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Social movements have a history of achieving great change. That’s why there’s something in the air this year, from public sector strikes to land access protests on Dartmoor, as mass gatherings of people have started to use their voices in an undeniable, visible way. In this issue, we capture a snapshot of that energy and how it relates to food, farming, land, nature and climate. In farming, there's a story similar to public sector wage disputes, where apple growers are starting to leave the sector (page 4), while columnist Sue Pritchard is calling for a new social movement for food (pages 6-7). The power of community is something our cover star, Rowan Williams, has long believed in; his words on how to create change, plus his views on activism and land, are as fascinating as they are pertinent. While mass gatherings can be overtly political (page 8),
coming together also takes place in smaller, though no less empowering, arenas. We explore how to find joy in hosting friends for dinner with zero stress (page 27 - how’s that for radical action?), and how food growing has long been used as a tool for unity (page 33). In Lifestyle, discover the community in your gut and how to look after it (pages 30-31), plus travel to the birthplace of the Slow Food movement (page 28). Elsewhere, as community means different things to different people, our roadmap to collective action celebrates this diversity (pages 16-17). In an era of polarisation, we hope this issue serves as a reminder that we have more in common than we do pulling us apart. And that joining in, finding your own community, can be as fulfilling as it is empowering.
Nina Pullman Editor, Wicked Leeks @nina_pullmanFormer Archbishop of Canterbury and advocate for social reform, Rowan Williams, reflects on how communities are the real agents for change.
Food writer and campaigner Yasmin Khan on what the Iraq war protests mean for climate activists today. P8-9.
1 Top five plant-based protein recipes
2 Organic on a budget
3 Beyond the bird feeder
4 Top tips for cutting food waste
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Apr
Hedges, thick and high, and full of flowers, birds, and living creatures, of shade and flecks of sunshine dancing up and down the bark of the trees - I love their very thorns. You do not know how much there is in hedges.
Genuine question. What wage do people expect to make off farms? I’m a lucky one, born on a farm. I’ve been running the farm for 10 years now and I pay myself £12,000 a year. All money made over that is pumped back into the farm. Am I paying myself more than others?
The IPCC report seems to have sunk like a stone. I woke up this morning and switched on the Today programme, hoping to hear some discussion and analysis of it. It feels as if the majority of the population, and the whole of government, have buried their heads in the sand when it comes to climate change.
Amanda Graham
Cross Country trains sum up the mood of a nation.
Join the conversation at wickedleeks.com
In 2022, incomes for the poorest 14m people fell by 7.5 per cent, while incomes for the richest fifth rose by 7.8 per cent. [ONS]
Apple growers are leaving the industry to sell to developers or diversify, as higher prices paid by consumers are not passed on.
Consumers paid at least 17 per cent more for apples in September 2022 compared to the previous year (ONS data), during which time British apple growers only received price increases of 0.8 per cent from supermarkets. The figures from trade body British Apples and Pears (BAP) add to increasingly stark warnings from the sector. A shortage of pickers was worsened by Brexit, while the Ukraine war saw energy prices soar by up to 300 per cent.
The cost of growing apples has gone up by 23 per cent, according to BAP, warning that growers have already cancelled tree orders.
“I can’t think of a single apple grower that is making money,” said BAPL chief executive, Ali Capper. “The costs of labour, storage, haulage, tree planting, and orchard maintenance have all increased. What hasn’t increased is the return to growers. No one wants to import
more apples. It makes no sense from a carbon or water footprint perspective, and it diminishes UK food security. We urgently need fairer returns for growers from UK supermarkets to ensure the future of the British apple industry.”
Speaking to Wicked Leeks, Capper said that, despite the publicity, “anecdotally, I am not hearing that things are improving. It’s all about margin. It has gone backwards.”
Kent organic apple grower Paul Ward said that, particularly in the South East, if growers can get building permission, "they’re out as fast as they can."
“Around us I’m seeing literally hundreds of acres of orchards coming out. Maybe going into arable, but farms are also going onto the market.”
He said low prices are “very short-sighted” and will leave the UK more reliant on European apples, where prices are more volatile. “The intransigence of the supermarkets about paying more money for the produce makes it worse in the UK. We’ve sold more apples last year than any other year, but we don’t have a penny in the bank,” he said, adding that he has been protected due to selling
Below: British apples are at risk.to organic veg box company Riverford. “Riverford and a lot of the organic wholesalers have supported English apples, taking them even though the cost is higher than imports,” he said. “The same thing happens on the continent –there is more commitment to national produce.”
The rising cost-of-living and stagnant wages have made headlines throughout the last year, with much of the public sector striking. Asked whether growers will follow suit, Capper said: “Are we going to go on strike? Or simply pivot and do something else? At the moment, that is what we’re seeing. I always thought food shortages would bring retailers to their senses. They just shrug their shoulders and import.”
Elsewhere, recent shortages of tomatoes prompted UK salad growers to point to low prices, while egg farmers have said they won’t expand flocks until higher feed costs are taken into account.
Ward agreed that strikes among growers are unlikely. “You will not get that degree of collective action among fruit growers. They’re not going to cooperate because they’re competing with each other. The only thing we can do is raise public awareness. Once this side of things is closed, it won’t reopen. Once it’s gone, it’s gone.”
Capper added: “No one in government is championing fresh produce and I don’t know why. They have delegated food policy to retailers. There needs to be a significant shift in attitude, mainly in government.”
Two thirds of people believe the UK government is doing too little to tackle nature loss.
[Save our Wild Isles]
[Too Good To Go]
Alandmark case won by a community to protect its local green space from being sold is being hailed as a precedent for the future.
The Supreme Court ruled in favour of Greenfields Community Group, in Shropshire, in a case backed by the Good Law Project, to overrule a council decision to sell the local park. The group had been fighting for almost six years over the land, arguing that Shrewsbury Town Council should have consulted residents before selling off the green space.
Legal manager of the Good Law Project, Ian Browne, said: “We are delighted with
[today’s] Supreme Court ruling, which will set a precedent to help safeguard green spaces from being sold off and the rights of communities to enjoy them for generations to come.
“Shrewsbury Town Council failed to consult the community about selling the land and it has led to a legal battle which should not have been necessary. We are thrilled to have backed the tenacious efforts of Greenfields Community Group, which means that Shrewsbury Town Council will now have to meet very strict criteria before they are able to sell off any green spaces in future.”
Citizens are being called on to join a new democratic gathering of views on the future of British food, to provide an up-to-date and in-depth insight into what the public want from their food system for government and policymakers.
