the fascinating journal Self & Society.
BREADLINES is a new and very compelling internet publication exploring food justice in the UK.
“To unravel food justice in the UK – one of the world’s most impactful global empires – requires deep reflection, reconstruction of the systems that support injustice (with which we are complicit) and more shared conversation and collective action. We hope that the content of this journal will focus on that awareness raising as it relates to the UK, but it will also draw connections with related issues and movements in other parts of the world.”
You can read the very first issue here with articles about food banks, the vulnerability of traditional public markets, land ownership, participatory work in practice, Nyeleni + 10, and much more. It’s a deeply political and change oriented food journal, concerned with EVERYONE having access to good food.
The work comes from an approach of “community centred knowledge” and activism. You can read about some of this, and access many resources, here.
I’ve learned so much listening to podcasts on A Sustainable Mind through the years.
This interview with Mallory O’Donnell, whose blog How to Cook a Weed is a favourite, struck me. The discussion reflects an approach to foraging which isn’t so much about wild food as trophy but instead gathered plant as relationship– with nature, with gardened landscape and feral escapees, with one’s own process of learning and self-education. I find this moving and hopeful. Have a listen. And there’s loads to learn and recipes to inspire on the blog. Looking forward to Mallory’s book!
I had the great pleasure earlier this month to be interviewed by Marjorie Alexander for the incredible A Sustainable Mind podcast. Marjorie highlights people who are doing some truly inspiring work around issues of ecology, food waste, reusable energy, sustainable living and a myriad of other matters that all relate very closely to the issues that are close to my heart. I feel honored to be included amongst these folks who are contributing in a much more direct way to facing and resolving what is one of the great crises of our times.
It is my firm belief that living more simply and in greater harmony with nature is one of the most important and personal steps we can take in life. I urge you to think about the sustainability of your actions every time you collect wild food, to understand and acknowledge the relationships of the plants and wildlife around…
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Wanted to share this short film about young crofters in Scotland figuring out ways to gain access to land, to practice small scale agriculture and local food production. Passionate, inspiring people.
When I started the project of this blog, I wanted to document what I was cooking and thinking, and often how the two related to each other. I was turned off and depressed by “lifestyle” blogs and food-porn posturing. I wanted to create a wide exploration of what it could mean to politicise a meal, to historicise and contextualise it, showing its antecedents and effects
I’m not sure how far I’ve come or where I’m going, but the vision remains strong that food on its own is not inherently interesting a subject to me, pleasurable as it may be to eat something delicious or gaze at beautiful food styling wishing oneself into the scene.
The video below interests me. I happened upon it because Sean Hawkey is a friend and had pointed something else out on the site. Sean is a photographer and filmmaker, often working for Development groups. I love how in the case of “The Breakfast Recipe,” he’s put the actual breakfast in a chain of events and a particular social milieu. It might feel feel easier to express this scenario in places where people grow their own food. But it seems really compelling to imagine the full weight of these stories for those of us buying our food in a globalised world. There will be stories inside of stories, with infinite digressions. All of which makes what we eat more compelling.
New Year’s Resolution to experience and express gratitude– I’m grateful to people who work really hard on the issues I deeply care about. Miles King is one of them. Here’s what he says about Brexit opportunities.
I’m delighted to be able to tell you about this new report which is published today. It’s the first People Need Nature policy report – A Pebble in the Pond: Opportunities for farming, food and nature after Brexit. You can download it here.
Here’s the summary:
As England prepares to leave the EU we have a once in a lifetime opportunity to change the way we support England’s land managers. This report shows how leaving the EU will enable us to channel money from the public purse to land managers in such a way that they can both produce food, help nature and provide all the other benefits society needs.
The last forty years of farm subsidies from Europe via the Common Agricultural Policy has contributed to a dramatic decline in nature on farmland – land that covers three quarters of England. The vote to leave the EU means we…
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If you are interested in the culture, politics, ecology and economy of food in Palestine, may I recommend FoodJusticePalestine, a quite remarkable website curating diverse articles and voices from around the web on many aspects of eating and growing there.
Had I been following this site earlier, I might have been aware, for example, of the neoliberal trade context that makes Nutella a normal part of life in occupied territories, despite an initial dismay, elucidated for me by Aisha Mansour in this article. I’ve also come to question my own assumed unequivocal support of fairtrade products from Palestine, a movement that is well intentioned (and so much about solidarity) but needs to be examined in terms of issues of food sovereignty at the broadest levels.
“International fair-trade companies have also decreased Palestinian self-sufficiency. These companies offer local farmers a slightly higher price for their products than the price in the local market, but the real price of this practice is that high-quality local (baladi) produce is removed from the local market and sold to the global market at much higher prices. This has increased inequalities in Palestinian society, creating a minority of wealthy businesspeople, and leaving an entire population with low quality, imported food.”
There’s much more on this Tumblr site – articles about foodways, Permaculture, trade deals, land rights and more. In fact it brings together so many aspects of how and why food is interesting to me. So I wanted to share it on my blog. Have a look and fall into a rabbit hole of fascination… You don’t need to join Tumblr to view, but joining means you can follow people and ‘scapbook’ your own posts.