SUSTAINABLE FOOD AND ETHICAL BUSINESS Cost-of-living special | Mental health and farming | Food waste in the fields | Art and culture 10ISSUE | 2022AUTUMN Vandana Shiva Onbeing'Monsanto'sworstnightmare'andalifetimeoffghtingforfarmers.FarmersOrganicRiverfordbyPublished
We join the dots, so you don't have to. Celebrating regenerative women on the land. 8th March 2022 Becky Blench 4 comments Diversity Nature Regenerative farming FEATURES Today marks International Women’s Day, where countries all over the world unite in the celebration of women’s achievements, raise awareness and rally for gender equality.The theme this year is #BreakTheBias. And looking at bias in agriculture is of huge importance, as advancing gender equality in the time of the climate crisis is crucial for a more sustainableThefuture.Regenerative Women on the Land group formed in 2021, following on from sessions at the Oxford Real Farming Conference, with the aim of creating a restorative place to connect and to inspire new entrants to farming. At this year’s conference, discussions celebrated the growing number of female farmers and looked at how we can remove obstacles to welcome more in. Globally, almost one third of employed women work in agriculture, including forestry and fishing. It is the most important employment sector for women in lower income countries, but less than 13 per cent of agricultural landholders are women. Women in the LOG IN wickedleeks.comNew website now live Food Politics Farming Climate
Veteran eco activist and VandanaacademicShiva reflects on a career fighting agribusiness and how people need to get behind farmers more than ever.
And so, we have looked into whether people still make ethical food choices when prices go up (pages 16-17); how bakeries are balancing affordability with fair pay and sustainable grains (pages 18-19); and where housing fits into all this (pages 20-21). And as eco
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Author Sarah Langford explains why regenerative farming could also solve a mental health crisis. P8-9.
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anxiety becomes a default setting, we hear of powerful ways to counter it (pages 30-31). Meanwhile, as farmers struggle with a mental health crisis, the new regenerative farming movement is starting to offer some human, as well as ecological, answers. There is also hope written into our new regular column by Poppy Okotcha, Practically Radical, combining gardening with positive change (page 33). And there's beauty to be found in thrifty cooking thanks to Tamar Adler (pages 6-7), and our second anti-consumerism shopping guide (page 32).
recycled FSC certified paper, meaning it is harvested from sustainablePleaseforestry.passon or recycle this magazine once you’ve finished with it.
t is no coincidence that this issue combines mental health with the costof-living, climate, and farming, under one umbrella of ‘cost’. The anxiety around climate, the mental health crisis in farming after decades of intensive systems, and rising food poverty, are all human symptoms of the big systemic problems of our era that need to be addressed together.
Incidentally, this is something our cover star, Vandana Shiva, has always known in her work fighting on behalf of both farmers and planet. It’s an honour to hear her reflections on a lifetime’s work, and her thoughts on where we are today.
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Food writer and Vogue columnist Tamar Adler finds the beauty in cooking with economy. P6-7.
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Let's be clear, farming is not going to be able to irrigate its way out of climate change. It can only be landscape adaptation.
“The reason I think it’s significant is because it’s reframing the discourse,” Hawkes explained. “We talk about sustainable or healthy food systems, but the starting point should be equitable food systems. Our future generations aren’t going to have the planet we have. It’s also more political to have a starting point of at in isolation.”
@blewinbell | 12 Aug
We’ve
That was the view of a new paper produced by a collective of 12 female academics, who shared different perspectives on inequalities ranging from unfair wages for people working in the food supply chain and low returns to farmers, to gender inequality and unequal land ownership.
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Social safety nets and healthcare will help people experiencing food insecurity, the paper said. But it said the root cause is “a deeply inequitable food system” that needs to be addressed to reduce vulnerability to conflict, climate, and economic turbulence. The group made four key recommendations, including: more women and young people to be involved in decision making; allowing communities to co-create solutions to their own food needs; and reducing the power of big corporates.
Published in The Lancet, the paper was led by director of the Centre for Food Policy at London’s City University, Corinna Hawkes, who told Wicked Leeks the female authorship was a deliberate choice and a “conscious effort” to raise women’s voices.
“With food prices at record levels globally, rapidly rising inflation, and economic instability, many people have no choice but to skip meals, reduce the amount they eat, and buy cheaper, and ultraprocessed foods.”
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1 Grow your own Christmas veg 2 Top five low energy recipes 3 Crops lost due to lack of pickers 4 Drought shows climate impact on UK crops
By Nina Pullman
Addressing inequalities in gender, age, race, and power would help transform the food system and combat soaring food and cost-ofliving prices.
“The method was listening to the voices of women from different backgrounds and parts of the world. I selected them because they had areas of expertise in relation to cost-of-living, some in agriculture, some in nutrition, or humanitarian aid,” she said.
The big question which has been unanswered for years is how do you get healthy organic food to people who can’t afford it? A recent poll said the majority of people who can’t afford organic would love to eat healthy food. rely on governments; would say let market forces dictate and look where that has got
10 years ago the only UK organic dry beans and peas could find were grown for animal feed. All the organic beans and peas on our plates were imported. changed that. Reader Jenny Murphy's photo for our virtual harvest festival.
A fairer food system 'would solve price crisis'
Community
The paper stated that: “In 2022, the world is experiencing the greatest cost-of-living crisis in a generation.
we
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“Women have a greater sense of what’s happening and how it feels in these systems.foodMany are growing food in the fields, cooking it in homes or working in factories; women have a greater connection to food that needs to be brought to the fore.”
us!
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ood and farming will gain new attention in global climate action talks with a new coalition and special focus at COP27.
Devon push for 'power allotments'
£22 million
Healthy foods are nearly three times as expensive per calorie as less healthy foods, according to the annual Broken Plate report by the Food Foundation. The report also found that the poorest fifth of UK households would need to spend 47 per cent of their disposable income on food to meet the cost of the healthygovernment-recommendeddiet.Thiscomparestojust
47 per cent
11 per cent for the richest fifth.
A campaign wants to help citizens take back control of energy prices and address the climate crisis by setting up community-owned energy projects.
“We will support communities
to develop their projects, or we [Devon Energy] can develop them,” added Parker. The project will also include advice for citizens to enhance biodiversity on the sites.
Fruit and veg worth £22 million was left in the fields due to a lack of pickers in the first half of 2022, compounding a severe summer drought that killed off healthy crops and prevented new plantings. The survey, of 200 fruit and veg growers across England and Wales, found 40 per cent of farmers had faced crop losses due to a lack of labour.
Climate issues in food and farming have come to the fore this year, with Dutch farmers protesting against compulsory reforms to cut nitrogen fertiliser as a key greenhouse gas emitter, and a severe Europe-wide drought crippling harvests. Meanwhile, new Prime Minister Liz Truss has appointed Jacob Rees-Mogg as minister for energy, with responsibility for climate, and Ranil Jayawardena to Defra, both of whom have voted against policies to tackle climate change.
COP27 to shine spotlight on food and farming climate impact
Below: Generating local energy.
BiodiversityWychwoodCredit
Host country Egypt had already stated it wanted food and farming, which was not prioritised at COP26 in Glasgow, to have more of a presence when it hosts the talks in November. A new Food Systems Pavilion will be co-hosted by groups including the Good Food Institute and food sustainability think tanks Food Tank and Clim-Eat, among others. “We must ensure that food dominates the COP27 agenda. It has been the missing
piece in climate negotiations for far too long," said Agnes Kalibata, of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa.
ISSUE 10 | WICKED LEEKS 5 NEWS
“If every parish in Devon hosted a five-acre solar farm, we could generate enough power for approximately a fifth of all the homes in the county,” said founder of Devon Energy, Als Parker. The project’s new website helps identify plots of land in Devon that are suitable for solar or wind energy and are close enough to connect to the grid. And they also want Devon locals to submit potential sites. “We’re taking community energy to the next level, by getting the whole community involved in the site finding process,” said Power Allotments project manager, George Middlemiss.
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Meat alternatives like plant-based sausages could have a fifth to less than a tenth of the environmental impact of meat-based equivalents, according to a study from Oxford University. Researchers collected daily data from 12 online supermarkets, and reviewed 570 studies on the environmental impact of food production. They combined emissions, land use and water stress into a single estimated environmental impact score per 100g of product. Looking at 57,000 products, they found that those made of fruit, veg, sugar, and flour, such as soups, salads and cereals, have low impact scores, and those made of meat, fish and cheese are at the high end of the scale.
Inspired by traditional food allotments, a collaboration between community energy company Devon Energy and net zero expert Regen wants every parish in Devon to start their own renewable energy project. These so-called ‘power allotments’ will be owned by communities, generating an income and clean renewable energy for local people.
As energy prices surge due to the war in Ukraine, and as fossil fuel companies profit from the crisis, this project could help to take back control of the energy supply and retain the economic benefits locally, said Parker, as well as fighting climate change by generating clean sources of energy.
I like to roast vegetables. I can fill my oven once and create a week’s worth of healthy, delicious ingredients. Roasted vegetables are also particularly good when they have had a few days to settle into themselves. I recommend buying two heads of cauliflower or broccoli, or one of each. Both are celestial cooked in a hot oven. They’re also two-in-
to the next
By the time I’ve finished, I’ve drawn a map of the week’s meals and created the beginnings of a succession of them. Then each day I pick up where I left off.
On Tuesday, I choose to eat the salad as is, or turn what is left into a frittata, or I decide to eat soup and spend my time making little garlic-rubbed toasts to accompany it. On Wednesday, I add freshly chopped mint and vinegared onions to roasted beets, or perhaps press garlicky cooked kale into sandwiches, or toss the kale with a béchamel sauce and spread it in a buttered dish to make a warm, bubbling gratin.
O
TAMAR ADLER Author and contributing editor to Vogue
Above: Prep veg with a full week's meal plan in mind.
ur desire to eat fresh vegetables has left us with an idea that vegetables are only good if they’re cooked just before being eaten. But many of the best vegetable dishes are created over time. This is true of a lot of dishes, but particularly of ones made from vegetables; those unwieldy things that take more doing than anything else in the kitchen does before they’re even close to done.