A series of workshops will begin this summer and take place across the UK, facilitated in the format of mini citizen's assemblies and building on the recent work done around a People's Plan for Nature. The Food, Farming and Countryside Commission (FFCC), which is behind the initiative, said it plans to use the findings to create "a new conversation around food."
A spokesperson for the FFCC said: "In our work over the last few years, we consistently hear from citizens that they are interested in the future of food, and worried by the lack of access to healthy food for themselves and their families. Yet again and again, we hear politicians and the media repeating a mantra that ‘people don’t want a nanny state’ and don’t want to be told what to eat.
"We plan to explore this question further, bringing citizens into a major new national
conversation about food and the food system."
The new inquiry will begin in summer, online and in locations around the UK. More infomation will be announced via the FFCC website in due course.
Only half of adults believe that food past its Best Before date is perfectly safe to eat.
Chief executive, Food, Farming and Countryside Commission
By the time you read this, we’ll know whether the winter of discontent continued into spring, or whether the government has settled this unprecedented level of strikes and disputes. Railway workers, teachers, civil servants, firefighters, nurses, ambulance drivers, doctors – the people who are working in the sectors foundational to a civil society – have decided that they need and deserve a fairer share of this society’s prosperity.
For all our recent (some might say self-
inflicted) economic woes, the UK is still the sixth largest economy in the world. Yet income inequality is high and growing. In 2022, incomes for the poorest 14 million people fell by 7.5 per cent, while incomes for the richest fifth saw a 7.8 per cent increase, according to the ONS in January of this year.
Over the last six months or so, unions have been polling their members on pay and conditions, and members have replied to say: enough is enough. And despite some government ministers’ polarising and populist rhetoric, support for striking workers among the public remains high and solid.
This doesn’t surprise me. Through our work around the UK, we find over and over again that citizens want a fairer and more sustainable society.
Social movements have shaped society
for centuries. Groups of people, working together with shared purpose, have secured important and positive changes. From the abolition of slavery to the rights to vote, reproductive rights to civil rights, the exercise of collective power has made hard-won gains we now take for granted. In the last couple of decades, citizens have mobilised to oppose war, for safer streets, and for climate action. In response, this government is introducing the most draconian Public Order Bill, which criminalises citizens’ rights to protest and act.
Farmers and growers are not on strike. But many are expressing their concerns in other ways. In several sectors – pigs, poultry, salads, fruit and veg – growers who no longer have confidence that they’ll even cover their costs, let alone get a fair price for their produce, have cut back or got out. The gaps on supermarket
shelves reveal the reality of a supply chain more fragile than we want to believe.
In the UK, we have one of the cheapest baskets of food in all the developed economies. The lowest prices are the advertising straplines of the major food retailers, yet food bank use is rocketing. Recent research from the Food Foundation reveals that 8.8 per cent of all households are so poor that they cannot afford enough to eat. Defra data show that 45 per cent of farmers earn less than £20,000 a year.
Meanwhile, global agribusinesses, energy companies and retailers saw their profits soar in the last year, in spite of (or maybe because of) the global crises that saw prices spiral and the cost of living shoot up for the rest of us. In a food sector worth £8 trillion, the rewards are flowing faster to those giants, and the risks are shouldered by farmers, growers, citizens and the environment.
This is not fair, nor is it sustainable. But history shows us that “power ain’t giving up power."
So do we need a new social movement for food?
Of all the elements of our economy, one of the things we really cannot manage without is food. Yet in the UK, governments have handed over responsibility for food systems to ‘the market’, and in doing so, allow businesses to profit from harming people and planet. The National Food Strategy – the latest in a line of reports to government – seems to be firmly stuck in the long grass. Over and again, we hear from ministers, business and sections of the media that people just want cheap food, and that no one wants the nanny state telling them what to eat.
In contrast, we hear, when we work with citizens around the UK, that they want and expect their governments to regulate
business and ensure a level playing field, for a safe, healthy, fair food system – fair for farmers and growers, and fair for citizens.
This year FFCC will be exploring questions like these with citizens around the UK.
Are we okay with the UK food system as it is? Or do we want public policy to actually prioritise health and the environment? And do we need to invest in new models, where farmers can make a fair living from farming regeneratively, and where smaller, local, distributed businesses have a fairer share of the market, with the same incentives and support that big businesses enjoy? Where public institutions like local authorities, schools, hospitals and universities use their buying power and leadership to strengthen local and sustainable food systems, benefiting their communities and their economies?
Over the summer and through the autumn we will ask citizens directly – what do we really want from our food? We’ll share the answers with policymakers and businesses in the run up to the election. We think they might be surprised.
@yasminkhanstories
This year is the 20th anniversary of the global demonstrations against the Iraq war. To this day, those protests remain the largest mobilisations in human history, with an estimated 14 million people, in 600 cities around the world, coming together for an orchestrated Global Day of Action on 15 February 2003 to try and stop Bush and Blair’s drive to go to war in Iraq.
It was an electrifying moment in British political history. Talk of the war dominated all aspects of cultural and political life - in schools and places of worship, workplaces and universities, music and film festivals, as well as in the media. There were meetings every week, up and down the country, with local anti-war groups springing up organically. Almost every day, a major celebrity spoke out against the war or tried to use their platform to influence opinion. The actual day of 15 February was a triumph, with people of all ages and backgrounds coming together on the streets of London. As I stood in Hyde Park and listened to speeches from Tony Benn, Rev Jesse Jackson and the actor Tim Robbins, I hugged friends and felt overwhelmed by the extraordinary sea of people who had come
together to save lives.
But a month after the demonstrations, on 19 March 2003, the US sent its military forces into Iraq. It was the start of an occupation that would last nearly 10 years, lead to hundreds of thousands of deaths and reshape the Middle East. Like many, I was crushed in the months that followed. Many people never went on a demonstration again and it led to huge numbers of people disengaging from politics for years. But looking back from the vantage point of where we are now, it’s clear the anti-war movement changed history. A whole generation of people were introduced to activism through that movement, as well as big ideas such as how the fossil fuel industry fuels the war machine. The antiwar movement set the political agenda on
military interventions and trust in politicians for decades to come, and influenced the rise of politicians from Jeremy Corbyn in the UK, to Bernie Sanders in the US, to Brazil’s current president Lula – who led the Sao Paulo protests.
For those fighting the climate crisis today, the lessons from the anti-war movement are manifold. What made it so impactful was its pluralism. To this day, I’ve never seen a social movement as diverse in terms of age, ethnicity and social class, and it achieved this by intersectional organising. We didn’t just talk about the war but also about neo-liberalism, the arms trade, the fossil fuel industry, Islamophobia, imperialism and racism. The movements were also decentralised, with local groups organising events in a way that spoke to their community, and we spent hours debating and discussing with others. This is something we perhaps have lost; the ability to sit down with people we disagree with, debate with them and, over time, and bring them over to our point of view. Instead of kneejerk cancel culture, a lesson from the Iraq anti-war movement is that we should offer people our empathy and our time if we want to bring them along with us.
