Food for the Future Programme

Food for the Future the Fife Diet’s AGM conference and ceilidh

A packed afternoon of workshops, kid’s activities, cooking, recipe book amnesty, Mrs Mash the storytelling cook, Jam Art, mill bike, and café.

With Lesley Riddoch, Catherine Brown and Haud Yer Wheesht ceilidh band.

Day conference is free but you must book your place. Ceilidh is £5.

Sat 15 Feb 2014 12:00 - 11 pm #foodfuture Cupar Corn Exchange St Catherine Street Cupar KY15 4BT United Kingdom

2013 was a year the food system was exposed as never before. We discovered that horsemeat was being sold in hundreds of products from dozens of companies across countless countries. This wasn't an aberration confined to one product line, company or country. Now we hear that it's been going on for three years before the 'scandal' became public.1 A year on and little has changed. Felicity Lawrence wrote that: “It is the biggest food fraud of the 21st century; it led to the withdrawal of tens of millions of burgers and beef products across Europe and a promise from David Cameron that everything possible would be done to get a grip on a "very shocking" crime. However, 10 months on, the details of how horsemeat came to adulterate large parts of the British and Irish food chain are still being kept from the public.” 2 It was the year in which 350,000 people received three days’ emergency food from Trussell Trust foodbanks alone between April and September 2013, triple the numbers helped in the same period last year. 3 2013 was also the year of the world's first lab burger. Produced at a cost of $325,000 by researchers at Maastricht University in the Netherlands and funded by Google co-founder Sergey Brin, it was presented in a media stunt in London. The world faces appalling issues of food and health and instead of dealing with this we are given rich men's vanity projects.

January this year saw three men charged under an obscure section of the 1824 Vagrancy Act, after being discovered stealing food from a skip in London.4 The value of the food was put at £33 consisting of tomatoes, mushrooms, cheese.

This is in Britain, 2014.

Now it's announced that Tesco is launching with Google and the NFU a massive 'Farm to Fork' programme in schools to educate our children about 'where food comes from'. So the company that sold you horse is now lecturing you on provenance.

It's in the context of these changes and captures that agriculture is debated. When you hear about the future of food and farming discussed it's almost always in terms of 'production' 'yield' and the feeding of the '9 billion'. The terms of the debate have been hijacked to be focused entirely on how to 'grow more' and 'increase production'. It is all about 1 2 3 4

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-25914459 http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/oct/22/horsemeat-scandal-guardian-investigation-public-secrecy http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/10/15/food-banks-triple_n_4100862.html http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/jan/28/three-charged-vagrancy-act-food-skip-iceland

growing in scale, more and more not better and better. Inevitably this leads us into the hands of technology, a sometimes nightmarish space where GM and meat labs are provided as ready-made solutions. The future we're told will be 'solved' by 'experts'.

Amidst all of this we gather in Cupar in late winter to explore a different path. Our gathering we've called 'Food for the Future' - is to counter the idea that food production must always be tied to technology and actually it might be better located in place, cultural knowledge and food sovereignty. We reject both the premise and result of this entire debate.

We start from the following basic principles: •

The food we eat is fundamentally important for our well being and the quality of our lives.

•

The challenges we face in food consumption are rooted in social injustice, access to land and cultural impoverishment and have virtually nothing to do with 'production'. In other words, the challenges we face won't be addressed unless we face up to those realities. Only a holistic grassroots approach will have lasting impact.

The issue is a critical one as ill-health brought about from poor diet becomes endemic. We're reminded of Wendell Berry's observation that:

•

“People are fed by the food industry which pays no attention to health, and are treated by the health industry which pays no attention to food.”

Imagine the Future Next year (Spring 2015) our core funding ends – and we're exploring ways to continue our work and ideas without funding. A scary prospect? It is, but then we existed before we received funding. So at the heart of this year's gathering is a session where anyone can raise ideas for the projects work to continue in new forms. Our ideas include: a pan-Fife member's run local food co-op, and members run community lunches. But it's up to you. In the Open Space session in the afternoon you bring your ideas forward and discuss how to make them happen. There are no limits.

