Food sovereignty: spirituality and awareness

On August 26, 2010, in the nose, by jamie
0

PERTH’s Christ Church Grammar School Centre for Ethics director, school chaplain and Anglican priest Frank Sheehan believes that understanding food, knowing where it comes from and restoring our dissipated connections with farming are the keys to a journey fundamental to every human.

Canon Sheehan was one of six panel-members at a forum convened by the Centre for Ethics and Slow Food Perth in the school chapel on 24 August 2010 to examine questions of ‘Food sovereignty: what’s on your plate?’, attended by more than 80 people. The other panelists included Spencers Brook organic farmer Annie Kavanagh, Western Australia’s former agriculture and food minister Kim Chance, spice magazine editor Anthony Georgeff, Murdoch University food academic and author Felicity Newman, and rural parliamentarian Max Trenorden MLC, Member for the Agricultural Region in the state’s Legislative Council.

Slow Food Perth co-leader and forum moderator Jamie Kronborg said the panel grappled with some important issues: the food production and supermarket-driven, bar-coded delivery ‘chain’ and its effects on small, seasonal producers like Annie Kavanagh, the encroachment of concrete on urban-boundary farmland, Frank Sheehan’s ‘spirituality’ of understanding food and where it comes from and the restoration of our connections with the land, and Felicity Newman’s challenge to extend into the broader community ‘knowing where food comes from and why that’s important’.

The forum set out to examine ‘food sovereignty’ – the right of local people to decide what they grow and eat – in an Australian context. ‘It is a term well understood in communities with a long tradition of small-scale farming,’ said Jamie Kronborg. ‘In Australia, where big farming tends to dominate, and our place in a global market means that once-seasonal fruits and vegetables are available year-round, ‘food sovereignty’ might be seen as irrelevant. But a burgeoning interest in knowing where your food comes from – who grows it, is it local, and how was it grown? – together with a heightened awareness of the cost of ‘food miles’ and the effect of genetic modification in staple crops, is encouraging support for local farmers’ markets and prompting questions at the local butcher and grocer.’

In the wake of the forum, the panelists wrote:

Annie Kavanagh: ‘I came home buzzing mainly with all the things I forgot to say! It was such a great experience being able to sit down with an intelligent bunch of people and discuss things that matter for a change. I met some really interesting people too which is always a bonus. Thank you for the opportunity to take part.’

Anthony Georgeff: ‘Thanks for organising it and helping get the ideas out there. And thanks, fellow panel members; I could have quite happily snuck out to the audience and had a relaxed listen. Much to concur with and learn and also much to think about. Was a pleasure.’

Felicity Newman: ‘…If you have reached only one new person you should feel pleased with the outcome. That session grappled with such important issues. I also meant to say it was just great to meet Kim Chance – such an inspirational figure.’

Teresa Scott (CCGS Ethics Centre): ‘ Many thanks… A shame more people weren’t there. Wonderful idea having it filmed – we’d love a copy of it if possible.’

Slow Food Perth member Helen Paynter, a teacher at a Slow Food-Millennium Kids’ Food with latitude programme participating school, said that the forum ‘was a really good one with great speakers who obviously had much information to give the audience’. ‘My head was buzzing on the way back home,’ she said, ‘and it was so good to have a lively conversation with the woman who came along with me who, as she said, ‘has never given a thought about where her food comes from as long as she could get it at Coles’.’

Information

Tagged with: • • • • •
 

A priest, an editor, a farmer and politicians: food sovereignty forum

On August 20, 2010, in event archive, the nose, by jamie
0

‘FOOD sovereignty’ – the right of local people to decide what they grow and eat – is a term well understood in communities with a long tradition of small-scale farming. In Australia, where big farming tends to dominate, and our place in a global market means that once-seasonal fruits and vegetables are available year-round, ‘food sovereignty’ might be seen as irrelevant. But a burgeoning interest in knowing where your food comes from – who grows it, is it local, and how was it grown? – together with a heightened awareness of the cost of ‘food miles’ and the effect of genetic modification in staple crops, is encouraging support for local farmers’ markets and prompting questions at the local butcher and grocer.

Join Christ Church Grammar School’s Centre for Ethics and Slow Food Perth for a forum on food sovereignty – ‘What’s on your plate?’ – in Claremont on Tuesday 24 August 2010. The panel includes the school’s Centre for Ethics convenor and senior Anglican priest Canon Frank Sheehan, farmer Annie Kavanagh, Murdoch University food academic and writer Felicity Newman, magazine editor Anthony Georgeff, Australian Landcare Council chairman and former agriculture and food minister Kim Chance, and parliamentarian Max Trenorden. This should be lively, challenging and informative.