Toppling from one meal
Headshot credit Grace Brannigan
warm vinegar, and have a roasted vegetable salad. Or I warm some vegetables up with a sprig of thyme, a little broth, and a splash of cream, and have soup.
6 WICKED LEEKS | ISSUE 10
Here is what I do, and I think it works well: each week I buy whole bunches of the leafiest, stemmiest vegetables I can find. Then I scrub off their dirt, trim off their leaves, cut off their stems, peel what needs peeling, and cook them all at once.
On Monday night, I decide to neatly make a vinaigrette, plump a few raisins in
This ensures my vegetables don’t go bad. It also means that I eat vegetables at most meals. Turned into cooked ingredients, mine are as convenient as canned beans.
likeable ingredients in your kitchen.
I buy one or two whole bunches of beets. Beets love to be roasted, are better cold than hot, and wait, without losing
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their pluck, to be turned into different dishes all week long.
If it is autumn or winter, buy one butternut squash, or any combination of carrots, parsnips, celeriac, and turnips. Simply roasted, these are one of the great pleasures in life. I grew up eating them hot at dinner, turned into salads at lunch, and cold as an after school snack. There’s nothing wrong with a snack of granola, but there is something unarguably right with one of roasted vegetables.
Here, we sauté leaves of Swiss chard and throw their good stems away. More often we buy greens pre-cut in bags, relinquishing their stems to the companies that hack greens up, only to then buy them back in frozen tamales and canned minestrone soup. A more efficient approach is to buy and use both ingredients, since they come conveniently attached to each other.
I can fill my oven once and create a week's worth of healthy, delicious ingredients.
ISSUE 10 | WICKED LEEKS 7 OPINION
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I start cooking as soon as possible after shopping, when the memory of the market’s sun and cheerful tents are still in mind. If you can’t get to it immediately, though, put everything but the greens in a big bowl on your kitchen table instead of refrigerating it. In plain sight, your vegetables will chide you to cook them, and it feels pleasantly frivolous to spend a few moments fussing cauliflower, beets, and squash into a tableau.
And always a few bunches of dark, leafy greens. This will seem very pious. Once greens are cooked as they should be, though – hot and lustily, with garlic, in a good amount of olive oil – they lose their moral urgency and become one of the most
An everlasting meal: Cooking with economy and grace by Tamar Adler (£14.99, Swift Press) is out in the UK on 20 October.
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Look for beets with their dark green leaves attached, then salvage them from their delicious roots and sauté them with garlic and olive oil, along with the rest of the greens you buy.
Greens must be bought whole. The balance of the universe dictates that one man’s head is another man’s tail. In Provence, warm baked Swiss chard tarts, studded with raisins, are made only with stems. There, Swiss chard leaves are cast-offs, sometimes used for bean and vegetable soups, more often fed to the chickens.
one vegetables: cauliflower’s pale leaves and solemn core, and the leaves and stem of broccoli, can be eaten.
Regenerative farming restores people , not just land
Author and former barrister
This was the cost borne by the dairy farmer who told me what it felt like to shoot a Holstein bull calf, which would otherwise have sold at market for less than the cost to get it there. The intensive pig farmers broken by a decade worth of disease, animal death and debt. The council farmer who had found cow carcasses rotting under
I
JayTombyIllustration
Farmers spend much of the year surrounded by the natural world. But this power of nature to heal is at odds with the chilling statistic that approximately one farmer a week dies by suicide, double the national average. A 2022 study by the Farm Safety Foundation found that 92 per cent
SARAH LANGFORD
fraction of the price at which their food was sold, which reflected neither the ecological cost, nor the human cost, of making it.
Many of the farmers I met had decided they could not go on as they were. This was not just because soaring input prices, chemical resistance and the removal of public subsidies following Brexit meant high yields no longer led to high profits. It was also because they had witnessed what this way of farming could do to a family, a community and a farmer’s mental health.
8 WICKED LEEKS | ISSUE 10 OPINION
Above: Farmers are facing a mental health crisis. Headshot credit Richard Allenby-Pratt
n 1971, a Pennsylvania hospital began a radical trial. Patients undertaking the same routine operation were randomly allocated two different types of rooms in which to recover. One had views of deciduous trees; the other a brick wall. Ten years later the researchers concluded something extraordinary. The patients who looked out onto trees recovered faster, needed fewer painkillers and suffered fewer complications. Nature, the study concluded, heals, even if you are looking at it through a window.
of UK farmers under 40 cited poor mental health as the biggest problem they faced. It seems increasingly clear that the price of modern industrial farming has not just been ecological. A human cost has been paid too.
It was this human cost I began to hear about when I moved out of London with my young family to Suffolk and took on the running of my husband’s small family farm. I found farming in a very different place than it had been when my grandfather was tasked with feeding a nation made hungry by war. Now, farmers faced accusations of ecological mismanagement from an overwhelming urban population, while UK food had become the third cheapest in the world, with households spending less than a tenth of their annual income upon it. A huge proportion of all food produced was either lost or wasted, and farmers received a
We do feel the pressure and we struggle mentally with the criticism. It can be a very lonely existence with nowhere to turn and no one to talk to, because you’re working by yourself. The honest truth is you’ve got all the equipment; practically speaking, you could take your own life.
The human side of farmers can be forgotten
arming isn’t a job, it’s a way of life. We’re parents, we’re partners, and we’ve all got emotions. I think that human side is forgotten when environmentalists and journalists say that farmers are to blame for climate change.
Just remember that many of us have no idea what our product will be worth when it’s sold, because the supermarkets decide. Add to this the weather constraints; imagine what it would be like to have your success determined by the whims of the elements.
I had never really spoken about my feelings before I wrote my book, The Hill Farmer, in 2014. I just kept them inside. But when I did, it was a real release and made me feel so much lighter. Talking about and sharing our problems are very important parts of what we’re doing.
These farmers were part of a new generation looking for change through a transition to regenerative farming. As I heard their stories and saw their farms, I began to understand something unexpected. This way of farming did not just mean regenerating the soil, hedgerows and trees, or the number and variety of creatures that lived above and below the ground. It did not just mean ecological resilience through growing a diversity of crops, keeping living roots in the ground, and minimising disturbance of the soil. It did not just offer them financial resilience through minimising inputs. This way of farming also regenerated the farmers’ relationship with the land, the food they produced upon it and the community around them too. It did not just restore the farm. It restored the farmer.
Rooted: Stories of Life, Land and a Farming Revolution by Sarah Langford (£16.99, Penguin) is out now.
I get frustrated and even defensive because they make us look like the big bad wolf. I feel like they simply don’t understand the difficult job we’ve got on our hands. We have to wear a lot of hats: feeding the nation in an affordable and environmentally friendly way, all while trying to make a living for ourselves.
Welsh hill farmer and author
If you’re struggling with mental health, it can be a tough job to be in. Luckily, there are many great charities specifically working to help farmers.
People may tell us what to do, but I doubt they’ve ever tried to put themselves in our shoes. It’s a hell of a job to do.
We need to show the human side of farming. We should let people into our world and allow them to see that farmers are part of the solution, not the problem.
GARETH WYN JONES
F
Sometimes, I ask myself: is this the right lifestyle for me? That’s why it’s important to fight our cause and talk about our mental health. As a rule, we farmers are not well known for being open, but we shouldn’t be scared of showing our emotions when we’re upset.
hedgerows because the previous tenant could not afford the cost of the knackerman. The arable farmer whose older brother had taken his own life because of the trap the farm now represented.
The price of industrial farming has not just been ecological.
We, as consumers, increasingly understand that our choices affect the land our food is grown on. But they affect the people who make it, too. Regenerative farming might be able to do more than provide nutritionally dense food that benefits, rather than depletes, the land. I have come to believe it might also be able to heal an agricultural mental health crisis, too.
I firmly believe that the supermarkets have kept us away from the customer so they can keep the power to themselves. The more they can keep the disconnect, the better it is for business. That’s why we need different ways of communicating with the people who eat our food, whether it’s via social media or getting them out onto the farm, to develop some much-needed empathy.
Above: Producing food can be a lonely job.
While social media can be divisive, and we’ve certainly seen that with George Monbiot’s latest book, it’s been a game changer for farmers. It’s our new way of sharing what we do every day, and people can get involved from afar and learn about the realities of farming life.
ISSUE 10 | WICKED LEEKS 9
FARMERS & FREEDOM
Legendary eco activist, academic and civil rights campaigner Vandana Shiva on the quiet power of the chemical companies, equality and the future of food.
Pictured: Vandana Shiva at her home in Delhi, August 2022.
Words by Nina Pullman Photography by Rebecca Conway For
Right: Shiva has fought patentingagainstofseeds.
Above: At a protest in South Africa in 2002.
andana Shiva has achieved something of a legendary status when it comes to fighting for food and farming rights.
farmer protests in the Netherlands against compulsory reduction of nitrogen emissions.
Her work began in the 80s and continues to this day, exposing how global corporations exploit farmers and food systems via various mechanisms, from pesticides to seed patents and genetic modification of plants.
“We’re living in two worlds,” she says. “Industrial agriculture, billionaires, big
But while there’s a noticeable shift in public consciousness, behind the scenes Shiva says it’s a different story.
“You don’t criminalise the victims. As a society, you sit back and say we’ve done it wrong. The subsidies were in the wrong place, half of tax money shouldn’t have gone to subsidies for industrial factory farming,” she says.
More recently, she has lasered in on fertiliser as another power tool sold by agribusiness to the detriment of both land and farmers, reframing it to explain the recent
12 WICKED LEEKS | ISSUE 10 FEATURES / THE BIG INTERVIEW
The 69-year-old Indian-born scientist turned environmental activist and author has three degrees and over 20 books to her name. But she could just as well be described as a galvaniser of movements and, as some have indeed called her, the ‘Gandhi of grain’ and heir to his legacy in fighting for civil rights in food.
