Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
The sun is going to power up what is now Alberta’s Number One industry — food production, processing and preparation — which was the topic of my keynote speech at an Edmonton conference called Cultivating Connections: Alberta Regional Food System Forum 2017.
This year we were lucky enough to have Olivier De Schutter – the 2008 – 2014 UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food – deliver a key note speech.
For two months in 2012, longtime Iola, Kansas, resident Mary Ross trudged through the sweltering heat, waving gnats from her view as she walked door to door with a petition. It was the hottest summer since moving there with her family about 30 years ago, but Ross was determined to gather signatures requesting a grocery store be established in the small rural town of fewer than 6,000 people.
That’s my topic for this newsletter — why proof is important in today’s social and political environment, what kinds of points need to be proved, and how the process of argumentation and evidence-gathering needs to proceed.
The industrialized food system, studies have shown, is linked to greenhouse gas emissions, algal blooms, pesticide pollution, soil erosion and biodiversity loss, to name a few ecological troubles.
I promised to do a few newsletters on helpful points about how to be more competent, especially on food and city issues. So here goes.
I believe that is one of the things we’ve all learned since 1986. Neo-liberal governments have shut down action much more than they have shut down research and policy, and that’s one of the reasons why peaceful guerilla methods need to be explored.
Corporate interest-driven trade agreements, including the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) are undermining the very principles of government by the people, and if approved, would continue to reverse hard-won progress for environmental integrity, social justice and economic development. It doesn’t have to be that way.
The referendum vote in favour of Britain leaving the EU is causing uncertainty in many areas, not least in the future direction of agricultural policy.
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I believe the New Urban Agenda has the potential to start a whole new conversation about food and cities and bring a whole lot of new people up to speed with where the early adopters have been — left out standing in their field, looking for someone to talk to – for some time.
If we want to see food waste, we have to look beyond landfill sites.
