On Wednesday there was the first of Shandon Food Group’s Winter series of events. There were a couple of nice presentations from Rob Ford of the Bridgend Allotment Community Health Project and from Tonya Brash of the Edinburgh Garden Share Scheme. Then we wrapped up with excerpts from The Power of Community.
A full write-up will appear on the Shandon Food site
Next event is on Monday 14 December. More details to follow…
80 people turned up to yesterday’s bring and share! What a resounding success, and many thanks to everyone who particiated. There was fantastic food, sympa folks and enough activites so that the kids didn’t get bored. Maybe the formula is facepaint + colouring-in + food + other kids + a steep slope = occupied children. And good weather, of course.
Photos from the event, thanks to Callum
Next thing for the Food Group: decent forum software that’s built with PHP or Perl and MySQL. Any recommendations?
First, I submitted a response to the now-closed BBSRC (biotechnology and biological sciences research council) consultation on Food Security, and then the Herald notes that Scotland could be hit by food shortages. The latter article links to Mapping and analysis of the resilience of the food supply chain in Scotland. As an advocate of local food, a fan of the transition movement and a blogger, how could I not respond to this? But, you know, I have a day job and an allotment to maintain…
The consultation was hard work. Obviously they were interested in research that was applicable to industrial agriculture and technofixes, but the language is quite neutral. It took me some time to unpick the relatively-anodyne-but-paradoxically-frightening statements and argue against their view that bigger is, if not better, at least easier to study. Here is the BBSRC page on Food Security
First impressions of the latter report are mixed. There’s a big piece of work to look at their list of disruptive events, and see how different the vulnerabilities of local food groups and foodzoning are compared with the standard, just-in-time retail food chain. I hope, of course, that the path we’re taking will prove more resilient. The anecdotal finding that remote and island communities routinely hold greater supplies of food at home, thus mitigating this vulnerability to a limited extent is positive. However, the second most critical vulnerability (after pandemic) is land contamination, and so shorter and more localised supply chains may be completely trashed. I guess the challenge is to maintain diversity whilst also shortening supply chains.
Had a very productive morning in the playgroup garden, assisted by Stephen and Gavin. Perhaps assisted is the wrong word for it: they did the graft and I faffed around with habitat piles, rakes and compost heaps. All the nettles are now gone and there’s a decent view from the kitchen window, so I think there’s more scope for the kids to get outside during the playgroup sessions.
View from the kitchen before the cleanup
View from the kitchen, after the morning's work
Plenty much vegetation outside the window
much clearer view of the window after our efforts
A respectably-sized compost heap
For the record, it took three of us 2 hours to
Looks like The Shandon Food Initiative has been awarded a grant from the Climate Challenge Fund. Brilliant news, but now some more hard work is on the agenda before the AGM on 21 April.
The first, informal meeting of the Shandon Food Initiative took place last night, and 61 people turned out to the Phoenix Centre on a cold night.
After a preamble we split into groups of half a dozen, with each group recieving 2 questions to brainstorm on and feedback to the meeting as a whole. There was some overlap between the questions, and it was good to hear that a lot of the same ideas came up from different groups to different situations; it builds links and resilience.
One idea I particularly like is a community food event. Part harvest festival, part community building, like urban farming in Middlesbrough and the food event for 1,500 in the town square. A similar idea was floated from two other groups and after the event one member came up and said he had previously organised a secular harvest festival. Since I’ve got reservations about standing for the committee, I might work towards putting something like this on.
The Slow food Edinburgh website reminds me that I would need to get food hygiene training.
There was some contention about the constitution, with most people arguing about length of tenure of committee members, how to ensure the membership stays active, how to define a quorum etc. Only I argued against the principle of the constitution. I believe that a voluntary association makes the committee members financially liable for any money raised so a company limited by guarantee is a better vehicle for such a group. There were good counter-arguments that one needs responsible people on the committee (but having money or able to accept that risk is a narrow definition of responsibity); that company directors are still liable for criminality (but there’s a lot of behaviour that would make someone financially liable but not criminally so); and that the constitution can be changed. However I felt it necessary to show my dissent. The vote was overwhelmingly carried with 2 against.
We heard in the preamble that there is no easy definition of local food. If this is an initiative to promote local food, it needs to be plural from the outset and be able to accept contradictions. At this meeting I felt safe being in such a small minority, and I hope that minority views will continue to be heard.