Where once this kind of campaigning might have been thought of as fringe, nowadays, the climate and nature crises are making regular headlines, and there is a whole new movement of regenerative farmers moving away from chemicals, and focused on biodiversity and soil health.
ISSUE 10 | WICKED LEEKS 13 THE BIG INTERVIEW / FEATURES
“You are living through changes in GMO regulations. The Prime Minister’s [Boris Johnson's] first speech mentioned ‘freedom for GM’. Not freedom for the farmers, or for the land, or for the animals, or children – it was freedom for corporations.
science, big food and big economy. And then real people. Real people see the connections, and more and more people think food is important.
Shiva, a lifelong and passionate champion of small-scale farmers, has little time for such views.
“And what globalisation did from '91 onwards, it started the deregulation phase. And that deregulation today is reaching its absolute dead end. After this, there will be nothing to protect. So, it’s a challenge. We have to reinvent our democratic rights.”
“Things today, politically, economically, ecologically, are much worse than when I started,” she says. “The world is rising. Except that governments have given up their responsibilities and are really an extension of the corporate rule. They are implementers of the corporate agenda. And you have corporations with total freedom. They have platforms, like the World Economic Forum, and that’s why people need to organise in new ways.
“You cannot be against industrial farming if you are for lab food. The feedstocks will come from hyper-industrial farming. I’ve got a report here quoting Bayer who are saying plant-based foods are a bigger opportunity for us,” she says. “So it is not the case that the land will be reclaimed. The land will see even bigger
“Most papers in science and nature on these issues are industrial papers. So all
Led by an urgency to reduce our impact on the planet, the mantra to eat less meat and dairy has taken off in the West in recent years, with extreme proponents like George Monbiot going as far as to advocate an end to all livestock farming.
“I have the privilege of being from the South. And therefore every time a fake narrative is created that universalises a false message, I can see it. Just because you have a limited, myopic experience of an industrialised agriculture, it is flawed to extrapolate it to all cultures. It is flawed to imagine that the whole world is industrial, it is flawed to be blind to the amazing agriculture system of the
From experience, she also worries about the presence of ‘paid’ science influencing policy.
“Compared to when I started, we had no global corporations directly in India. But today in every part of the world they are the dominant force. It is a polarised world. A world of conscious people who would care for the Earth, care for the food they eat, and another world that would trash every bit of it as fast as they can.”
“The big change is that when we would do this work 10-15 years ago, or even 30 years ago, we would be able to write policy to make corrections. Because we had viable, democratic processes and we had decisions that were made by national parliaments.
Shiva’s position as a scientist from the global south also provides a perspective of clarity, especially when applied to the debate around the role of animals in farming.
SheSouth."seesother problems with Monbiot’s proposal to return farmland to nature in a mass rewilding, including the production of feedstocks for lab-grown food, as well as what she sees as Western colonial “arrogance” to impose solutions to problems it has largely created.
The ability to see the threat to people and planet from global business still feels like one of the most radical aspects of Shiva’s work. Where for most of us, big business is a largely invisible force driving our food supply chains, Shiva has always seen the links between food, farming, power and money. Today she feels it more than ever:
“Societiescolonisation.havespentcenturies to evolve knowledge of food and farming. I have spent nearly four decades to understand, with humility. I see it as a new colonialism, only this time in a green cloak.”
corporateextensionandresponsibilitiesuphaveGovernmentsgiventheirarereallyanoftherule.
LutherSamirCredit
“Of course, they threatened me. And they still threaten me,” she says, of one of the most consistent threads in her career and a fierce determination to bring the power of the pesticide giants into the light.
In the autobiographical feature film The Seeds of Vandana Shiva, Shiva is described as “Monsanto’s worst nightmare” after suing the company for attempting to patent seeds in India, and consistently using her platform to bring its intentions and exploitation of farmers into the public domain.
Recently, a long-running study found that nature-friendly farming does not reduce food production. Others have long pointed out the ecosystem benefits, such as repairing biodiversity and soil health, which organic farming provides. Meanwhile, the broader regenerative farming movement is helping to prove that plant diversity can replace chemical fertiliser at no risk to farmer livelihoods.
14 WICKED LEEKS | ISSUE 10 FEATURES / THE BIG INTERVIEW
One such example was the disappearance of her physics degree from her Wikipedia page – restored when her son posted the evidence, before immediately disappearing again.
“They have retreated from wanting to debate to basically now stabbing you in the
Another time, a Monsanto lobbyist turned up after a press conference to present her with a handful of manure, calling it ‘the Bullshit Award for starving the world with organic’. “So I said ‘thank you, it will still make good compost. I can call it cow dung, you can call it bullshit – it’s still good compost, the Earth will thank us.' And we had a compost ceremony," she smiles.
“I have witnessed the top scientists marginalised and pushed aside,” she continues, of scientists who saw early links between the herbicide glyphosate and cancer. They are now being vindicated, as court case bills against Bayer-Monsanto in the US add up, in compensation for diseases caused by the chemical.
The question over whether organic farming can feed the world is a common attack, which Shiva says has no basis but is easily propagated by “a paid article in Nature”.
Less optimistic is the fact that, where fossil fuel giants like BP or Shell are well-known and regularly targeted by eco-activists, the agrichemical companies and big animal feed companies with huge control and footprints in the food sector have largely been allowed to stay in the shadows.
back with whatever means they can," she says. "They were more confident earlier; they could come out in the open and debate ideas and science. But I think they know they’ve lost that, and they can only do character assassination.”
“The father figures of the environmental movement have not seen that industrial agriculture is fossil fuel agriculture,” says Shiva. “They’re willing to fight fossil fuels in your car, but they’re not willing to fight fossil fuels in your food. I think there is a failing there. A large part of the environmental movement has not extended the challenge to the oil industry in their incarnation as agribusiness. Because what is agribusiness? Industrial agriculture began with pesticides and fertilisers – where did they come from? Fossil fuels.
Born in rural India to a forester father and a mother who returned from a life of academia to work on a farm, she has perhaps been crossing these worlds since she was born. The interdisciplinary strength in her background is probably also one of the reasons she has been so hard to silence. And there have certainly been attempts to do so.
“It's not that the knowledge is not available; at least five of my books have made that connection. I think part of it is we have let them off the hook,” she continues, sitting in front of a bust of her childhood physics inspiration Albert Einstein, which she sculpted while working with an artist during a brief ‘down’ period between degrees.
“I called them the ‘Poison Cartel’; the drivers of industrial agriculture. I have,
Industrial agriculture began with pesticides and fertilisers - where did they come from? Fossil fuels.
you’re doing is replicating corporate lies. Just like there’s paid news. I have lived through it – there is paid science.
Speaking from her home in Delhi, Shiva shifts easily between the language of an experienced orator, an academic focus on detail, and the earth-centric connections between planet and people.
Far left: Campaigner, academic and eco activist. Left: She has a belief in the right to good food for all.
throughout autumn and winter for workshops and events to inspire your
Change can also come from connecting the city with the countryside, and using a local first (rather than local only) approach to food chains. “Every city has a food shed around it," says Shiva, adding that she wants to reach outside the usual green sphere.
Christmas baking
“It’s time for us to put our hands out to the conventional farmers and say together we will protect the food, and together we will make the transition that will protect the Earth. People are not for agribusiness.”
They have retreated from wanting to debate to basically now stabbing you in the back.
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Despite everything, Shiva remains hopeful and uses her outrage as fuel. “I’ve always looked for how bad things are and what I can do, and how can I work with others to spread hope. Not hope as an empty promise but as real action. I made a clear choice that I would act for the Earth, for justice, for things bigger than myself. I’ve lived through very difficult times, but I’ve never allowed the difficulty to be a reason for despair.”
Many of Shiva’s stories still resonate today, as issues around the right to food and who makes money from it are still very much alive. But where once she was fighting for the future of climate and nature, now those crises are happening in real time. And after years of being positioned as a radical eco-warrior trying to ‘starve the world’ and go back to the dark ages, ironically, Shiva’s long-held position in defence of farmers, citizens, and planetary care could not be more modern.
she doesn’t refute the link: “I’ve definitely learnt the issues of economic freedom from Gandhi,” she says. “The idea of saving seed as a response to GMO or patenting came from thinking: what would Gandhi do?"
Wreath making
As for Gandhi and inheriting his legacy,
Advance booking theriverfordfiessentialeldkitchen.co.uk 01803 227391 Field Kitchen
Cookery demos
For others with less time or dedication, she also believes that “in every place, there are many ways to make change”. “In some places it will be challenging laws, in some places it will be working with parliamentarians. There will be times when there’ll be a need for protest," she explains.
through personal experience, as well as through my engagement of movements, seen that they are still what they were. That clique is still deciding what will happen with our food. The future is digital agriculture, farming without farms, driver-less tractors.”
I’m lucky that it’s not affected me too much. I’m homeevencomfortable,prettybutI’venoticedthatI’meatingatmorethanIwouldnormally.
Alec
Fruit and veg is more expensive. I used to buy meat three times a week, now I only buy it once. I always try to buy organic but it’s way more expensive. It tastes better, but I’m buying less. I come from Spain and the vegetables don’t taste as good here; if you buy organic it’s better. I’m eating out way less now. If groceries are more expensive, you don’t have as much money left to go out.
I have a family allotment and we’ve definitely noticed a lot more people on the allotment are sharing produce so that nothing gets wasted. I think that’s because people feel the value of food.
Word on the STREET
Amy
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Laia
When costs go up, sustainable shopping can be the first to go. Will the cost-of-living mean people move away from ethical food choices? Jack Thompson hits the streets of London to find out.
Everything has doubled for me; rent, food, water and electricity. It’s worrying me that's it’s going to go higher in autumn. We’re definitely being more careful. We’re not five bottles of champagnetype people - it’s just fruit, veg, rice, just generally things you need to survive. We’re changing to value brands more often and my mum is even saying we need to stop buying organic because it’s just really stressful. Organic is something my mum has lived by for many, many years, and I’ve picked that up too. After the last two years, I can’t believe we’re in this situation and it’s not because we decided to spend our money on a trip to Bora Bora.
