Food brings people together. ‘Companion’ literally means ‘one who breaks bread (panis) with (com) another’. Food might be the ultimate catalyst to improve places. If we can make a sustainable plan for how we eat, the rest will change, too: our communities, cities, landscapes, health, social relations, public spaces, political structures, biodiversity etc. It’s all connected..
“Our aim through the project is to empower more citizens to start small scale initiatives in urban farming, for instance in their balconies, rooftops, small gardens and public places.”
“The reset we need, therefore, is nothing less than a reimagining of what a good twenty-first century life might look like. Rather than pursue a consumerist lifestyle we know to be undeliverable, we must imagine other ways of life that are just as appealing, yet which everyone on the planet could enjoy. What we need, in short, is a vision of a good life based on a totally opposite set of parameters: zero carbon, ethical and ecological food, finite resources, a low-carbon economy and global justice. Is such a mission possible?”
“The advent and growth of technology have enabled the transformation of traditional membership groups into online communities and platforms like Nourishing Africa to flourish. According to GSMA Intelligence, a source of mobile industry insights, more than half of the population in Sub-Saharan Africa had access to 4G network by the end of 2020.” Nourishing Africa is building a vast community of young agri-food entrepreneurs and works hard to secure a stronger, more sustainable, and resilient Africa.
If we really want to understand cities, we need to look at them through food. If we mean to create sustainable cities, we need to begin with food culture and production. The potential is vast, and it can be done. It’s not Utopia; it’s Sitopia.
Carolyn Steel, British architect, scholar, and author, has written two seminal books on the relationship between food and cities in which she explains the ways we can restore lost connections. The Empty Square met Steel for a talk on Sitopia, and why we need to put food at the front of all future urban development.
“Giving food without considering the structural reasons ‘why’ food is needed is a never-ending battle. Building community resilience using food is a critical part of the puzzle to end hunger in communities and eradicate poverty. Food is a powerful tool for social change.” Food Ethics Council has written a guide to unpick and understand what a path to building community resilience in the UK could look like, focusing on the role of community food organisations.
The Bug Picture has entered into a partnership with RWACOF, Rwanda’s largest green coffee exporter (a member of the Sucafina Group) and COPED, one of Rwanda’s largest municipal waste managers. Now, in a first-of-its-kind project for Rwanda, The Bug Picture is looking to take coffee waste and mix it with the trusty black soldier fly larvae, as well as other organic waste supplied by COPED, to create protein for animal feed and biofertiliser, which can be difficult to find in Rwanda.
The Bug Picture is intent on finding solutions to environmental challenges in East Africa, with insects as the hero. By sustainably creating animal feed and bio-fertiliser, through the combination of black soldier fly larvae and organic waste, they hope to ‘close the loop’ and create a zero-waste system. The Bug Picture’s vision is to establish climate-smart, decentralised facilities to leverage the natural climate conditions of the region and create jobs in this new industry in East Africa.
Sustain is campaigning for solidarity with women agripreneurs of Gaza so they can realize their aspirations for food sovereignty - an independent and resilient food system for Palestine and all Palestinians.
“The estimated costs of dietary-related ill health and mental illness in Australia are a staggering $200 billion every year. With COVID-19 and the climate emergency, we need more innovative policy strategies for mitigating these costs,” notes Dr Nick Rose, Executive Director of Sustain. A new report published by the Australian food network lays out an action agenda to create more edible towns and cities.
All developers and urban decisionmakers (and everybody else), please listen to chef, writer, and local entrepreneur, Trine Hahnemann, as she elaborates on the importance of understanding cities through food and reconnecting health, culture, and community. Reconnecting city and countryside; production and consumption; real estate value and biodiversity; democracy and commerce.
Meet Eric Thirion who runs a Belgian delicatessen in Copenhagen. Like so many local shops all over the world, it fills out an essential role as a community anchor.
Imagine if we started to use food, not as a weapon, but as a design tool. A design tool with ultimate beauty as the goal.
This note is about a restaurant built on the love and memories of a city. It reminds us of the powerful potential of great third spaces. Welcome to Dishoom.
In 2013, in the Belgian city of Liège, that question triggered a series of actions concerning local food production and consumption. A project called Ceinture Aliment-Terre Liègeoise (CATL) was launched by a coalition of civil, economic, and cultural stakeholders in the province.
”The feeding of cities has been arguably the greatest force shaping civilization, and it still is. In order to understand cities properly, we need to look at them through food.”
The possibility of going out to eat is at the core of every living city. The concept of restaurants goes back to 1767 where an eatery in Paris was named after its consommé, a restorative meat bouillon, known as a restaurant.