Event details
Date: Tuesday 24 Aug 2010
Time: 7:30pm
Venue: Christ Church Grammar School chapel, Queenslea Drive, Claremont WA 6010
Entry: gold-coin donation to Anglicare

Tagged with: • • • • •
 

Common sense interview with Michael Pollan

On June 30, 2010, in the nose, by pauline
0

MICHAEL Pollan is interviewed on the various aspects of organic food and farming. This report covers common sense arguments and questions often asked. See interview

Tagged with: • •
 

The true cost of our daily bread

On June 21, 2010, in the nose, by pauline
0

THE Sydney Morning Herald mapped the journey of an unremarkable basket of groceries and found that it had, collectively, travelled farther than some of its consumers. In a recent article, Ben Cubby writes about the complexities of food miles. Read more.

Tagged with:
 

The 1280% beef price hike

On June 21, 2010, in the nose, by pauline
0

A TASMANIAN beef farmer was astonished to find that meat from a beast he sold for about $5 a kilogram last month was on sale at a Surry Hills butcher in eastern Sydney this week for $69. Read more about the complexities of farming and producing meat for the Australian market from an article by environment editor Ben Cubby in The Sydney Morning Herald.

Tagged with: •
 

Unseasonal desires

On March 19, 2010, in the nose, by pauline
0

REPORTED on ABC news in a story on feeding Australia, journalist Brigit Anderson reports on the seasonal aspect of food, food miles and how buying food out of season shows how disconnected we have become from the land. Eating food out of season is having a huge environmental impact, read further from the news article

Tagged with: •
 

Food miles and carbon footprints

On May 19, 2009, in the nose, by pauline
0

MICHAEL Specter in The New Yorker, February 2008, writes about the very complex issue of food miles and carbon footprint. Simply put, carbon footprint is a measure of the total contribution to global warming of each and every human activity, whereas food miles is the distance food travels from field to plate. Specter talks about how food carries enormous symbolic power, and the concept of ‘food miles’ is often used, he says, as a kind of shorthand to talk about climate change in general.

The term ‘food miles’ was first used by Dr. Tim Lang, author of “Food Wars” and Professor of Food Policy at London’s City University in 1994.

In May 2006, Lang, at Slow Food in Bra, explained that the concept of food miles is part of a broader issue of sustainability which deals with a large range of environmental issues including local food. He went on to say “that the point was to highlight the hidden ecological, social and economic consequences of food production to consumers in a simple way, one which had objective reality but also connotations“

The term ‘food miles’ is now being superseded by the term carbon footprint as it is often not just the distance that food travels that has to be considered. Specter highlights one of the many aspects of this in his article in the New Yorker:
“researchers at Lincoln University, in Christchurch, found that lamb raised in New Zealand and shipped eleven thousand miles by boat to England produced six hundred and eighty-eight kilograms of carbon-dioxide emissions per ton, about a fourth the amount produced by British lamb. In part, that is because pastures in New Zealand need far less fertilizer than most grazing land in Britain (or in many parts of the United States). Similarly, importing beans from Uganda or Kenya—where the farms are small, tractor use is limited, and the fertilizer is almost always manure—tends to be more efficient than growing beans in Europe, with its reliance on energy-dependent irrigation systems”

The Carbon Trust established in the United Kingdom in 2001, is an independent organisation set up by their government and its mission is to accelerate the move to a low carbon economy by working with organisation to reduce carbon emissions and develop low carbon technologies. They have also developed a label for some food items to show the total carbon emissions used to produce the product.

In May 2009, Australia’s Prime Minister Kevin Rudd released a statement that his government would establish the Australian Carbon Trust to help all Australian to do their bit to reduce Australian carbon pollution. A new web site will provide a portal for individuals and households to simply calculate their energy use. The Australian Carbon Trust will be developed in collaboration with the Carbon Trust in the United Kingdom.

Tagged with:
 

Local food investigated

On April 17, 2009, in the nose, by pauline
0

RESEARCHER Sarah DeWeerdt of the Worldwatch Institute that discusses the issues of local food, food miles, organic, non-organic, conventional farming and farmers’ markets.

Tagged with:
 

Michael Pollan fixes dinner

On February 25, 2009, in the nose, by pauline
0

MICHAEL Pollan, author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma and numerous books about food, is interviewed by Mother Jones.

Tagged with: •
 

Globalisation, culinary diversity and local food

On August 7, 2008, in the nose, by pauline
0

GLOBALISATION introduces us to great new foods from around the world but at the same time it threatens culinary diversity. Read an article and consider why local food may be more than just an elite fashion.

Tagged with:
 
Next Entries »