Writer, activist, food anthropologist and chef
In October 2022, a group of BPOC growers from London were walking among tall, wind-whipped stalks in Hertfordshire.
We were visiting David and Brenda Mwanaka, who grow white maize, a staple of southern African diets that is not grown commercially elsewhere in the UK. The trip was organised by the Rootz into Food Growing (RIFG) network, and funded by Manchester-based cooperative Unicorn Grocery. This network emerged from a report, published in 2021, to address BPOC growers’ experiences of ‘going it alone’, and it now meets regularly to socialise, share offers of work or funding and exchange tips.
The Mwanakas have become spokespeople for culturally appropriate veg. With white-dominated audiences, they focus on their Zimbabwean heritage and why they grow white maize. On our visit, the ‘why’ was implicit; most of us knew the difficulty in finding ecological, culturally relevant food, and some were already growing plants uncommon to British soils, such as okra and callaloo.
Many RIFG participants wanted to receive support while ‘not having to explain the nuances of race’, so as we roasted maize on an outdoor fire, we talked about customers, ordering systems, harvesting methods, staffing and lease agreements – all within a shared, implicit framework of being racialised growers in a white-dominated space.
At Aweside Farm in East Sussex, Sinead and Adam Fenton grow edible flowers, herbs and salads. We walked with Sinead in the sun, nibbling on leaves and swapping stories. These two visits were a rare chance to spend time in nature with only BPOC
growers, because farming is the least diverse occupation in England and Wales. Although many BPOC communities possess significant agricultural knowledge, inherited from ancestors overseas or in the vibrant “playground[s]” of British allotments, they find themselves cut off from farming in the UK by racialised structural barriers.
So being on the land without being made to feel out of place is an essential healing experience. For Pamela Shor of Black Rootz, visiting these farmers “encouraged me to pursue my passion for food growing and plant seeds of hope within my own community."
“Most importantly,” she said, “I was empowered, and left feeling like this is an achievable goal. It was beautiful to see others living the dream.”
We left the Mwanakas loaded with creamy white maize, psychedelic-looking jelly melons and sweet sorghum stems, which can be chewed like sugar cane. They thanked us for taking the time to visit, for the opportunity to host. Despite their proximity to London they are not entrenched in its networks, but at London’s first Black Farmers Market we found eager mouths for these rarely seen crops amongst Brixton’s BPOC community.
For BPOC farmers to thrive, we must strengthen connections between them, provide space for healing and opportunities for knowledge-sharing. All this requires resources. Funding for BPOC growers has increased since 2020, but there are signs this is beginning to dwindle, while there is still so much to do. Sinead dreams of regularly hosting BPOC growers, but a system that encourages unpaid work and reliance on unpredictable grant funding is a serious struggle. On top of this is the racism and isolation; an unwelcome spectre in her work.
As the agroecological movement increasingly prioritises care and justice, BPOC growers are owed additional support. Promoting the flourishing of BPOC farmers is essential for a truly just food system. Let’s keep up the momentum.
A whole generation of people were introduced to activism through that movement.Pictured: A historic turnout against war in February 2003.
(Ex)-Archbishop, activist and advocate for social justice, Rowan Williams, on why the power of community has never been more important and where he sees the best examples of positive change.
Words by Nina Pullman
Pictured: Rowan Williams has been a voice for radical social reform.
hat has faith got to do with food and farming? It’s not the kind of question you might regularly consider, but Rowan Williams, academic, poet and former Archbishop of Canterbury, isn’t fazed.
There is the matter of practicality, he says – the church is one of the oldest, most consistent presences in rural and remote areas. Something he says brings “an invaluable connection” with the experience of rural life, which is so often intertwined with food and farming.
There is also something deeper. “There is generally, in faith traditions, a sense that our relationship with the world around is life giving,” he explains. “There is sometimes a view that religion is all about virtue and being good. But a good many people would say it’s actually about being alive, and alive in a way that allows the flow of life to move freely.”
That is a view most environmentalists would likely agree with, and something regenerative or organic farmers, for whom life in the soil is nowadays almost sacred, are perhaps enacting every day.
We are speaking at an event held by Cusp – the Centre for the Understanding of Social Prosperity, of which Williams is patron – after a keynote talk in which he has already answered most of my carefully prepared questions.
The topic has been ‘food justice within planetary boundaries’, otherwise known as fairly priced good food, available to all, without trashing the Earth. Williams has been talking about his career spent travelling and visiting communities addressing these issues in some way; his keynote designed to demonstrate how the different issues
of health, food, justice, power, climate and nature are inherently linked.
It's something he is well placed to do after a career spent in international, academic and interfaith relations and diplomacy, and his oratory skill in joining the dots is on full display.
But Williams isn’t your average bishop. He’s also a published poet, an honorary professor and an activist. He’s multilingual (five in total) and has a reputation for being radical, outspoken and controversial –depending on who you talk to.
He is probably most well known for his nine years as Archbishop of Canterbury. So what does his experience in leading a faithbased community have to offer the issues we face today?
“We’ve lost some of that being part of a connected whole,” he says. “Urbanisation doesn’t help. Globalisation doesn’t help. It's not that you tear up cities and international relations, but you think about what it is to be more attentively involved in the place where you are and the people you’re with. It’s deeply fulfilling.”
For Williams, the strength of a community can be useful in providing resilience for the significant challenges the world faces, including the climate and nature crises, and volatile geopolitics. But it can also be an empowering, perhaps radical, platform for changing the course of some of these challenges.
In recent years, there has seemingly been a recognition of this, with more visible groups coming together on issues from the youth strikes for climate to the ongoing public sector walk-outs.
I suspect we're not going to get very much further with the electoral system we've got.
Williams, who led a multi-faith ceremony to ask leaders to confront humanity’s destructive habits ahead of COP27 last autumn, agrees that “there’s rather more activism than we’ve seen for quite a while."
“Maybe 20 years ago, I would have said teenagers and students from that era were not quite as active as I remember from the late 60s, and then it’s sort of swung back a bit,” he says. But it’s not all rosy, and he sees modern day activism as occasionally “chaotic and scattergun”, with single-issue politics sometimes taking over from the bigger points.
All the same, the issue isn’t a lack of uprising in citizen awareness and consciousness, as polls repeatedly show how the public believe climate change to be the biggest issue of our time. Rather, the issue is how leaders are responding.