Winnie
N
Haley
It’s affected my meal deals. I used to go to Morrisons, sometimes Sainsbury’s, but both of them have pushed them up to £3.50. Now it’s Tesco every time, but you have to have a Clubcard.
Sabrina
“At a time when making sustainable choices is more important than ever, the rising cost-of-living is putting pressure on consumers’ finances,” says ESG lead for Deloitte, Emily Cromwell. “While it’s positive to see a marked improvement in consumers buying only what they need, it’s important to consider that this could also be a result of cutting back more generally. For many consumers, opting for sustainable alternatives is just too expensive.”
But business development manager at the Soil Association, Lee Holdstock, says the organic market is only seeing very small reductions, at half the rate of declines in non-organic food.
Whether it’s cutting down on higher welfare meat or moving away from organic, the potential implications for ‘ethical’ and sustainable eating are manifold.
It echoes findings in a recent survey of 2,000 people by auditors Deloitte, which found that cost was the biggest barrier to a sustainable lifestyle for over half of respondents. It also found that 52 per cent of those asked had repaired more items or bought second hand in the last 12 months.
Rob
Ed
I actually just started getting a produce box delivered to me every two weeks. It hinders me going out to the store and buying stuff every single day when I don’t need it, because I focus on what I have in the fridge. I’m more considered when I go out now because drinks are so expensive.
During the week, I only try to have one or two meals that have expensive ingredients in them, like meat. The rest of the meals are pretty vegetable-based. But even then, there are some vegetables that are quite expensive.
o matter where you look, prices are up. Food is no exception, with grocery inflation reaching 9.8 per cent in June according to Trading Economics; the highest since the 2008 food price crisis. But unlike energy, bills, and rent, food is the one flexible part of the household budget, leaving it open to big changes.
In a snapshot survey conducted by Wicked Leeks in July 2022, a deep sense of unfairness, frustration, and anxiety were just some of the sentiments expressed by Londoners when asked how the cost-ofliving crisis had affected them.
Meanwhile, another survey of over 2,000
“The organic sector has got this small but dedicated core, which accounts for more than 50 per cent of the spend,” says Holdstock. “On the one hand we have people making difficult decisions, on the other we have more consumers motivated to make sustainability a priority.”
The honest answer is not really. We’re fortunate, really. We prioritise food and we like to eat decent food. At most, I’d say it’s pushed us to eat at home more.
people by research firm Public First found that 28 per cent of those taking measures to cut costs are reducing their meat intake.
Several Londoners also told Wicked Leeks that they are stopping, or considering stopping, buying organic food, or buying meat less often.
Survey conducted in several areas of central London in July 2022.
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hy does bread matter? Partly because almost all of us eat it; 99.8 per cent of households buy bread and 11 million loaves are sold each day, according to trade body UK Flour Millers. It matters because we eat over half our body weight in the stuff every year.
“It’s like a soft crust batch loaf made with half wholemeal, half white flour, and we add potato,” says Loaf co-operative member Nancy“We’veLangfeldt.always maintained that we would keep that at one pound, even though it ought to go up in the current environment,” says Langfeldt, adding that the price
In contrast, a loaf of so-called ‘real bread’, made by bakers paid a fair wage rather than machines, using traceable, nutritious grains from sustainable farms, can cost the best part of five pounds.
Bakers, food campaigners and bread fans unite in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis to make good bread more accessible. Jack Thompson reports.
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But it’s cheap. Today you can buy a loaf for as little as 36 pence in Tesco.
DAILY BREAD Give us our
Is it possible to bridge this void in cost in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis? Bakers, ‘breadheads’ (as bread fans call themselves), and food campaigners from all over the country united in crisis talks at the pioneering E5 Bakehouse in east London recently to address the issue.
Passionate bakers often don’t just bake; they are thinking deeply about this staple food. Interestingly, bakeries can often be a bastion of progressive politics, and within them they project a vision of society they’d like to see taken up more widely. That’s why it matters to them that their product is available to and enjoyed by all.
“Some of us have some discretion in choosing real bread,” said Young. “But many people don’t.”
It also matters because as it stands, the vast majority of bread is a nutritional, ecological and social disaster. Our white sliced loaf, which accounts for three quarters of the UK consumption, is devoid of nutrition, based on cheap labour and wheat grown using toxic pesticides and fossil fuel-derived fertiliser.
“Who’s going to pay for the gap between what it costs to make and what people can afford?” asked co-ordinator of the Real Bread Campaign, Chris Young, reminding us of the tight margins many bakeries battle.
One bakery in Birmingham has been leading the way since 2012. Loaf, a bakery run as a workers’ co-operative, sells the ‘Stirchley loaf’ (the neighbourhood they are based in) for one pound.
W
As Robinson suggests, it’s powerful to see what a real bakery can do beyond baking: from Loaf’s in-house subsidies keeping the price down, to Small Food Bakery championing creative ways to improve access to better bread.
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Young certainly thinks so: “They could
Above top: Loaf bakery and cookery school based in Stirchley, Birmingham. Above bottom: The Stirchley loaf costs £1 and is made with potato.
While price is undoubtedly a big factor, it’s not the only thing putting people off buying bread from bakeries.
This is why, explained Young, Small Food Bakery in Nottingham, run by baker Kimberly Bell, is selling sliced sourdough loaves through a local corner shop. “This is where people actually go,” he explained.
But the reality is most people still buy their food in the supermarkets. Is this the answer to the question of access?
“We need to avoid making it [sourdough] seem like a boutique, fancy product,” adds Langfeldt.
A subsidy system is a popular model in the baking world; while pastries and coffees can seem expensive, this is often how the price of a basic loaf of bread is kept down.
“Sourdough is not a product, it’s a process,” she continues. “It’s a really normal way of making bread, and it would have been in every household, not especially long ago.”
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But the camp is split. “Whether or not real bread is on the supermarket shelves, they’ll still keep the profits,” says director of the documentary Real Bread Bakers, Zev
But how do we get people to care about the power of bread and bakeries? Langfeldt has strong views on the matter: “I think everyone cares about their food and what it does to them.”
“Language can have a big impact,” says Lizzie Parle, from Ten Belles bakery in Paris. “Sourdough can be very alienating. It’s not easy to explain and you have to get quite
Left: Bread made by people paid a fair wage and with nutritious grain costs more.
“A large proportion will be buying the Stirchley loaf, particularly those on a lower income who don’t want to miss out on good bread,” says Langfeldt. “It fills you up. It’s more nourishing.”
“It’sscience‐-y.”alsoabout accessibility,” said Young, back at the E5 event, on sourdough’s premium image. “Some people think ‘this is not my food’, ‘these are not my people’.”
make it accessible to millions of people.”
“Although the bakery has a significant turnover, it’s not a high profit business,” says Langfeldt. “There’s a limit to how much you can charge for bread because of the environment you’re selling it in.
of flour has gone up by half, butter has almost doubled, and electricity costs have increased by almost 150 per cent.
The secret is that the £1 loaf, and the rest of the bakery, is subsidised by an attached cookery school. Home baking, as Langfeldt points out, being “the most accessible option" of all.
Who's going to pay for the gap between what real bread costs to make and what people can afford to pay?
“There’sRobinson.more to sourdough than the process if it’s made in a small bakery. There are so many social benefits,” he adds.
“The question of caring isn’t the right one,” she adds. “The question is, how do we give everyone the opportunity to figure that out, because a lot of people don’t have much choice in the matter.”
The issues around housing, affordability and inequality are complex socioeconomic trends, many of which can be traced back to Margaret Thatcher’s decision to sell off the country’s council-owned housing, sparking decades of inequality. Without going into the political history, here are three main issues connecting food and housing today that could help join the dots for a more holistic understanding and potential solutions.
While the focus is always on making food cheaper, might housing hold more answers for an equal society where better choices are affordable? Nina Pullman finds out more.
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HOMETRUTHS
The amount of agricultural land set aside for housing and industry rose from 60 to over 6,000 hectares per year between 2010 and 2022, according to new research by the countryside charity (CPRE) that cuts to the heart of the brownfield-greenfield problem.
The drive for cheap food has intensified since the cost-of-living crisis has brought household expenses into sharper focus, with some people already turning away from more expensive sustainable products. Meanwhile, politicians and supermarkets can often be heard using ‘cheap food’ as one of the main justifications for unsustainable decisions.
CPRE chief executive Crispin Truman explains: “For the first time in several generations, our food security is at risk – yet we’ve seen a 100-fold increase in the loss of our best farmland to development. Heating, eating and housing are fundamental needs.
“That’s why a greenfield site is absolutely lovely, because you can start digging straight away for water and electricity pipes.”
According to the Office of National Statistics, between 1957 and 2017 the share of household expenditure spent on food has halved. This partly reflects our larger incomes, smaller households and a greater choice of products at different price points. But over the same period, the share of our spending going on housing has doubled, with transport not far behind.
more complex problem: how to tackle expensive housing, and therefore bring a greater proportion of income back into pockets to make food choices more feasible.
As a result, almost 300,000 homes were built on more than 8,000 hectares of prime farmland, at a time when climate and volatile geopolitics should mean we are producing more food in the UK. Meanwhile, previous research by CPRE has shown there is space for 1.3 million homes on previously developed land (brownfield sites), much of it in areas of the Midlands and North most in need.
WHERE TO BUILD
In fact, what land is developed, how food is considered in new developments and, crucially, the soaring price of houses and rentals could well be some of the biggest barriers to ever achieving a truly sustainable food system that is affordable to all and not just a wealthy few.
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The problem is, brownfield sites are much more expensive to develop, as they have been previously used for other purposes and need clearing before groundworks can begin, which increases the cost and reduces the profit for any likely developer. “The cost of developing land that has history goes right up so it might not have any value,” says planning lead at campaign group Sustain, Gillian Morgan.
hy should foodies care about housing? You might think your interest in animal welfare, low pesticide, low carbon and nature-friendly food would have little to do with the roof over your head.
