Week 51: 'An understanding ... of the human place in the order of creation.'

Wonder spawned in: Throughout history
Wondered into being by: Ordinary folks as usual
Wonderspan: 10 minutes
To experience this wonder at its best: Make sure you can hear the sound and click 'full screen' icon.


Food.  In every bite is the sun’s light, Earth’s evolution, the labour of other people, and particles your body will soon make its own.  In food culminate all the things that make life and communion possible – cosmos, Earth, people – it really is something to say Grace for.  If we want to evaluate how well we love ourselves, others and the Earth, there is no better barometer than how we grow and eat food.  With food, fundamental questions about how we live our lives and organise our societies are literally in your face.

British households throw away more than seven million tons of food and drink each year, worth £12 billion.  Why does it matter?  Here are a few more facts, starting with one I’ve mentioned before; the industrial food system:

• Has destroyed a third of the Earth’s topsoil in less than half a century;
• Consumes more than 2,000 litres of water to produce a piece of steak and more than 1,200 litres to produce a loaf of bread;
• Consumes 10 calories of energy for every 1 calorie of food it produces;
• Generates yields that are no higher than smaller-scale biodiverse alternatives and creates fewer jobs;
• Will collapse worldwide within a few decades due to its heavy dependence on fossil fuels.

That has barely begun to explain why change is necessary, but it's enough to be getting on with.  Some people are grappling with the problem in creative, practical way and what they are doing is amazing and exciting.  We'll be looking at one or two of these ways of loving today.

I've gathered four short film clips; please pick one for your Monday morning wonder.  Each film shows how changing the way we grow and eat food is not only socially and ecologically urgent, but involves us in questions of passion -- that is, of what we think life and society are all about.  All the films show that the Earth can produce such benign abundance when we work with and not against it.  This is a wonder, yet so is how these individuals and groups talk about what their commitment means to them; it’s about the whole of life, they say.  Be inspired!


1. Vandana Shiva

Here, physicist-turned-farmer Vandana Shiva talks about the work of Navdanya farm – a place ‘hospitable to every species and every culture’.  She has found that biodiverse systems are twice to five times as productive as industrialised monocrop systems (including those depending on genetically modified organisms – ‘mutilated seeds’).

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9K0cZGQgHA

2. Wendell Berry

Poet and farmer Wendell Berry talks about how working with the land teaches certain attitudes to work and food.  We need ‘a proper humility’, he says, in order to understand the kind of relationship to the Earth that will support human life in the long term: one that allows nature rather than fights it.  His uncommon eloquence and depth of spirit make him (for me) a modern-day prophet.  Every line is like a planted seed, the listener’s mind and heart like a waiting hillside for this ‘good farmer’.

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODX-DE8EfqI

3. Rebecca Hosking

Here is Rebecca Hosking and Tim Green’s film showing her quest to change her own farm.  It’s one of the best documentaries I’ve ever seen: beautifully made, straightforward, grounded, sad, moving, still hopeful.  Here are the first ten minutes:

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xShCEKL-mQ8 

Or if you prefer to skip straight to the bit that talks about how a farm, configured differently, might feed 10 people per acre – twice as many people as conventional methods in Britain - then this link takes you to a point later in the programme:

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxsPfeSRIFo

4. Overtown

Overtown in Miami is one of the oldest and poorest communities in the United States.  The community has planted a permaculture garden on old waste land beneath the freeway.  These guys are from the school of ‘Just Do It’.  ‘We had to bring the dirt,’ they say, without asking for permission because the authorities would have said no.  This film by Kevin Brown, Francine Cavanaugh and Adams Wood is a bit grainy but I find it really inspiring:

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6s6wZqFh9RY

There’s a bit more about Overtown here: http://overtowner.com/


A few easy ways to join in:

Here are a few things I've been trying to do - all fairly simple, none particularly radical:

Cut down waste: http://england.lovefoodhatewaste.com  For most items apart from fish and some meat, ‘best before’ dates can be roundly ignored.

Cut down on meat and dairy products - if not veggie, then treat meat as a treat, not every night of the week.

Cut down on heavily processed food (it typically tastes awful anyway).

When buying:

• avoid supermarkets if possible (they're not on our side, nor on the Earth's); small shops are not always  much better but they are better
• choose locally grown food if possible (and never anything air-freighted)
• buy only seasonal produce as far as possible (try a veg box scheme, put a seasonal produce calendar on your kitchen wall)
• avoid heavily packaged goods
• prefer organic and fairtrade goods (yep, they’re more expensive, but usually only by a few pence - some people can't afford them, many can)
• notice when you’re thinking of buying New Zealand butter / South African wine / Moon cheese etc. and refrain!

Try growing your own organic food – you don’t need much space.

Enjoy cooking!  Try never again going to McDonalds/Subway/Pret a Manger etc.

Extra:

• In Australia a few friends get together to set up a permaculture garden in an afternoon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DT2z1zuQTJg
• The Dervaes family manages to turn their 66’ x 66’ garden into a mini-farm producing some 6,000 lbs of produce per year: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ex2ye2AZR2k
• On the roof of a Budgens supermarket in London: http://www.flickr.com/photos/foodfromthesky/4937661627/in/set-72157624838804596
• And finally, there’s more of Rebecca Hosking being quietly amazing here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/nov/23/plasticbags.recycling

Thanks to Fritha L for suggesting growing food in unusual spaces for a Monday wonder.

___________________
www.waysofloving.com