“At the same time, unsurprisingly, we have a political establishment that’s digging itself in more and more firmly,” he says, and points to the need for structural, rather than social, reform.
“Whether we’re at a tipping point I don’t know. I would like to think so. But I also suspect that we’re not going to get very much further with the electoral system we’ve got,” he says, adding that electoral reform will be needed to “get us away from what I think of as ‘Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee’ politics.”
Nevertheless, he still sees it as vital that people “have a sense that they can make a difference." He sees this as one of the core roles of cooperatives, describing them as “agency giving” as much as “problem solving” ventures.
He is in favour of “loosening up our education philosophy”, citing young people who were consulted as part of his work with the Welsh government on shaping the future of the constitution, and who wanted
to be “out there campaigning and voting”.
He’s also interested in localised power structures, which he sees as developing “people's skills in dealing with one other, problem solving and also building a culture”, enabled by strong national leadership.
“It matters for people to be on school governing bodies. It matters for people to be in credit unions, or cooperatives. And I think that is where you start. It won’t happen, though, without a bit of a change at the other end. So national governments that actively encourage this.”
While there are plenty of examples of local or regional government – he cites Manchester’s mayor Andy Burnham as an inspiration – on a national scale, the government’s Public Order Bill appears to be actively discouraging citizen engagement and action.
It’s the kind of bill Williams might have had personal experience with – in 1985, he was arrested for singing psalms as part of a protest organised by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament at the US base of Lakenheath - and he says it [the bill] “worries me a great deal.” “I think it’s panicky, and cosmetic. Panicky because it’s a reaction to a largely imagined problem; what’s wrong with the rules we’ve got? What are they trying to fix? And it’s cosmetic because it’s, as they say, ‘red meat’ for the voting base. Never mind
what happens – it looks good.
“People are constantly talking about solutions that have no problems. Brexit, for example – a solution to a problem that didn’t exist. There are real problems! I believe the psychiatrists would call it ‘displacement activity’.” I suggest that might be a relatively nice way of putting it, to which he concedes “it’s as uncynical as I can get.”
There is definitely a sense that, behind the gentle voice, iconic eyebrows and careful answers, there is someone much more outspoken and perhaps even angry at the injustice and inaction facing society. A sign of a life spent in the public spotlight, perhaps, or of holding radical views inside a conservative institution.
The church, of course, is far more than a benign community network. According to the land access campaign website and public resource, Who Owns England, its property arm – the Church Commissioners – owns over 100,000 acres of land and property worth over £2 billion.
Williams is clearly well aware of the significance of this, noting in his talk that “land
ownership is the elephant in the room” and “you can only talk about food sustainability if you have some control over the land.”
The church is notoriously secretive about what land it owns and even the articulate Williams becomes a little less free on the topic. “The church has begun looking at, broadly speaking, the environmental ethics of its investments,” he begins. “It’s looking a bit at the ethics of land use and what it does with its tenants, which has been an issue for quite a long time – several centuries – with some rather hair-raising stories about… when people have taken their eyes off the ball there. So it’s on the radar,” he says, sounding guarded for the first time in our interview, before reverting to the safety of religious metaphors.
“I’d like it to be more so, and I’d like us to be a bit more joined up and forceful about this in public, and particularly about the fact that, in the Christian faith, the consumption of food is actually a sacramental act.
“The main thing that Christians do together is Holy Communion; they eat a little bread and drink a little wine. So we ought to be interested in food – we put it right at the heart of what we do."
It’s clear that for the church to ever fully become a modern blueprint for community,
It matters for people to be in credit unions or cooperatives.Above: The church is a major land owner. Right: A voice of radical optimism. Credit Judy Dean Credit David Bewick
it would need to first recognise its own part in the nexus of power, land and wealth distribution that controls so much of society and food justice issues in this country and globally. I wonder aloud if there are probably some competing interests that might be standing in the way of such a coming together. “I dare say,” says Williams, with no further detail except a wry smile.
It’s perhaps why he is so interested in change happening on the fringes as a counter to centralised power systems, and why he sees most hope in the visions of the Welsh government, where national food partnerships are funding community-led projects across the country, or Burnham’s Manchester-led vision for local government.
As he puts it: “Change will happen, as is often the case, on the margins. I’m obviously very interested in what can be done in Wales to revive and renew the democratic system. The experience of smaller scale governmental units is, I think, very important for challenging the astonishingly centralised culture and economy.”
After such a varied career, is there anyone who has stood out in terms of leadership, religious or otherwise?
“I still have immense respect and
affection for the Dalai Lama. I’ve had the privilege to know him a little bit and work with him on a few things. He’s just one of those people who, without any of the pomp of leadership, conveys a very simple authority. And that’s impressive. He doesn’t need the cosmetic stuff.
“But on political leaders, I struggle to think of current examples. I have great admiration for Mark Drakeford, the First Minister of Wales, just because I think he’s a man of manifest integrity, without a great, dramatic ego.
“Another figure, I can’t even remember his name, but it was what he did that impressed me. I was travelling in the Solomon Islands and met the Premier of Malaita. I was celebrating mass in a football field, and the Premier said to me: ‘We’ve just had the civil war, and a lot of people think it was all someone else’s fault. And of course it wasn’t, it was ours too. I’m going to ask you to absolve us for our complicity.’ How many leaders would say my job is to focus on fallibility? That’s leadership.”
And with that, our time is up, and all that’s left is a glimpse of a vision of a fairer world, with robust communities and ethical leadership. Just a glimpse in a blue eye, but it's there nonetheless.
“Healthy
“A
“The
What is collective action? Simply put, it’s the power and strength you feel when you connect with others – whether that’s something as simple as a neighbourhood seed swap or hosting friends over a homemade meal, or signing a petition, taking part in citizen science, or joining a peaceful demonstration. There’s more than just safety in numbers; there’s joy, human resilience and a huge sense of empowerment.
Volunteer
Visit
rights
mass trespass. Follow Right
gig or concert for unrivalled collective atmosphere Start
Go Join a peaceful protest or camp out
Leave no trace!
Surf and sustainability: sas.org.uk
Connect with regenerative groundswellag.com
Inspiring talks to shake off the
Protest for the planet: extinctionrebellion.uk
The Dartmoor Wild Camping Action Group was set up in response to the recent court case between hedge fund manager Alexander Darwall and the Dartmoor National Park. The group intend to use the camp outs to raise awareness for the upcoming appeal, but also to practice and promote ‘leave no trace’ principles.
