Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
As we look ahead to re-open the country post-COVID, we also have the chance to re-work our public relationship to our food system, and mend its broken aspects in a way that will better meet community needs and values in our “new normal” future.
Reparations is about recognising that the wealth and privilege of white people came from the exploitation of black and indigenous people and taking the necessary steps to heal that trauma. That means taking time to understand how you benefit in whatever way from white supremacy.
Times of turbulence usually precipitate great change, and we are certainly on the brink of great change. Which direction we go in is entirely down to us – how we spend our money, how we vote, how we engage with our community. I hope the opportunity isn’t wasted.
Cooperative structures like the Carolina Textile District provide an inspirational example of the type of regional networks that could grow and flourish throughout the country.
How do we take back control and ownership of our food? It’s my belief that before we can change something, we need to understand it.
The need for imagination right now is more urgent than ever. We stand to either create a new daring world or stay in old paradigms with some minor fixes that give us the illusion of change.
Our era is one of profound loneliness, and the proliferation of digital devices is only one of the causes. That emptiness also proceeds from the staggering retreat of nature, a process underway well before screen addiction.
We’re producing a series of films to capture the incredible enthusiasm of people across Bristol for good food. From growing at home to cooking from scratch, stopping food waste to supporting local producers, Bristolians are finding new ways to make our local food system stronger than ever.
I salute every coronavirus gardener, and I dearly hope they will make a permanent habit of it! Because there are some excellent reasons to garden that have nothing to do with food security.
We are in desperate need of more integrated approaches that recognize our interdependent place in the natural world. Strengthening interdisciplinary and intercultural collaboration will encourage a paradigm-shift towards integration, as will the sharing of knowledge between people with different worldviews.
I so often tell others that the reason I grow food is because I love eating. But let us not lost sight of the fact that ‘food is medicine and medicine is food’. We can brings plants together and manage them in a forest garden, to provide for ourselves, our families, communities and customers.
We need to change the narrative now, embrace a new story truer to circumstance — a storyline in which we heroically face adversity together, creating abundance out of crisis together, moving with agility through chaos toward new community values that will sustain us in the unsettled years ahead.