We hope you can come along and join in discussing ways to shape a future for our food system based on good simple food that's in tune with what our bodies need, not what a company needs to sell us. A farming system that we have some say in and foods that are good for us: body and soul, people and planet.

PROGRAMME 12pm Soup & Welcome. Enjoy soup and a roll and browse the Fife Diet's History Timeline.

1pm Review of the Year & AGM 2.00 - 4.30 Downstairs: Children's storytelling with Mrs Mash, food co-op stall, cafe, food preparation workshops, Fife Diet advice, the Mill Bike, Jam Art, paperpods and a chance to learn more about the food coop.

Plus tastings and signings with author Catherine Brown. TASTINGS: Past foods with a future? Including Neolithic barley (bere) still grown on Orkney but once a staple grain throughout Scotland - a new take on traditional fish preservation plus a historic harvest home celebration which makes an instant pudding. BOOKS : Scottish Seafood (its history and cooking); Scottish Cookery 5th edition (2013); Broths to Bannocks (cooking in Scotland 1690-present day); Maw Broon’s Cooking with Bairns; Classic Scots Cookery; The Taste of Britain (Britain’s traditional food and drink customs) also new edition of FM McNeill’s The Scots Kitchen with biographical intro by Upstairs: We’re hosting an Open Space session to hear whatever ideas people have about continuing elements of Fife Diet work or developing new ones. What would you like to see happen and what part can you play?

Grassroots movements with real resilience need to have a life of their own and not just be grant dependent. Now, with our mass membership and with key legacy ideas streaming out of the project it’s time to go out on our own.

This session is not suited for kids.

4.00 – 4.30 Everybody clear up the downstairs 5.00 – 6.00 Dinner in the upstairs hall (see menu overleaf) 6.30 – 7.30 Speaker: Lesley Riddoch, author of 'Blossom: What will take to make Scotland flourish?'

8.00 -11.00 Ceilidh with Haud Yer Wheesht

MENU Starters

Savoy Cabbage Parcels with Winter Roots Veg Falafel

[we wanted to give you fresh ideas for using winter veg. The falafel represent the idea of being open to all sorts of international cuisines, the parcels the need for fresh and RAW food]

Main Course

Beet Bourguignon Potato and Celeriac Dauphinoise Puy Lentils [The main course is vegan and gluten free, recipe from the fabulous http://www.greenkitchenstories.com/]

Dessert

Crowdie and Heather Honey Ice Cream with Rosemary Shortbread and Fruit Coulis [Ice cream recipe from the Gardener's Cottage restaurant in Edinburgh with thanks, shortbread made by our student placement Fiona Wallace]

Transport, Travel and Access The Corn Exchange is on St Catherine Street off the main square in Cupar, within walking distance of the train station.

There is limited parking next door to the venue. The venue is wheelchair friendly with a side access and lift to the upstairs floor.

Kids We aren't running a specific creche this year – but all of the activities downstairs should be child-friendly. We've got paperpods and Mrs Mash the story-telling cook.

Special Thanks ...go to Wendy Gudmundsson and Colin Lindsay who have been on our board for years now. Wendy has been our chair since the very beginning and has supported our work brilliantly. Colin has asked difficult questions, processed endless paperwork, and checked if we were going in the right direction. Both have helped at hundreds of events, sat on interview panels and generally been amazing, all in a voluntary capacity just because they believed in the Fife Diet idea. Both are standing down now and we just wanted to give them a very special thank you for all the their time and effort.

Our Staff Team Mike Small, Director, Teresa Martinez, Development Coordinator, Meg Elphee, Finance and Administration Officer, Elly Kinross, Growing Facilitator, Mags Hall, Outreach and Membership Coordinator, Fergus Walker, Seed Truck Coordinator, Fiona Wallace, student placement, Abertay University. http://fifediet.co.uk