Campaigner Rick Stewart at the camp out, which coincided with the 20th anniversary of the Land Reform Act in Scotland. Campaign group Right to Roam is currently asking the government to support an extended Right to Roam Act for England and Wales.
Photographer Fern Leigh Albert wild camped on Dartmoor to hear how a court case has reignited the movement for land access.
As night fell, cloud cleared and temperatures dropped, and campers were rewarded with an incredible starry night sky. That night also concluded the event ‘Starry Starry Fortnight’, set up by the campaign group The Stars Are For Everyone. People within England and Wales were encouraged to camp out in their national parks to raise awareness for land justice. Campaigners are pushing for wild camping to be legal in all national parks across the country.
Rebecca Trebilcock, a passionate outdoors spokesperson and wild camping campaigner, was an organiser and speaker at the Princetown rally in December. She is now raising awareness for Save Dartmoor - a crowdfunder set up for the Dartmoor National Park, which is raising money for legal costs to appeal the court decision.
On a cold, crisp February afternoon, hikers gathered in a small carpark next to Hound Tor. A cardboard sign saying ‘Dartmoor Wild Camping Action Group’ pointed in the direction of Hayne Down. The majority didn’t know each other, but gathered for a common purpose: to raise awareness for the Save Dartmoor appeal and for greater access to land. Mark Hayhurst, an outdoor education teacher, helped organise rallies when the Darwalls went to court with the Dartmoor National Park. Since then, he’s continued to promote wild camping and the Save Dartmoor campaign.
Mark Beacham prepared breakfast in a frost-covered tent for him and Pipit the dog. Although living in Devon, this was the first time Mark had wild camped on Dartmoor. He found the Dartmoor Wild Camping Action Group online and decided it was a great way to meet likeminded people who are passionate about the outdoors. He says it was a catalyst for "something he’d wanted to do for some time", and the group has also given him a wider understanding of local and national issues concerning land rights.
We awoke early to catch the sunrise - a welcome return of the sun after a frosty night under the stars.
Just past the British Library in King's Cross, down a seemingly residential street, stands a wall heavy with green, blue, and yellow and lines crossing every which way, mimicking the Tube map. Blocked letters read ‘Story Garden powered by Global Generation’.
The wall features rounded glass windows, offering passers-by a sneak peek into the secret urban garden just beyond. On a chilly Saturday morning in February, the wellorganised community garden, smack in the middle of the city, is alive with residents and
families. A local gardener is handing out seeds, many of which have been saved from previous crops. A yurt, warmed with a small fire, is occupied by a group of caregivers, children, and older women, learning to weave bird feeders from willow branches. A shipping container-turned-café dishes out free bowls of hot dal and rice and baked goods.
Global Generation is a London-based non-profit organisation whose mission is to create hands-on, land-based learning activities for residents and families that are not only fun and educational but inclusive of backgrounds, abilities and local interests. Their goal is to connect the dots between community access, ecology, creativity and health. Global Generation offers many access points: after-school programmes, work placements for special educational needs, resident-focused workshops, dedicated growing for the local food bank, and youth ambassador programmes.
Co-director of the organisation, Nicole Van den Eijnde, says: “It's about helping people connect to themselves within nature, then establish a connection between the food that we grow, what we eat, and the way that we are with each other. We work with people across ages and backgrounds, exploring heritage through storytelling, food growing and creating together.”
There can be a disconnect within the educational system for children who may not see themselves or their foods represented. Breaking down lessons or foods into ingredients, plants and sensory-related activities helps to increase representation by allowing room for personal interpretation.
Food writer Bee Wilson is the co-founder of TastEd, a sensory-led organisation that
Two organisations are using food and storytelling to explore cultural heritage and strengthen community connections.
Adrienne Katz Kennedy finds out more.Above and right: Ecology, health and education at Global Generation. Opposite middle: Feedback from a TastEd lesson.
helps create language and opportunities for school-aged children to connect with produce, hoping to stoke a curious and healthy relationship with nutritious foods.
"From an early stage, we realised that the method could lead to some important conversations among children and teachers about the cultural significance of food through lessons on smell,” she explains.
“When we brought fresh mint into the classroom and asked the children what it reminded them of, almost everyone had a memory associated with family and home. Children of a Turkish or Moroccan background might say, 'that smells like my grandmother's tea,' and a boy whose parents were from Vietnam said, 'Pho,' whereas children of a white British background might say, 'it reminds me of when we make mint sauce to go with roast lamb.’
“It is almost as if the mint enables the children to bring their families into the classroom with them.”
Like TastEd, Global Generation works to create activities that allow room for interpretation and discussion.
"What works well is to have activities with a focused purpose, so you can have
these conversations side by side whilst your hands are busy. It can feel less invasive and more relaxed this way and lead to better discussions,” says Van den Eijnde.
"The stories we tell about food are such a central aspect of why we eat and what we eat,” says Wilson. “TastEd is all about the relationship between food and humans, mediated by the senses. But our senses are always informed by culture.”
TastEd delivers a variety of lessons that connect to the national curriculum. Through an ingredient-based focal point, students can see a variety of connection points. In a lesson covering the Tudors, some students recognised barberries, popular fruits during this time period, in their own family’s Persian or Indian heritage.
Global Generation, on the other hand, uses storytelling and its connection to imagination to help create intergenerational learning. Its ‘Voices of the Water’ project uses cultural water stories contributed by participants to highlight the universal need for water and its ecological significance. Simultaneously, the project works to
connect an older generation of local Bangladeshi women with teenagers through storytelling and food sharing.
There are two key rules in every TastEd lesson: ‘No one has to like' and 'No one has to try'. These rules are underpinned by a set of classroom expectations that value a respect for individual choices and preferences, a key social skill, delivered through the food. Feedback from educators showed that, by allowing children to share their family histories and experiences in a welcoming environment, teachers understood their students in new ways. The benefit of this kind of connection and cultural exchange between students and educators and the effect it can have on learning cannot be overstated.
This movement of cultural and culinary representation as a means of access to health is growing worldwide, with the indigenous food sovereignty movement in the US at the heart of some of these bigger discussions. Organisations like Indigenous Food Labs, The Sioux Chef, Dream of Wild Health, and educators like Linda Black Elk, Sean Sherman and Brian Yazzie showcase the value and health benefits of native science, indigenous foods and plantbased medicines through representation, education and empowerment.
The work of all of these organisations and many others like them is to increase cultural visibility and connectivity through food, to create a more equitable, healthy and delicious future for all.
Urban farms are bypassing supermarkets to create their own local food systems and connect communities. Robbie Armstrong reports.
Blackhill, in the north-east of Glasgow, is flanked on one side by the M8 motorway and the M80 on the other. It’s a food desert, the name given to an urban area in which it is difficult to find or buy affordable or good quality fresh food.
