I found out about this through an inspirational session on landscape scale regeneration at Groundswell 2023.
Food producers and the community in Waterford came together to craft their own manifesto for food, and it is compelling and beautiful.
Videos
Food systems transformation and poverty – a powerful reminder
This AFN Network+ talk with campaigner Dominic Watters on food insecurity is an essential watch if you’re interested in food systems transformation. It is deeply moving.
Dominic speaks candidly about his own experience as a single parent living in poverty, with food and fuel insecurity. He urges us not to include the voices of those in poverty in an ad-hoc fashion, sending them back home when we feel we’ve ticked that box, but to build sustained and sustainable relationships that value voices of that living experience.
He emphasises the difference between lived and living experience; he is living it every day.
There’s also a reminder of our interconnectedness and to avoid the othering inherent in using expressions like “our world” and “your world”.
I grew up the son of a single parent who worked hard to feed me well with scant resources. I have a little insight into the experience Dominic describes – but only a little. The situation for him and others like him is very different now, and more difficult.
The food systems transformation we need doesn’t work unless it works for everyone, yet at times talk of sustainable food has made it sound a little like an aspirational lifestyle choice. The price for much of this food and the casual assertion that we all need to pay more for our food suggests as much. Dominic and many in a similar situation to him live in food ‘deserts’ where the only shop within a reasonable distance sells expensive, poor-quality, often ultra-processed food and nothing fresh. The cost of cooking food is a factor.
Food, the quality, availability and price of it, how it is prepared, is so intrinsically linked with poverty. Food poverty doesn’t exist. It’s just poverty. But food, the way we produce, buy, prepare, share and eat it is also so central to what it means to live well, healthily and happily. Yet again for me, and seen through the lens of Dominic’s experience, the way we eat is at the centre of so many of the issues we need to fix in our world and why genuine, equitable, sustainable transformation of our food system is probably the most powerful thing we can focus on.
Six Inches of Soil
The new trailer for Six Inches of Soil, the film looking at the regenerative farming movement in the UK, is out. It looks great.
The UK premiere of Six Inches of Soil will be at the Oxford Real Farming Conference in January 2024. Further screenings throughout 2024 will take place on farms, in cinemas and many other venues – see the Six Inches of Soil website for screening dates and further info.
Postcard from Cambodia
I’ve had a load of video footage sitting around for ages taken in 2008 with the young adults at the Sangkheum Center – the group wrote and presented their own ‘Postcard from Cambodia’ where they wanted to tell people about Cambodia, Siem Reap, school, food and what they enjoyed. They wrote it themselves, presented it themselves and filmed a lot of it themselves. We watched all of it at the time but I’ve only just had the time and tools to finally edit the film together to the script they wrote – and had a great time doing it.
Put the crappy video quality down to a poor camcorder purchasing decision on my part. Put the crappy editing down to me.
HOPE for Cambodia is supporting youth development projects like this in Cambodia right now – please see more at GlobalGiving and consider donating to help them out.
Vanilla Ice’s development advice
Maybe it’s because it’s a four-day weekend here, maybe I’ve been inspired by Britney Spears’ Guide To Semiconductor Physics (look it up), I don’t know, but I just discovered that Vanilla Ice, intentionally or not, offers one of the most essential pearls of international development wisdom I’ve seen yet:
Stop; collaborate and listen.
Do not follow Vanilla’s advice to ‘light up a stage and wax a chump like a candle’. This is usually not appreciated and may be seen as unprofessional. You should also exercise caution when accepting advice from someone who raps wearing peach-coloured trousers.
*gets coat*
Perpetual Ocean
Looking uncannily like Van Gogh’s ‘The Starry Night‘, a visualisation of ocean surface currents around the world between June 2005 and December 2007. A bit lovely. Best watched big, in HD.
via B3ta.