Red Russian Kale

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This is a precious time. Everyday a new shade of green appears with yet another tree coming out of its shell. It is the miracle of nature at work which I also intensely enjoyed growing up on a farm. Our balcony is joining the green forces; snow peas, tomatoes, lettuce, kale, herbs, flowers, brocoli, peppers, strawberries, red currants, raspberries. In part this nursery provides the allotment garden.

But yesterday we tried something new. We joined the guerilla gardeners who “attacked” the Netherlands this weekend in 7 municipalities. Guerilla gardening has blown over from the US and the UK and is about making public space in urban environments greener and more edible. Quite literally in our case. We planted ‘red russian’ kale in our neighborhood grown from seeds of the Small Potatoes farm in Iowa.

Food Flight

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The first people have entered the airspace again after almost a week of non-mobility at this side of Europe. While the large number of grounded people can slowly start to return, also freight transport by air can resume itself. Schiphol is packed with just-in-time deliveries such as consumer electronics and also perishable things like flowers, vegetables and fruit. Albert Heijn reported no immediate problems last week friday in the NRC just after the closure of Schiphol, but there was optimism then about the time it would take to re-open the airspace. Most of the supermarket’s food is transported over land, specific things like tropical fruit salad might get out of stock, the newspaper reported. It might be interesting to see what is not available anymore after a week of silence in the air. This extraordinary situation might further inspire the emerging practice of urban food planning and policy.

Food planning has risen in attention (see also earlier blogs) because of the “new food equation” (Morgan and Sonnino 2010). By this, the authors refer to a combination of factors which together make that food supply matters again as a political issue. They mention amongst others:

– Rapid urbanisation and rise of the number of people dependent on food supply

– Land conflicts and new colonialism

– Climate change effects such as water stress

– The food price surge of 2007/ 2008 and consequent food riots.

Food security, therefore, has become a national security issue again in many countries. So far, however, not really for us, it seemed. The ash coming down in silence might draw extra attention to the logistic miracle of keeping the shelves full with the thirty thousand items or more per supermarket each day. A vulnerability assessment of the food system might not be such a bad idea in the light (or darkness) of an eruption of the second, much larger volcano on Iceland.

Repeasantisation in Araponga, Brazil – a quest for space

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By Leonardo Ayabe van den Berg, MSc graduate International Development Studies

Recently I completed my MSc-thesis. The thesis research is set in the municipality of Araponga in Brazil, where (re)peasantisation occurred and continues to occur. Here I describe some of the findings of my research.  When interested you can downlaod a pdf of my thesis ‘Invisible peasant movements: A case study of (re)peasantisation in Brazil‘.

Araponga

Araponga

When I started to read about the peasantry there were two major things that occurred to me as striking. First, in policy peasants are often considered as a group of laggards: who are unable to take care of themselves and therefore need social assistance; who rely on primitive forms of technology and therefore must be modernized; or who are impeded by a stagnant, traditional mentality and must therefore be converted into small entrepreneurs. The peasant mode of farming is seldomly considered in its own right. Second, in academic theory peasants are predicted to disappear, weaken or live a life of poverty as a result of their inferior mode of production and their helplessness. Departing from the assumption that actors are driven by a specific economic-rational logic, neo-liberal approaches roughly theorise that peasants commoditize, compete with other farms as a result of which there will be regional growth. Tradition or culture can block economic rationality and the transition from peasant to entrepreneur. The peasant will then be doomed to poverty. In contrast to the neo-liberal approach, neo-Marxist approaches, most of which also assume that the peasant is driven by an economic logic and commoditize, theorise that commoditization will either lead to the destruction of the peasant enterprise or to a fate of poverty. This is the result of price fluctuations, squeeze in agriculture (caused by the trend of decreasing produce prices and increasing input prices for farmers), or newly emerging food networks (through which income from weaker, peasant, parts of the chain are squeezed in favour of the more powerful, retailers, part of the chain). These predictions and preconceptions contradict with what happened in Araponga, a rural municipality in the state of Minas Gerais in Brazil where there was a rise in the number of peasants and an increase in welfare. The objective of this thesis was to find out how this was possible: how had (re)peasantisation occurred in Araponga. Continue reading →

Food romance

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The rediscovery of food, as good food, as delicious goal in and of itself, as a link to doing good, fuelled organic, local and gourmet niche markets. In her excellent book Hungry City, Carolyn Steel investigates the relationship of us, urbanites, with our food. Is this a sign of reconnection?

For foodies – like me – there are ‘festival marketplaces’ where their romance with food can reach exhilarating heights in the face of so much authentic and artisanal products. One can marvel over the latest authentic chocolate, over that particular healthy seaweed and over this special free range chicken from France. The success of these type of markets – based on food tourism – suggests that we have not lost appetite for food, yet ordinary street markets are having a hard time.

“This seeming paradox”, argues Carolyn, ” is explained by the fact that food is not embedded in our culture. We only lavish time and money on it when we are ‘treating ourselves’ not as part of daily routine.”

She concludes therefore, that these festival food markets are in fact “a manifestation of our overwhelming disconnection with food”. In similar fashion Dan Barber is critical about our real connection to food in this TED talk where he gives a hilarious account of the romances he had with two fish. As he shows, restoring the regenerative capacity of our ecology is the only real connection to quality food.

Chicken wings and cat feed

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In our wealthy nations quality food is treated as a speciality, for those occasions where we have something to celebrate – maybe…because those chicken wings on offer this week cannot be left on the supermarket shelve….

source; felinefuture.comIn the words of a radio advert of an animal welfare Ngo; “this week chicken wings, again cheaper than cat feed. Ever asked yourself how this is possible?” Cheap food comes at a price, the price we do not pay directly, we pay indirectly, by becoming resistant to antibiotics we heard last week. Its heavy use in amongst others the chicken industry poses serious human health consequences.

The Dutch supermarkets are notorious for their narrow low price/best deal strategies. In his excellent analysis “Het boodschappenbolwerk” of the insular Dutch supermarket branch Frits Kremer shows how this sector has been able defend, divert, ignore and ridicule quests for more responsiblity on their part for a sustainable food supply chain.  Contrary to many of their European colleagues, they hide behind ‘this is what the consumer wants’ instead of taking the kind of leadership which their market power obliges.