St Paul's Youth Forum was set up in the area in 1997 to tackle the problems young people face through exercise, healthy eating and education programmes.
Blackhill's Growing community garden was established by St Paul’s with a simple mission: to eradicate food insecurity. They bring the community together through a number of activities revolving around growing, cooking and eating.
“We have a community garden with three polytunnels, several raised beds, chickens and a large community orchard maintained through regular volunteer sessions. We also run workshops all year round to engage children and young people in growing,” explains community growing coordinator Joe Lowit.
It’s hard to keep up with their raft of events, markets and projects. Three days a week they run a vegetable ‘barra’ (Scots for wheelbarrow) in which fresh fruit and vegetables are sold at wholesale cost, subsidising prices for those in need. They also give away their own produce, eggs from their flock of laying hens, jam from their own soft fruits and seasonal honey.
“It’s incredibly important. A lot of the glue of the community is built around social spaces involving food, and when that’s absent, people suffer,” Lowit says, highlighting that the only other social spaces in the area are pubs.
They run community meals, free and open to anyone, which have been expanded from twice to four times weekly due to the cost-of-living crisis. These include a full sit-down meal, a lunch club run by the community and an evening when young people come and cook pizza in a woodfired oven. Alongside this, they work with four local schools and a nursery to provide education as part of the curriculum.
South of the city is the Wash House Garden, hidden away in the ex-industrial area of Parkhead, which ranks fifth highest in the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation.
Bypassing supermarkets, this
agroecological garden grows fruit and veg for 35 households and a few food businesses from spring through to autumn. They also run workshops on food growing and cooking, free community meals and gardening sessions twice a week.
Founder Max Johnson explains: “Anyone is welcome, you don’t have to be fit or able bodied, we have people from every walk of life.
“We have a joint lunch, everyone brings food to share and we sit down and eat a meal; it’s core to us – we feel like a family.”
But running the garden isn’t without its difficulties. “It’s really hard to make money
from growing veg – we knew that but just decided to give it a go,” Johnson explains.
“I’m in it because it’s environmentally good, not to make money, but we need to reconcile that with the need to make money and be self-sufficient. It’s a tricky balance,” he adds.
The team at Wash House has difficulties in directing support, as many won’t divulge that they are struggling or need help with the cost of a veg box. Even then, a half price box remains too expensive for many. In the future they hope to work with partnership organisations that can refer individuals in need.
Soon they will be launching a Crowdfunder to cover community activities, employ community gardeners, cover the cost of infrastructural improvements and increase outreach work to reach more people.
“We still really want to push for providing something for lower income households, but frankly, my opinion is that the price of food is artificially low,” says Johnson.
“People need to be paid a fair wage. A lot
A lot of the glue of the community is built around social spaces involving food.Above: Locals growing at Springfield Farm in Hackney. Left: Head grower at Dagenham Farm, Alice Holden. Credit Helena Smith
of food in our system is produced in slave labour,” he adds.
“It’s not a small market garden’s responsibility to provide discounted food, but it feels like we need to do something given the level of food poverty. On one hand we have a conscience, but also it’s not our responsibility to solve this, and nor should it be.”
A similar model to the Wash House Garden operating at a larger scale can be found at Dagenham Farm, east London, which grows organic produce sold through a fruit and veg bag scheme.
Operating since 2012, the farm produces around five tonnes of veg every year. It grows near to areas of population density and helps to engage local people in food growing. The 1.7-acre farm shows what can be achieved at relative scale on the fringes of cities. Head grower Alice Holden explains: “Growing Communities, which Dagenham Farm is part of, allows access to food, supports farmers by paying them fairly and allows easy means to provide farmers with fair pay and a logistically viable market through a veg box scheme and farmers’ markets.
“I couldn't supply supermarkets because of the prices they’d offer me – Growing Communities is a not-for-profit giving money back to the farmers, allowing the farmers to keep growing and going and creates a different system which has been going since the 90s,” she adds.
“It shows there is a viable alternative: it’s a more direct way of paying people. They are able to pay farmers a fair price because it’s a not-forprofit, it's not being syphoned off but being redistributed in a healthy, agroecological way.
“The truth is, it costs more to produce organic food, which isn’t subsidised; it is fairly priced, but it isn’t the cheapest on the market.
“We also give food to food banks and people can donate bags as well. We try to make it as affordable as possible but have to make sure it’s fair,” she adds.
The UK suffers from low levels of food
security, and imports around 46 per cent of the total food it consumes. Urban agriculture therefore offers untapped potential in offering sustainable, affordable and nutritious food to those living within cities.
Research shows urban farms could supply up to four times the amount of fresh fruit and vegetables that the UK currently imports. The recent tomato and salad shortage only highlights the need for the UK to grow more of its own produce.
Food insecurity can lead to poorer diet, stress and poor health outcomes. Urban agriculture, on the other hand, can improve access to fresh food, while developing skills, social connections and wellbeing. But despite this potential, and the best efforts of growers in urban communities, there is a tension between the desire to provide affordable food to local communities and the labour-intensive
Frankly, my opinion is that the price of food is artificially low.Above top and above: Blackhill's Growing in Glasgow provides local food security. Above right: Horton Community Farm in Bradford uses food growing as therapy after being unable to provide affordable food at scale.
nature of small-scale farming.
Add to this the stark truth that in 202021, around one in five people in the UK were living in poverty (equivalent to 13.4 million people), according to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
North Glasgow’s Blackhill is at the sharp end, and Lowit has seen food insecurity ramp up recently.
“Something that has become more and more necessary is our community larder: a help-yourself food bank that is free to all without referrals, with old supermarket food alongside food from the garden. Sadly it’s the busiest it’s ever been at the moment,” he says.
“Car ownership isn’t high in Glasgow – so people pay a poverty premium in public transport to buy fruit and veg, which is compounded when you consider people who have poor health, or the elderly population in Blackhill who really benefit from having the community food barra near enough that they can walk to it,” he adds.
Jonathan Pollard is the director of Horton Community Farm, situated in the heart of urban Bradford, where they lease one third of a 5.5 acre allotment site. Rather than focus on scaling up food growing, their focus is on increasing access to green space and using food growing for social and horticultural therapy. They run free sessions for refugees, asylum seekers, carers, children, and those living with mental health difficulties.
“We grow food on a small scale, which is a long way from commercial viability,
owing to a lack of enough building space, inadequate plumbing, and the time and effort required in bringing enough land into production,” he explains.
Ensuring lower income communities within the city have access to locally grown food remains a goal they are working towards in the long term.