But perhaps this obsession with cheap food is a red herring in the face of a bigger,
and connecting them to rural livelihoods.”
“If you build new houses, there are certain things that should be normal, such as the space to be able to grow food, which would help normalise where food comes from in the urban environment,” says Morgan. “Urban people often don’t know where food comes from and don’t value it, or they don’t realise the effort that goes into producing it." Things like fruit trees, edible hedges, and pots of
This kind of planning helps developers, who can work out the cost, their profit, and what kind of housing they can build. They can then go to the landowner and bid at a more accurate price. “If they get it wrong and pay too much, it has to come off at the end. They still want the money to walk away with so it gets squeezed in the middle,” says Morgan.
The price of food has become a monumental barrier to any meaningful scaling up of sustainable farming. And it’s not just about affordability, but about priorities, time, confidence, and what food is actually for sale.
“As we face a cost-of-living crisis, housing crisis, and the adjustment of our farming sector to post-Brexit subsidies, we have multiple, critical priorities for our land. We need to move away from intensive farming and towards a more ‘multifunctional’ approach, reconciling food production with better management for natural and cultural heritage, and for public access.”
Where food and housing can be transformative is when councils take a leading role, as is happening in Carlisle. “It used its status as a Sustainable Food Place, so they had a vision about their city that included food, which was picked up by local planners,” says Morgan. “Now there’s work going on at St Cuthbert’s Garden Village where it hasn’t just been sold to the developer; they’ve very much set the framework and there’s a lot in there about food and food growing. Things like orchards, green footpaths and amenities.”
“When it comes to bigger developments of 250 houses or more, a developer will bring in a landscape designer,” she says. “And often they don’t know about food growing, so they might put a little corner in and label it ‘allotments’. It’s unlikely to be successful. If you call something a community garden, it needs to be integrated and have a facilitator to keep it going.”
Join a campaign
The solution? In the old days, it would have been local councils – now drastically underfunded – who would do some decontamination to prepare a brownfield site and make it more appealing to developers. Those days might come back, believes Morgan, although to be effective they need to come alongside work to integrate a better food economy.
Priced Out is England’s campaign to reduce the cost of decent housing, running petitions and lobbying government for reforms that would make the housing system work better for citizens.
Left: Could house prices be a blocker to sustainable food and farming?
VoltàAdriàbyIllustration
“It’s weird the way we make financial choices around food,” he continues. “The evidence at the moment is that people are cutting down on sustainable food, but still going out to eat and buying a bottle of £12 wine.
“Even people like me, I’m a manager of a charity and I’m a foodie – I believe in this stuff, but when I’m busy at the weekend I go to Asda, because it suits the time I have available,” says Jonathan Pauling, of fruit and veg voucher charity Alexandra Rose.
any of these problems won’t be solved with one solution, but many of them do involve cost and societal inequality. To this end, a new project called Bridging the Gap has won £1.5 million in funding from the National Lottery to test various financial mechanisms that could help make local, sustainable food more affordable. These might include subsidising access to veg box schemes or ‘prescribing’ fruit and veg as part of social care. “It really is about how do you come up with financial mechanisms to subsidise the food system that we all need,” explains Alexandra Rose’s Jonathan Pauling, which won the funding with city farm Growing Communities and campaign group Sustain. “You could increase benefits and minimum wage, but that won’t allow people to buy from a nature-friendly farming system. It’s not there for one, in places like Liverpool, Glasgow or Barnsley. And if it is there, it’s not as cheap as a supermarket.”
Citizens UK runs citizens’ assemblies to give people a voice in campaigns including the post Olympic housing legacy, and challenging criminal landlord behaviour.
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Once you have a site, the next radical solution that could transform people’s connection and access to good food is how that site integrates food growing.
THE P WORD
We need to know what to put where.
“I’d love to see salaries and benefits go up, but that on its own won’t do it. It’s also about communities understanding supply chains
On housing more specifically, campaign group Priced Out wants rising house prices to be halted to allow wages to catch up, but says fundamentally the problem is a lack of supply of new housing. This will all take significant political action. But the benefits are clear, as Morgan adds: “The price of housing, whether you rent or buy, is a fixed cost. That takes the top portion of all of your income and it’s only what’s left that can go on other essentials.”
herbs could all help achieve this, says Morgan, who describes how “kids on the way to school could see an apple and think it’s normal.”
COMMUNITIES, NOT TOWNS
M
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“It’s incredibly expensive to research such a massive and diverse industry [like agriculture],” explains William McManus from Wrap. “We don’t know whether levels are going up or down.”
Food waste in the fields
Above right: Aesthetic perfection and unfair trading practices contribute to waste.
“Huge quantities of fresh produce like fruits and vegetables simply don’t make the grade
Read the news in recent weeks and you’d be inclined to think they’re going up. The harsh weather, dearth of pickers, and whims of the supermarkets (as well as their own waste targets) have all been linked with rising levels of waste. So, how much food waste is produced on farms and what
UK householders alone throw away 4.5 million (m) tonnes of edible food a year, according to Wrap, a charity specialising in waste. Another 0.8m tonnes is wasted by restaurants, pubs and cafés, while food manufacturers and retailers chuck away 0.8 and 0.3m tonnes respectively. In the context of the climate crisis, a cost-of-living crunch, and world hunger, it’s a scandal.
But these statistics are not the full story: they don’t include food waste on farms.
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Lack of Davidtheknowfields.foodcouldforandextremepickers,weather,newrulessupermarketsallincreasewasteintheButwedon’ttheextentofproblem,findsBurrows.
can be done about it?
The shocking findings are another sign that our food system is “broken”, explains Lilly Da Gamma, WWF’s food waste expert. She blames the inflexibility of the current food system to deal with gluts (farmers often look for alternative markets but these are not always readily accessible), as well as consumer expectations of what food should look like.
igging around for information on food waste can reveal some nasty nuggets. Food loss and waste accounts for eight per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, which means if it were a country only China and the US would be responsible for more greenhouse gases.
A report produced by WWF and Tesco last year estimated that, globally, 15 per cent of the food that’s produced never makes it off farms. The most recent figure for the UK, calculated by Wrap in 2019, put on-farm food waste at 1.6m tonnes a year – or 3.2 per cent of all food harvested. Another 2m tonnes was ‘surplus’, and went for redistribution, animal feed or to become bio-based materials.
Above top: Food waste in the fields is largely unmeasured.
harvest conditions, it can be difficult for them to avoid.”
The demands of the supermarkets can also increase waste. Research by Feedback, a charity, found that rejection based on aesthetic imperfection, unfair trading practices, and overproduction were the three main causes of on-farm food waste. Its report includes a quote from Guy Singh-Watson at organic veg box company Riverford, who said that when he sold to the supermarkets he’d grow about a third more than needed “just to make sure that the supermarket buyer didn’t have a tantrum if you ran short."
That report was four years ago. Retailers have in recent years relaxed their standards, according to some growers we spoke to (and many supermarkets have also moved to introduce ‘wonky veg’ lines). But the specifications remain pretty strict. “Our members have an innate financial incentive to avoid food waste,” says an NFU spokesperson, but “given the plethora of external influences such as retailers and
and are left [in the] field,” she explains.
The NFU says reporting is too costly. But the likes of Bowman say farm waste can no longer be ignored. Without reporting, there is a risk that farmers will continue to suffer the costs of waste, he explains: “Their exclusion [from new reporting laws] will create perverse risks of more food waste being pushed onto farmers via unfair trading practices.” boxes
But accurate figures are hard to come by. “No country in the world currently has robust data on food waste on farms,” says Martin Bowman from Feedback. Da Gamma at WWF is currently working with farmers and businesses on an up-to-date estimate, and says: “A vital first step is working out the size of the problem."
Indeed, research by Wrap shows that UK farmers could increase profits by 20 per cent by minimising food surplus and waste.
Scan the QR code or visit organic-recipe-boxesriverford.co.uk/
tightly, which was actually inhibiting sales and increasing on-farm waste “massively”.
Feedback has launched a petition to push for mandatory reporting of food waste from all food businesses, after government proposals to tackle the issue also ignored on-farm waste.
There have also been reports that the supermarkets’ own targets to reduce in-store food waste have created more wastage on farms. Berry producers told trade website Fruitnet recently that stores were controlling fresh produce levels very
The finding came from work with Ribena’s blackcurrant growers, including Rosie Begg from Gorgate Farm in Norfolk. “If you’d asked me before the project I’d have said our waste was really minimal,” she explained in a recent video, “so we were all quite surprised to see that we were leaving a lot more in the field than we previously thought.” Measuring food waste in this way can have massive benefits. “It’s certainly opened our eyes to applying more science to the art of forecasting,” explains Marks at Barfoots, which has reduced edible waste by almost 6,000 tonnes. The figures are reported as part of Wrap’s food waste reduction roadmap – a voluntary initiative to which only 50 farms have signed up. “Many farms are afraid of reporting food waste due to fear of reprisal from their buyers if they seen to be criticising [them],” says Bowman.
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A recent survey by British Berry Growers estimated that annual food waste almost doubled last year compared to 2020, and would double again this year. Its members’ losses were reportedly a direct consequence of the restricted supply of labour. Barfoots, which sells a range of fresh produce in the UK and overseas, had a “good deal of waste” last year as the lack of labour saw crops left in the field, says boss Julian Marks.
Veg-packed seasonal recipes, and all the organic ingredients you need - dinner Organicsorted. recipe
Globally, 15 per cent of food never makes it off farms.
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“When we first began, you had to get permission and then pay £2,000 to the council so if anything went wrong they would be covered,” says Venn, who says
anksy might be Bristol’s most wellknown renegade, but he’s certainly not the city’s only resident working in public spaces without official permission.
