Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
From the back streets of Jerusalem to the markets of Nablus we take a journey through some of the most iconic foods, learning how they connect people, offering comfort and community and making tangible years of culture and history.
With borders hardening around the world, more people than ever are taking on the slippery, often tortuous challenge of proving their relationships to the authorities, which often boils down to having their love recognised as legitimate by the state. I’m one of them, or fear I soon will be.
Citizens Assemblies are a powerful tool for hearing the thoughts of a population without the filter of political interference, lack of understanding, and the polarity that has been driven by social media and surveillance capitalism. But what are they, and how might Citizens Assemblies be a vital tool for creating the spaces that allow imagination back into our public life?
For centuries, ordinary Brits have enjoyed a legal “right to ramble” throughout the countryside even when they might cross someone’s private property. In England and Wales alone, there are an estimated 140,000 miles of footpaths and bridlepaths that are considered public rights of way. Now, as reported by the website Boing Boing, the full scope of this right — and access to a vast network of paths — is in question.
The chief judge of an Australian court of superior jurisdiction has, for the first time, found that a coalmine ought to be refused for its impact on climate change. And the decision comes just in time.
Joel Salatin is an internationally known author, farmer and advocate for what he calls “emotionally, economically and environmentally enhancing agriculture.”
We focus here on two proposals for a Green New Deal that are politically viable today but also point us toward the deeper long-term change needed: (1) job training that could help repopulate the countryside and change how farmers work, and (2) research on perennial grain crops that could change how we farm.
Capitalism is not just a system, it is a system of social relations and socio-metabolic processes, and we have to change many of those relations and processes radically from within and very quickly in order to deal with the current ecological emergency.
A successful Saami-led, salmon rewilding project on the Näätämö river in Arctic Finland illustrates the success of partnership between Indigenous knowledge and western science on environmental questions, say the authors of a recent paper, but outdated perceptions and prejudices means these kinds of partnerships elsewhere still too often fail.
In both the commercial and health professional viewpoints, the social, emotional, environmental, economic and empowerment dimensions of food relationships are pushed aside.
The big change since the days of Richard Douthwaite and the 2012 publication of Sharing for Survival is that we now have zero faith in an international order being able to bring this about. Hence my presentation was focused on the need for Scotland to enact Cap and Share and show the way, rather than wait for a global agreement.
There is growing recognition of the value of Australia’s native produce and a need to capture what knowledge there still is of Indigenous land management practices and the cultivation and preparation of many of these foods, before it disappears entirely.