“Providing affordable, local food was one of the main drivers of our project early on, 14 years ago, as we sought to regenerate an allotment site that had suffered decades of decline,” Pollard explains.
“Producing local food organically and with little input from machinery is very labour intensive, and making the leap to this being a profitable part of a business is difficult.
“We look to one day running a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) scheme with fees on a sliding scale related to people’s income.
“Obviously, buying food from a supermarket is very disconnected from the slow, precarious process of growing food,” he adds. “Through our project, we
nurture an appreciation of this process and demonstrate the huge satisfaction of growing and eating your own fresh produce, while also revealing the difficulties that the vagaries of the seasons bring.”
One project increasing access to affordable good food is Bridging the Gap, coordinated by sustainable food alliance Sustain. It aims to make agroecological food accessible to all, particularly those on a low income, with an initial three-year grant of around £1.5 million.
This, Sustain’s programme director Sarah Williams argues, feels “more relevant than ever, following the climate emergency, years of increasing household food insecurity, the widening of health and income inequalities and now a cost-of-living crisis."
In Tower Hamlets, fresh fruit and vegetables are being prescribed to lowincome families in a year-long pilot aimed at tackling poverty-related hunger and health inequalities, co-funded by Bridging the Gap partner Alexandra Rose Charity, along with the local council and health partnership.
The ultimate barrier to making nature and climate-friendly foods accessible to people on lower incomes is the high rate of poverty here in the UK, as well as the higher relative costs associated with agroecological food growing.
Projects across the country are showing that a more sustainable and equitable food system is not only possible, but essential.
First though, we must tackle the unacceptable levels of poverty that too many in the UK face today.
is a tension between affordable food
Some of the absolute seasonal favourites from this time of year include the first British-grown broad beans, new potatoes (Jersey Royals, Cornish or Pembrokeshire earlies) and asparagus.
Although British asparagus is delicious and prized for its short season, you can still find the occasional Peruvian label lurking on packs so it's worth double checking.
During the so-called Hungry Gap, Spanish-grown broad beans and broccoli cover for new season greenery until the main UK growing season kicks in, alongside front runners like UK purple sprouting broccoli. On fruit, some of the earliest English strawberries will start to appear, along with the first European summer fruit bringing the taste of summer holidays: pick up a mini Spanish watermelon and prepare for the first of the stonefruit. In June and July, celebrate the end of the Hungry Gap like the end of Lent with a full rainbow of British-grown veg and salad, as well as berries and cherries in their peak seasons. In summer, supply of favourites like apples, pears and citrus moves over to the southern hemisphere countries. They might not be flown, but they have much further to travel – so for peak freshness, follow the seasons of countries closer to home and you’ll be rewarded with the best flavour.
Poached rhubarb is the ultimate balance of sweet and sharp. If you do it well, you’ll
Try rhubarb ketchup for a savoury option with a few more adventurous ingredients
peril that the acidity of the rhubarb will curdle the creaminess of the custard. The perfect baked custard is the skill here – at one end of the spectrum is silky, barely set custard, at the other is sweet, grainy scrambled eggs. It’s all about method.
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Sitting down to eat with a group of friends should be convivial, relaxed and tasty. Avoid the foams, towers and squiggles, and concentrate on freshness, flavour and seasonality as your foundations.
I would eschew too much formality, too. No straight backs, heavy linen and cut glass. Guests should feel free to put their elbows on the table and lean in. If you need more than one type of fork to eat a dish, you’re in the wrong arena. Life is too short for napkin rings.
Top right: Bring people together around a table of seasonal food. Below: Salads are easy to prep ahead.
A salad is an instinctive choice. It isn’t too heavy, can be served cold, and all the elements can be prepared ahead of time. Leave tomatoes and peppers until summer and build it around something at its best right now. That might be asparagus or even samphire, while their fleeting seasons last – or new potatoes, perfect paired with radishes, fresh herbs and boiled eggs. Serve on a large platter, layering ingredients to show off colours, shapes and contrasts. Herbs, crumbled cheese, nuts and dressings are added at the end as a finishing flourish.
Communal and ‘familystyle’ relieves the pressure of plating up and allows people to judge how much they want. A slowly braised stew, ladled from a pan in the centre of the table, is easy for all – try an aromatic veg tagine, a navarin of lamb and spring veg, or a fish stew full of fennel and Jersey Royals. Bowls of chopped herbs, a piquant green sauce, toasted nuts and seeds, or lemons for squeezing all add to the theatre and the idea that final tweaks are personal.
There is an anecdote about legendary restaurant Chez Panisse once serving nothing but a perfectly ripe peach for dessert. A bold act, but not a bad premise around which to build a pud –go for what is ripe and in season. When the first strawberries arrive, serve with a little cream or pair with some lightly poached and sweetened rhubarb, piled atop pavlova.
Steaks, fish or stir-fries need to be cooked just-so or served sizzling hot. Meals that need serving and eating fast aren’t conducive to a leisurely approach.
Leave discussions about house prices, tribal politics and virology at the door. It isn’t just food and drink that can turn sour. Boo those that disobey!
Enjoy the sense of occasion and leave time to put on something that makes you feel fabulous; that goes for you and the table. Bring greenery and flowers in for table vases and choose candles for joyfully relaxed lighting.
Plan any kid-friendly alternatives ahead of time rather than having to cobble something together mid meal.
Communal eating is back on the cards. Here’s how to bring people together around the table in a stress-free, stylish and seasonal way, writes chef Bob Andrew.
Slow Food board member and professor at the University of Palermo.
peaks and green valleys, and can be experienced via friendly guided tours, selforganised visits to producers or vineyards, or just in the gastronomic traditions of the villages scattered throughout.
Born in Italy, Slow Food is now a global movement of millions across 160 countries, set up to counteract the disappearance of local food traditions and spread of fast food culture. The model is based on experience tourism, where travellers can meet producers, farmers, cheesemakers, winegrowers or chefs. As Sottile puts it: “Meeting people has always acted as a spur to travel. The excitement of travelling comes from experiences, hearing new stories and meeting new people. The result is a convivial community that interacts as a system, welcoming visitors who discover it through food.”
A million miles away from all-inclusive resorts cut off from local traditions and people who can really open your eyes to a place, Slow Food and its community-led ethos offer access to food, communities and place in a whole new way.
One of the most characteristic food products of the Biella mountains, in the Piedmont region of northern Italy, is Upper Elvo raw milk butter, made with the cream that rises to the top of raw milk before being cooled in fraidél – small stone structures fed with icy spring water. This milk comes from the Pezzata Rossa di Oropa, a local cattle breed suited to grazing in steep mountain pastures, whose meat is also cured, or served in hearty stews alongside polenta made with stone ground cornmeal from the local mills.