Fed up of council red tape and strategies going nowhere, radical gardener Sara Venn’s Incredible Edible network in Bristol turns unloved corners of the city into foodproducing green spaces for local communities. Nina Pullman reports.
“I’ve gardened in the middle of the A38 for two years and no one noticed. You just get on with it,” says Venn, a trained horticulturalist who moved to Bristol in 2013.
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“What we’ve learnt over the years is that no-one notices. Put a high vis vest on and no one questions you.” Sitting on a sunny step at her garden shed at an allotment plot in an understated part of north east Bristol, Sara Venn couldn’t look less like a rule breaker.
She began by working in traditional community gardens, often reliant on longwinded grant funding or help from the council, before choosing a different path that was more shovels than strategies.
Nowadays, her work usually begins by a member of the public “sidling up” at an event, says Venn, who then visits the space and hears from locals what it is they want to do. Often, her work is “hand holding”, as people new to gardening learn how to care for crops. But her team also provide expert growing skills, like no-dig, composting, and choosing the right crops.
The Banksy of veg
But the network of guerrilla gardeners she runs, the Bristol outpost of national group Incredible Edible, has a well-established direct action approach to creating gardens.
Just start composting or put some beans in the ground. It makes you feel part of a bigger conversation.
they simply stopped paying the fee and carried on making the gardens.
Ironically, land for food growing may also be easier to access in cities than in the country. “Everyone assumes that the council owns all the land but actually they own a small percentage,” says Venn. “For a couple of our gardens on little pockets of land, we still have no idea who owns it.
There are many reasons why urban food growing is a radical concept, not least issues around access to land, plus the racial and socioeconomic inequality in who has access to that land, and the mental and physical health benefits that come alongside.
And even if people do notice, they aren’t that inclined to care if “you’re making something rubbish a bit better and supporting people to do sensible growing”, she says.
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“We ramped up food production at the start of Covid, where previously we were experimenting with things like lentils. We made sure it was things that people recognised. And if there was a glut we put it into one of the schemes across the city,” she explains.
“Globe artichokes grow everywhere, blackcurrants get on with it, [as do] fennel, mint, lemon balm, and perennial kales. If you see any of those things, you know I’ve been there. They’re bombproof,” says Venn.
“It’s about empowering people to take control of their own environments. Instead of asking the council to clear it, it’s clearing it and then asking the council to pick up the black bags,” explains Venn, who’s also
Gardens created by Incredible Edible are now transforming “unloved bits of land” across the city, from residential areas in Speedwell, to Avonmouth train station and Millenium Square in the city centre.
found that gardening can be a simple antidote to climate anxiety. “We speak to so many people who are terrified of climate change and are too busy keeping a roof over their head,” she says. “We say: just start composting, put some beans in the soil. It makes you feel part of a bigger conversation.”
decentralised model means every branch runs autonomously. What they probably all have in common is connecting people in cities and towns with where food comes from and the effort it takes to produce. “What we do have in cities are communities who are so far away from where food is produced, because food comes from Tesco,” says Venn.
“It’s possible there’s more access to land in cities than in the country. You’re not going to get more than an acre, but it’s probably easier to access,” she continues. “Even if it’s three fruit trees and a bench, that is just lifechanging for the people who live around it.”
She is also clear about filling a more practical gap. “People growing stuff has to be better than someone sitting on a mower 10 hours a day, or pesticide spraying. We don’t need another strategy on biodiversity sitting in a drawer.”
The first Incredible Edible was set up in the Yorkshire town of Todmorden, but its
Left: Shovels not strategies at Incredible Edible. Above: Ready for planting. Right: Bringing nature into cities. Below: Sara Venn is a trained horticulturalist.
Communities are always involved in the project from the beginning, which almost completely cuts out the risk of vandalism, according to Venn, and ensures plots are well maintained. Second: all food grown in public spaces must be available to everyone. “If no one helps themselves then what we’re doing is pointless,” says Venn.
Back in the garden, Venn has a clear idea of her place in the wider food system. “I think community gardening is a start to put people where they become part of the puzzle. Showing people what can be done, empowering them and giving them the skills.”
Ask
Further afield, the European fruit season is coming to a close - look out for the last figs at their best, while Spanish nectarines and peaches are also ending. Autumn isn't the best time of year for citrus, as southern hemisphere seasons end ahead of the Spanish winter crop starting in November. King of autumn produce has to be squash, and there are many varieties that grow well in the UK, including Crown Prince, Kabocha and Red Onion. Butternuts do grow in the UK, but are more often from overseas.
One of the great joys of food is communal eating. Whether you’re cooking for friends at home or eating out, try our recommendations for where to go, what to ask, and ideas for dinner table discussions.
Our verdict: My first impression was that it doesn't add much. I got a bit of warmth on my lips but that was about it (perhaps my jalapenos weren't that hot). A few sips later, and while there is something nice about the contrast of an ice cold drink with a bit of spicy warmth, I'm just not sure I'd waste the jalapeno. Next time, I think I'll save it for salsa or nachos...
e may mourn the loss of summer, but autumn brings its own pleasures - particularly a welcome change in seasonal produce. Firstly, it's the start of one of the most English of harvests: apples, beginning with the early Discovery, Windsor and Scrumptious varieties, before the peak season Cox and Gala arrive. Pears and plums are also at their best in UK orchards at this time.
eatingsSeason's
Discuss
26 WICKED LEEKS | ISSUE 10 LIFESTYLE
26 WICKED LEEKS | ISSUE 10
By Nina Pullman
The armchair activist
Go 40 StreetMaltby Spot veghistoricofsmallsourced,samplefoodiescelebrityandimpeccablyseasonalplatesinoneLondon'sfruitandmarkets.
Sipping on spice
Social media expert Emily Muddeman reviews the latest foodie trends...
I'm a big fan of a spicy margarita, so when I saw people on social media adding jalapenos to their rosé wine, it caught my attention. When it
Trends trialon
ACTIVISM
We put this to fusion chef Ixta Belfrage –‐ she simply wouldyourforonehaddecide.couldn’tIfyoutopickcuisinetherestoflife,whatitbe?
Ask where the meat is from; if they don't know the farm or producer, don't order.
W
Want a simple way to reduce your environmental impact? According to Flight Free UK, one flight can generate more emissions than a year’s worth of meat consumption or driving a car, so if you are looking to make positive changes, going flight free for just 12 months is a great place to start. Find out more and make the pledge at flightfree.co.uk.
comes to margaritas, the heat of chilli in the drink or on the salty rim goes so well with the fresh, zingy lime. I couldn't quite imagine why it would complement rosé, which has very different flavour profiles, but of course, I was willing to try.
Eating in or dining out
To stop sliced apple becoming brown, soak in salted water. Dissolve a quarter teaspoon of salt into half a litre of water. Add the apple, leave for ten minutes and rinse. They will stay white for a few hours, ideal when preparing dishes in advance.
INGREDIENT SPOTLIGHT:
APPLES
The versatile apple doesn’t just belong in the fruit bowl. It can be made into drinks or vinegars, eaten raw in salads, or cooked into sweet and savoury dishes. Add them to traditional slaws, bake them stuffed with meat, rice or mushrooms, mix them into pancakes, pies and crumbles, or challenge yourself making the classic French tarte tatin.
A
The apple tree (Malus domestica) has its origins in Central Asia, where it has been growing for thousands of years. It travelled along the Silk Road to Europe and was brought to America by the European colonists. Apples have religious and mythological significance in many cultures. In the Bible, it is the fruit eaten by Eve; in The Arabian Nights, a magical apple can cure any illness; while in Norse mythology, the golden apple provides immortality to gods. More recently, in the Cornish festival of Allantide, apples are gifted to friends and family as a symbol of good luck.
Around 100 varieties of apples are sold commercially, all of them with distinctive characteristics. Apples are mainly sweet, but they can have a sour or bitter taste, too. To choose the best variety for a recipe, consider the level of sweet and sourness, how mild or strong the flavour is, and the firmness of the flesh. Keep in mind that sour apples are the best to use in sweet recipes and sweet apples work best for savoury ones.
Provenance and history
Pairings / swaps
Traditionally combined with fruit, nuts and spices, apples can also be paired with many other ingredients. Mix them in salads with beetroot, fennel or celery, or add them into squash and parsnip soups. They help balance the fat in meats like pork and duck, and mix well in cocktails with brandy, kirsch, Madeira or rum.
Health myths
‘An apple a day keeps the doctor away’ may have some truth. Apples have been linked to numerous health benefits including gut health, plus reduced risk of stroke, high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, obesity and some cancers. Eat organic apples unpeeled and whole instead of juiced or puréed to get the most benefits.
Food waste tip
ISSUE 10 | WICKED LEEKS 27 SPOTLIGHT / LIFESTYLE
Recipes
Music to cook to Play musicBaroquetorecreate the moment when an apple hit 17th century academic Isaac Newton on the head and the law of gravity was discovered. Or dance along to ‘Save all your kisses for me’ by Brotherhood of Man, the biggest hit of 1976 – the year Steve Jobs created Apple Inc. computers.
Trivia
Apples float in water because 25 per cent of their volume is air (perfect for apple Applebobbing).pie is not American; the first recorded recipe was written in 1381 in England.
pples are one of the most humble and popular fruits in the world. They're available for several months of the year, but reach their peak in the UK in autumn, when the trees change colour, the migrating birds fly to warmer places, and the days start to shorten, writes chef Ariadna Martin.
In the UK, an average person eats 65 apples a year. Most apples in the world are still picked by hand.
Flavour
Prep
Store in the fridge wrapped in a damp tea towel. An excellent way to use when past their best is to make apple sauce, or even make your own face mask.
Africana: Treasured recipes and stories from across the continent by Lerato UmahShaylor (£22, HarperCollins) is out now.
