Category Archives: Food

Growing food in the neighbourhood

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Tilburg’s City Garden- Lise Alix

This winter I did an internship in which I set up a city garden in Tilburg. I found ten enthusiastic, mostly female neighbours, ready to cooperate in creating their neighbourhood’s kitchen’s garden. We learned about designing and preparing a garden, working together, and about physical endurance while spreading manure, transporting unwanted sand, and carrying and breaking paving stones.

I was assigned to manage this project by the Brabantse Milieufederatie (BMF), an organization that tries to protect the  environment. One of their focus points is on food, because food is a daily need that links many environmental problems like food transport, food packaging and unsustainable agriculture with use of pesticides and fertilizers.
One way of solving these problems is by growing our local vegetables, for example in neighbourhoods kitchen’s gardens. The BMF has, in cooperation with other organizations, tried to raise consciousness and support by the municipality of Tilburg on city gardens. As an example of how well it functions, BMF wanted to have one tangible kitchen’s garden in Tilburg. That’s where I came in.

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Gastronomic field trip Rhederoord 2011 – new video clip

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Like last year (see the respective blog on the field trip and the rather amateuristic video clip I made of it) students attending the course Origin Food: a market for identity made a field trip to the Rhederoord estate to learn more about the passion for local food and actually taste excellent local cuisine. Jidi Xu, one of our enthousiast students made a ‘cool’, dynamic video clip of the field trip that will especially be appealling to young people, although I liked it very much too!

PUREFOOD Research Vacancy ‘Comparative analysis of urban food strategies’

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The vacancy for a position as Early Stage Researcher (ESR) for the project  ‘Comparative analysis of urban food strategies in European cities’ within the PUREFOOD research and training network has been re-opened. More information about PUREFOOD can be found below and on the PUREFOOD website (which is still under construction).

Job description

For this PUREFOOD project ‘Comparative analysis of urban food strategies in European cities’ we are looking for an Early Stage Researcher who is interested in the topics of urban food provisioning and the relations between food and policy domains as public health, education, environment, et cetera from a sociological, political science and/or planning perspective. The research will focus on how food policies are articulated and motivated in different European cities and what  the consequences are for their implementation. This focus is inspired by the fact that more and more city governments are taking up food as a key policy area to enhance human and environmental urban health. The challenges of policy articulation and implementation are big. The articulation of food policy has so far been reliant on individual politicians and on a political level vulnerable to electoral shifts. Institutionalization of food policy in city governments has just started and different patterns of institutionalization are emerging with particular pitfalls and successes. This study will explore the preconditions, political processes, strategy articulation and implementations of urban food strategies in different European cities in comparative perspective to enhance the understanding of the conditions for successful urban food policy implementation. Continue reading →

The agrarian mind

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Not so well-known in Europe is Wendell Berry, farmer, teacher, poet, activist, ecologist. I came across his writing in Iowa in 2009  and I was deeply moved. His writing resonated. The agrarian mind. The feeling of depth of place, of connection to land, of mysteriousness of nature. Rhythm, cycles, seasons, belonging, acceptance; place and sense making. I found his poetry incredibly powerful. Indeed, to touch land and grow food is a vital energizing force for me. In a contribution to the book Fatal Harvest he wrote:

To the agrarian mind, which is the only mind capable of rebuilding the culture of healthy soils, water cycles, richness, and diversity. May it multiply in future generations so they can recoup what has been lost and create farms and economies that are sustainable, humane and beautiful.

With lots of pleasure, but barely making a living, I see the agrarian minds in this region who work hard to create this culture of healthy soils and healthy food.  They are heralded as good examples of sustainable food production but are at the same time scraping for an income. Their effort not only nourishes people but also nourishes and rebuilds local resilience, an impact far beyond current prices. Book after book appears which critiques the current culture of profit and greed, the myth of self-regulating markets, the power concentration in the food industry and the urgency for sustainable alternatives. But the larger audience seems intoxicated by passiveness. As if food, land and the planet are not urgent matters to all of us. Who wakes up the agrarian minds?

Planting trees with the neighborhood

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Finally, after one and a half year preparation, we planted lots of new trees, hedges and bushes in the Pomona neighborhood ‘forest garden’ (see here for the history behind). Old varieties fruit trees, such as ‘moerbei’ and ‘mispel’ together with peer, plump and apple will complement the 6 trees of the old orchard which will be renovated and protected by an extra inner hedge which we planted saturday. Another hegde was planted all around the area to guard it off from the road. This latter hegde contains many different species, some with thorns, planted in small series with here and there a bigger bush and roses.  

Some 20 people, including a group of childeren, came to help during the day starting at 10 and finishing at 4.30. The neighborhood centre provided freshly made soup and sandwiches. Not everybody who wanted to help felt physically capable of doing so. A woman who had been coming to the planning evenings stopped by with a just baked apple pie to contribute to the hard working. We certainly worked hard. The soil is extremely dry and was – at places – very compact and full of stones. However, we got all trees and most of the hedge in and will finish the job next saturday. In the meanwhile we drew up a roster for watering and we wait for the spring to make it all green.