3. Slice the remaining Romano peppers in half lengthways and then crossways into strips. Add to the pan with the sliced green stalks and chillies, if keeping whole. Sauté for 3 minutes, stirring occasionally, then pour in the onion and pepper purée. Cover with the lid slightly ajar and simmer gently for 10 minutes, until the peppers and stalks soften and the purée thickens. Stir occasionally, adding a few
1 large brown onion, peeled and halved 3 red Romano peppers, stemmed and deseeded ½–1 scotch bonnet, or 2–4 red chillies, stemmed, deseeded (optional) and finely diced or pierced and left whole 200ml chicken or vegetable stock
5. The greens may release a lot of moisture, creating their own stock. If not, add some stock, a little splash at a time, to keep it moist but not drenched. After 5 minutes, taste your greens to check for doneness and seasoning. If you are happy with the texture, remove from the heat and serve – if you want them more tender, cook for another 5–10 minutes, as needed. Don’t forget to fish out the scotch bonnet if kept whole!
Braised greens with sweet red peppers
his is a humble, verdant dish with so much love, goodness and sweet memories of family. I learned to cook braised greens from my mum when my grandma Theresa had diabetes and lived with us until she gently passed away. Although she was kept on a strict diet and told to avoid starchy foods, my sweet grandma adored plantains, just like my mother and I, and she simply could not give them up. So, we were advised to feed her boiled unripe (low-sugar) green plantains
1. Place half the onion, one of the Romano peppers and the scotch bonnet or chillies, if not keeping whole, in a food processor with 60ml of the stock and blend to a purée.
2. Heat the oil in a heavy-based saucepan over a medium heat. Thinly slice the remaining half onion and, once the oil is shimmering, add to the pan with a generous pinch of fine sea salt. Sauté for 10 minutes, stirring often, until softened and golden.
RECIPE
T
Serves 4 Method
Going green
with her favourite stewed greens. I love them with sweet peppers, puréed and sliced for a little texture, and with a smoky flavour from paprika. Braised greens in various guises are emblematic across Africa: the spicy efo tete in Nigeria – amaranth cooked in a stew of red peppers and chillies, with an assortment of meat and fish; Ethiopian gomen – collard greens cooked in aromatics and spices; Ghanaian palaver sauce with taro leaves; and stews made with West African sorrel, or 'bush okra'.
500g greens (e.g. Swiss chard, amaranth, wild spinach, kale or collard greens), tough stalks removed and thin stalks and leaves thinly sliced 2 tsp smoked paprika
tablespoons of stock, if needed, to stop the sauce from drying out.
Ingredients
FisherTaraCredit
4. Add the smoked paprika and a generous pinch of fine sea salt and cook for 1 minute before adding the leaves of the greens. Cover and cook for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally, until tender.
90ml rapeseed or vegetable oil
Braised greens are emblematic across Africa, with regional recipes passed down through family, writes food writer Lerato Umah-Shaylor.
ISSUE 10 | WICKED LEEKS 29 CULTURE / LIFESTYLE
TAKEAWAY: Stories from a Childhood Behind the Counter by Angela Hui (£14.99, Orion Books) is out now.
It was a juxtaposition of being treated like immigrants, but also keepers of instinctivelysomethingBritish.
byIllustration LeungGeorgina
Behind the counter
I
Beddau was gloomy, rainy and had an insular community, with a population of just
The complexity of the British Chinese takeaway story cannot be categorised neatly into rice, chow mein, curry and chop suey dishes, but it can tell us a bit about ourselves, writes Angela Hui.
n the end, my parents saved up and opened their own Chinese takeaway called Lucky Star on the luckiest day of the century: 8 August 1988.
It’s an auspicious date because the number eight is lucky in Chinese culture, signifying good wealth, fortune, and prosperity – three key factors needed for a young, growing immigrant family. My parents, brothers and I lived above the takeaway and we barely left the building. My home town of Beddau, which means ‘graves’ in Welsh, is a former mining village in the South Wales Valleys. Our shop backed out onto the old, derelict colliery and coke works, a vision of poverty and profundity. Most Welsh coal mines were closed by the end of the 1980s when my family arrived, and their ends were hastened by the Thatcherite decree. It’s a sad story of deprivation, hardship, and decline, and what’s left are grim scars of despair, worklessness, and industrial gravestones.
Despite dying of boredom and being apart from anyone who looked like me, being in Beddau did mean being in the beautiful countryside, surrounded by lush, rolling green hills and flowing rivers – wherever you stood there was a high chance of spotting fluffy white sheep in the distance.
Our takeaway was the place to go for the neighbourhood pub afterparty. A place for some food and chat, where women gossiped and beaming elderly men came to stave off loneliness. The telephone rang constantly and a stream of people would pop in to pick up orders in hot foil containers stacked in white plastic bags. It was a juxtaposition of us being treated like immigrants, but also being keepers of something instinctively British.
We were also far from the hustle and bustle of the nearest Chinatown or any Asian supermarket, so I was surrounded by white neighbours, white teachers, and mostly white friends. Diversity was pretty much non-existent around these parts. It felt secluded from the rest of the world.
There’s a stark contrast between the rich, joyous beauty of the landscape and the high unemployment rates and limited prospects, but it’s the melancholy of the people who try to scratch out a living in these parts that make this place what it is. It’s the tangible optimism, the wicked humour and the mischief from these tight-knit communities. It’s the neighbour who stops you in the street to ask, ‘How’s it going? S’appenin’, butt?’ Or the local hairdresser asking about your loved ones: ‘Dawn! Alright, love? How’s yer mam doing? Tell her I said hiya.’ It’s the welcoming, friendly natter of people going about their day-to-day, and that is the essence of the Valleys. This was, for better or worse, the green, green grass of my home, and I wouldn’t have traded it for the world.
The complexity of the British Chinese takeaway story, and my story growing up in Beddau, cannot be unravelled through an inked menu alone, or categorised neatly into rice, chow mein, curry, and chop suey dishes. But the shop can tell us a little bit about ourselves – how we Brits treat one another and how we accept the new and the different.
over 4,000 people; everyone knew each other and knew each other’s business, which was both a blessing and a curse. Home to walls daubed with crude graffiti, stocky rugby lads drinking flagons of White Lightning in fields, and youths who would set fire to our wheelie bins, it was a sleepy nowheresville where there was not much to do and, as the name suggests, a place where all good things went to die.
“Climate anxiety is closely tied to the fight, flight, freeze response; an old, evolutionary reaction which is deeply ingrained in our biological makeup, and activated when we face a threat,” says Kleczka. She explains that it overlaps with climate grief, which functions very similarly to the loss of a loved one. We are only just feeling this loss, but for others it is not new. “Indigenous peoples and those in the Global South have been experiencing those phenomena for decades at the frontline of climate change impacts,” says Kleczka.
According to the Climate Psychology Alliance, it is normal to have a reaction
Collage illustrations by Becky Blench, a nature-inspired artist in her spare time.
This in turn can feed into mental health problems like generalised anxiety disorder, OCD, and depression. So how can we respond to such a huge existential threat in a way that keeps us well?
y newsfeed is full of pictures of parched earth, forest fires, the loss of whole species, or a highway being built through the heart of the Amazon. I want to know what’s happening, but I’m left with a tangle of thoughts about what to do for the best, a sense of disempowerment and a deep sadness at the devastating loss of life, nature, and culture.
Surprisingly, Kleczka starts by asserting that these feelings are in themselves not the problem. “Climate anxiety itself is a healthy response to the planetary-scale crisis we find ourselves in," she says.
Feeling anxious can be a default setting as the cost of the climate crisis to people and planet grows. How can we channel it into positive action? Becky Blench finds out.
M
ANXIETYCLIMATE On the mind:
to what we are seeing, and the shortterm function of anxiety is to alert us that something is wrong. Left untended over the long term, though, it can show up in some problematic ways. “It can manifest as insomnia, being unable to focus, not enjoying the things that are important to us, feeling irritable, emotional instability, or obsessive behaviour such as constantly reading the news,” says Kleczka.
Feeling anxious may be just one part of being human, but it seems more like a default setting in daily life now, as the cost of the climate crisis to both people and planet Whethergrows.youhave a niggling worry, a sense of dread, or full-on overwhelm about this issue, you are definitely not alone. I reached out to climate psychologist, activist and writer Jessica Kleczka to find out if there is a healthy way to handle the anxiety and channel it into a more positive space.
Sometimes we may feel everything acutely and understand the need to act, but feel paralysed; something studyingsaysandanxietyoverwhelmingtheresponseparalysis’,psychologistsclimatecall‘eco-andatraumasimilartoshock.“Inmyexperience,bestwaytodealwithclimateistotakeactionjoinaclimategroup,”Kleczka.“WhenIwasmydegreeinpsychology
in chronic illness. I have been there, and nowadays I am very careful to avoid burning out by taking time off, going offline, and communicating my boundaries,” she continues.
Sean Murray, a charity fundraiser working on behalf of Greenpeace, has to manage being immersed in this tricky emotional territory during his working week.
Many will feel ashamed that we are part of the problem, or dread the future impacts of climate change, so they disengage from the issue (the flight response).
and became aware of the extent of the crisis, I fell into a depression. I then decided to bring climate into my psychology work and became an activist, which was the best decision of my life. I wake up every morning with a purpose, driven to make the world a better and safer place for my children. I couldn't even begin to quantify how beneficial that is for my mentalScientists,health.”conservationists, land workers, and anyone for whom dealing with environmental issues is their job, have to face these difficult truths daily, often overworking to burnout as a consequence.
The best way to deal isclimateoverwhelmingwithanxietytotakeaction.
This is understandable given what we are facing, combined with the total lack of positive action from world leaders. But this disconnect can be divisive, fuelling bitter culture wars.
Eco anxiety and how to deal with it
HEALTH AND WELLBEING / LIFESTYLE
Kleczka acknowledges her work can be stressful and consuming, but similarly there is one thing that grounds and inspires her: “What helps me is to spend time in nature and remind myself what it is we're fighting for. That we're a part of nature, and we live in an incredibly beautiful world.”
Connect to nature. Every day in any way you can, whether that’s cloud watching or a walk in the park.
Follow social accounts that are a window into climate positivity, such as @jessicakleczka, @sambentley or @queerbrownvegan.
It’s empowering to think that climate anxiety doesn’t just have to be pain without function. It is a call to acknowledge our deepest feelings, helping us turn fear into courage, and a bridge to repair our connection with the land and each other.
Nurture. Eat well, do activities not related to climate change, and make time for friends, for rest, for movement, for screen-free time.
“It can take months or even years to recover, and sometimes it results
“Rather than demonising climate deniers or sceptics, it's helpful to remember that often, those behaviours can actually stem from climate anxiety, and what people need is a more functional way of dealing with difficult emotions.” says Kleczka.
Ditch doom scrolling.
The message there is that fighting for change needs to be balanced out with rest and self-care.
Create, don't consume. Making, growing and mending are radical, selfempowering acts.
Find support. If you are concerned about your mental health, there is help and info available; Mental Health Foundation, Mind and Sane are good places to start. For climate anxiety, Climate Psychology Alliance has a wide range of resources.
Connect. Join a climate group and organise within your community, or attend a climate café online as a friendly discussion space to share.
Choosing to live by his values helps Murray feel that he is creating the change he wants to see. “Doing all I can personally is important – for me, that means going vegan, growing veg on my allotment, and I choose not to have a car,” he says. Most importantly, he says that having a daily routine that supports wellbeing is key. “I meditate every day and do a 12-mile cycle each morning – without connecting to nature, I couldn’t do the job I do.
To cut your clothing footprint and save money:
4 Stretchy cotton clothing cut into thin strips is great to use in the garden instead of twine or wire.
3 Other household textiles like cotton or linen sheets can be upcycled. In Grow, Cook, Dye, Wear: From seed to style the sustainable way, Bella Gonshorovitz shows how to grow and cook five fruits and veg, then create natural fabric dye – even the dressmaking patterns are included.
5 Turn lightweight fabric into decorative bunting – make a triangular card template, 16cm for the top and 22cm for the sides, draw round it onto scraps of fabric, cut them out and sew the short edges at intervals along a piece of bias binding or ribbon.
1 Make a rag rug – a traditional, relaxing and resourceful clothes upcycling craft. Elspeth Jackson's Rag Rug Techniques for Beginners is the perfect guide.
32 WICKED LEEKS | ISSUE 10 LIFESTYLE / SHOPPING
5 3 2 1 BUY IT 6
6 Cut old t-shirts up into squares and use as washable multi-purpose cleaning cloths.
The DIY edit:
The anti-consumerism shopping guide
2 Create heirlooms from scraps with Modern Quilting: A Contemporary Guide to Quilting by Hand by Julius Arthur of House of Quinn. A brilliant guide to making chic, minimal quilts, ideal for first-time crafters.
Clothes are incredibly resource-heavy to produce, so good rules of thumb are to buy less and better quality, wear each piece more, and swap, sell, or donate items you don’t want. No longer wearable or repairable? Upcycle with these guides or makes, compiled by lifestyle writer Becky Blench.
The squash plants are reaching their long arms out of their patch and are now romping through the strawberry bed. The chicken mummas and their chicks have got loose and turned half the courgette corner into a dust bath, taking out a good few plants in the process. The cull was probably for the better though, since with what’s left we already have more courgettes than we can eat.
don't mind that. I just pinch them out as they appear to ensure the intended seedlings aren't outcompeted. It’s nice to bring as few outside resources into my garden as possible.
ISSUE 10 | WICKED LEEKS 33 GROW YOUR OWN / LIFESTYLE
as most of our gardens today are below five acres, they do invite us to explore creating and producing, rather than consuming.
I settle down with my seed box, a collection of saved, shared, swapped, and purchased little nuggets of potential.
While I do see gardens as spaces that can support the vision of a more ethical paradigm, it would be naive to imagine a happy future in which those of us who even have gardens are dependent on these little patches of ground for food, while also working full time to pay the rent, energy bills, and everything else.
Costing the garden
Our gardens are not a silver bullet solution to the cost-of-living crisis.
After turning the Bokashi (a process of air-free fermenting) compost into the compost heap, it’s time to sow the hardy veg seeds that will over-winter and give fresh greens through the darker months.
The vision of individual self-sufficiency, to me, is a myth. We need one another and we need ethical, efficient networks of production that work well for us all.
Throughout history, gardens have sustained us, offering food, medicine, and places to turn waste into a resource. For example, in a manual written in rhyming verse in the mid 1500s, gardeners are directed to empty their privies onto their veg beds in autumn, along with leaf mould, to maintain fertility. This practice also avoided the need for energy-intensive, industrial sewage processing.
Growing much food at all takes time, space, resource, and is best done in groups.
The answer was clear to me then, but being here in this wonderfully muddled little garden it is clearer now: no.
Rather than hiding in a romantic vision of the past, we can use our gardens to inspire and connect us. Ecological growing is fertile ground for dreaming up ambitious visions for the future that honour the wisdom of past and present communities who knew or know how to live in a healthy relationship with the land.
Practically Radical:
I
t's the end of summer and the garden is settling into her faded glory. It's been a hot, dry few months; while I’ve been travelling about giving talks on the power in our gardens, my own garden, left to her own devices, is growing beautifully wild and unruly.
Above: Growing food and biodiversity.
I fill each tray with garden soil; perhaps controversially, I often don’t bother sowing into sterilised compost anymore. It does mean I have to be vigilant against the volunteer seedlings that pop up – but I
However, our gardens are not a silver bullet solution to the complex, globalised supply chain, threatened by climate change and volatile politics, which has led to the cost-of-living crisis.
As I sow kale, spinach, parsley, lettuce and coriander seeds, I mull over the number one most asked question I was asked while away: “Is growing our own food a good solution to the cost-of-living crisis?”
A new column by ecological grower and forager Poppy Okotcha on gardening and optimism.
Below: Blue sky thinking in the garden.
Today, according to the report ‘Who Will Feed Us’ by the ETC Group, 70 per cent of people globally are still dependent on the ‘peasant food web’ – a network of hunters, gatherers, fishers, pastoralists, urban producers, and farmers working on less than five acres, for most or all of their food. And
@poppyokocha
As a species in the midst of a selfinduced climate crisis, it is essential that we re-think our relationship with the planet and our ecosystems. To this end, the podcast talks to a range of artists and curators, including Caroline Till, cocurator of the recent Our Time on Earth exhibition at London’s Barbican, Guardian columnist and environmentalist George Monbiot, and students from the Arts and Ecology MA course at Dartington, south Devon. It’s inspiring to listen to the wonderful work being produced, but also a narrative that is very much geared towards a positive mindset shift.
34 WICKED LEEKS | ISSUE 10 LIFESTYLE / ARTS
I hold the orb of England in the palm of my still fleshy hand, unsullied by a callus or a cut or disappointment: tapered fingers curled round this scarred and severed fruit of Eden, contours of subdued vermilion with nostalgic pink and ochre, tainted by a jealous splotch of brown, elsewhere a tender skin spot large enough to fit my thumbprint.
By Victoria Holmes
Cecilia M. Gigliotti | Published in Elements: Natural & Supernatural, Fawn Press, November 2021.
Arts & Ecology is available on Apple Podcasts
Art can help connect people to nature.
visualGoing
Above: Lino print by Viola Ivanova.
talking to artists who are encouraging a shift in perspective, by engaging people to imagine a better world and inspiring them to do something about it.
his is the question being asked in Arts & Ecology, a new podcast about the vital role that art and culture play in creating a regenerative future.
On an English Apple
What is the artist’s role in an ecological crisis?
Ultimately, we all need a deeper connection to nature and the non-human world. In episode six, hosts Mike Edwards and Natasha Rivett-Carnac discuss how students in Dartington are given the space to have ‘unusual’ encounters with nature, such as conversations with trees. Indigenous communities have understood this principle for millennia. Monbiot (episode two) says the “old narrative is destructive” and discusses the “mind-blowing” wonders of soil, its abundant life, and calls for a new culture that celebrates the world beneath our feet. Green MP Caroline Lucas said in her Letter to the Earth back in 2019 that “political failure is at its root a failure of imagination.” She called on artists then to “inspire us to believe it’s not too late to act and show us that each one of us can make a difference.”
Art speaks where words are unable to explain.
Underneath the spots the tangy blood of Nature’s meanest daughter, plucked by me, her newest mistress, from a basket of her sisters, from the womb of Holborn market, brought out through a plastic exit into merciless December; my tongue’s ten thousand citizens rejoice in their discovery— unadulterated sweetness in a swollen, smoggy city and for one delicious instant I have known a day in Eden.
POEM
T
In episode two, Till talks about how art and culture has the ability to make issues like climate change tangible, to “bring it to life” and “experience it more deeply.” Often, environmental art and activism has taken a much more doom and gloom perspective, which is powerful in bringing an issue to our attention and, as Till says, “depicts the scale of the problem really well” – but it leaves people feeling powerless as to what to do about it. The podcast has a much more optimistic feel,
I’d recommend this podcast for some much-needed creative hope and inspiration, and details of where to find the art to help us.
REVIEW
THE BACK PAGE / LIFESTYLE ISSUE 10 | WICKED LEEKS 35
Catch up on episodes with Poppy Okotcha, Melissa Hemsley and Ixta Belfrage.
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A day of thought=provoking talks from inspiring speakers like Christiana Figueres and Naomi Klein. £20.
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Available on Spotify and Google Podcasts.
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13. Hard to measure on farms, greenhouse gas emitter (5) Daily staple (5) Bristol artist (6) Human cost of engaging with climate and nature collapse (7)
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BBC Good Food Show Winter 24-27 Nov | NEC, Birmingham
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8. Food and energy inflation is making this rise (4, 2, 6)
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Hear from leading voices in food, farming and climate on meat and dairy consumption. £15, low income FREE.
Resurgence Festival of Wellbeing 22 Oct | Online
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TV chefs like Nadiya Hussain host festive kitchen demos, plus hundreds of products to taste. From £25.
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