“Going there up on the mountain, visiting the producers and experiencing how they make this excellent traditional butter, is a unique experience, which also educates people on the value of preserving the ecosystem by the production of this particular dairy food,” says Francesco Sottile,
If you’ve ever wanted to explore a food culture outside of your own, now is the time to try. Slow Food is a global movement of producers and people passionate about good food and preserving local traditions, with its sister network Slow Food Travel offering the chance to support this way of life as a unique holiday experience.
“It’s a different way of being a tourist than mass tourism, which often harms the environment,” explains Sottile. “The Slow Food Travel project represents an attempt to restore an environmental and ethical dimension to tourism, because the environmental and social implications of mass tourism are dramatic.”
Another food tradition in the Biella area is chestnuts dried on planks over wood fires. Until a century ago, these chestnuts were considered the 'bread' of the mountain people, but today only a few farms have chestnut groves and process the nuts. Food is deeply connected to the cultural history of this mountain region, with its white-capped
The Biella region is easy to travel around independently, or you can book via a travel guide or operator. Find more info and a map at fondazioneslowfood.com/ biella-mountains or explore the different Slow Food itineraries or producers at slowfoodtravel.biellese.net.
Go to atl.biella.it for the well organised and welcoming tourism website.
By train, take the Eurostar from London to Paris, change in Paris for a 6hr train to Turin, Italy, and then change for the final leg to Biella San Paolo. From £155.
Experience the global Slow Food movement in the Biella mountains of northern Italy, writes Nina Pullman.Left: Butter is made from raw milk cooled by mountain spring water. Below: The Biella mountains in Italy.
accessible dishes that they are likely to cook themselves. Or, to the personality of the content creator.
Take Martyn Odell (@lagomchef) as a good example. His energetic homecooking videos have gained huge attention. He has become so popular he was featured on the TikTok television ad and now has numerous brand deals. Another example is Nonna Pia (@nonnapiaa), an Italian grandma who shares her traditional cooking recipes in her very ordinary home – no frills, nothing fancy, just good home-cooked food.
Three years’ ago, I wrote about how Instagram changed the way I cook and use recipes.
Instagram is full of aspirational content; picture-perfect food with heavily stylised recipe shots, immaculate kitchens, and more often than not, the beautiful, slim, white women behind them. It was all a little shallow and unrelatable – after all, who spends an hour making sure every sesame seed and slice of avocado in their salad bowl is perfectly placed?
Fast forward a couple of years and there’s a new app in town. Based on users uploading short videos, TikTok’s success has skyrocketed, and with it has come a new era of recipe content made by everyday home cooks.
With its own reinvented algorithm, TikTok is a space where anyone’s food video can go viral, and unlike Instagram, it doesn’t need to look aesthetically appealing. Raw, messy, in-the-moment content does best, and for high views you don’t have to make beautifully curated plates of food, or even take a good video.
Instead, people respond to relatable,
Seeing home cooks is such a relatable and accessible trend that I’ve recently created my own food account (@goodmuudfood on Instagram). I was making videos anyway in my role as Riverford's social media manager, many of which used my own recipes. I think what people like is that it’s food they would actually make. My recipes are built around everyday ingredients and I’m a big fan of ‘things on toast’. I think the key is showing how you can try new things every day, while still keeping it simple.
The community of online cooks has grown so much that recipe brand Mob has even developed its own app, Peckish, where anyone can share their recipes (imagine Instagram, but solely for food and where each post has a recipe attached).
It’s yet to be seen whether the era of the home cook spells the end for polished influencers. TikTok is certainly not immune to the push to sell – TikTok Shop is set to be a big focus for 2023. But perhaps, before that takes off, its relatable style might bring a little cooking confidence into the phones and the minds of its young user base – and if that sparks a new generation of home cooks, that is no bad thing.
Out with the aspirational, picture-perfect world of food and recipes; the era of the home cook is here, writes Emily Muddeman.
As humans, we place significant value on the communities we belong to. But do we give enough thought to the vast microbial communities we host inside our bodies? The microbiome is a bustling community of trillions of microorganisms of different species, predominantly bacteria but also archaea, fungi, viruses and parasites.
Did you know that the number of bacterial genes within your body vastly outnumbers your own? The trillions of bacteria that live in our bodies contain more novel genes than there are stars in the observable universe. Posing the question –are we more bacteria than human?
The largest and most important community of microbes live in the gut, but we have several microbiomes, most notably
the oral, skin and (for women) vaginal microbiomes. Our interactions with our gut microbiome have a powerful impact on many areas of health - digestion, immunity, mood and cognition to name but a few. As we learn more and more about the microbiome, awareness of the need to nurture this community within is growing too.
What does a healthy gut microbiome look like? Our individual microbiomes are unique and distinct. From one person to the next, we only share roughly 20 per cent of the bacterial species in our gut. Meaning there is no ideal ‘blueprint’ to aim for. Simply put, we need a diverse range of beneficial strains to be present; these strains convey positive effects on our health and work to keep potentially trouble-making strains in check.
Taking care of the complex microbiome within your gut can help digestion, health and even mood, writes nutritional therapist Hannah Neville Green.Above: The gut microbiome is made up of microorganisms. @hannahngnutrition
When it comes to nurturing our microbiome, we know that eating a diverse range of plant foods is important to nourish our gut bacteria. This is because they contain prebiotic fibre – a food source for the bacteria we want to encourage in our guts. Gut microbiota ferment prebiotic fibre, producing beneficial by-products – like shortchain fatty acids – which support the health of our gut lining and can help keep inflammation in check.
As well as feeding your microbiome, introducing fermented foods – which contain live bacteria – is a great way to support gut health. Foods like sauerkraut, kimchi and kefir contain a distinct population of microorganisms, which have a positive impact on our gut microbiome, either by colonising the gut or temporarily taking up space and allowing resident beneficial bacteria to thrive.
Microbial communities are also responsive to our interactions with other humans. Fascinatingly, studies have found that long-term intimate relationships impact our gut microbiome, with couples having more similar microbiomes than
strangers. It’s also been shown that people with larger social networks tend to have a more diverse microbiome.
And it appears that our gut bacteria can influence our behaviour in turn. Recent investigations indicate that these microbes impact cognitive function and behaviour patterns, such as social interaction and stress management. Anxiety and stress have also been linked to reduced diversity, suggesting that interventions to improve gut health offer promising potential in the field of mood disorders. Katerina Johnson, a researcher at Oxford University, has found that abundances of specific bacterial species are significantly predicted by personality traits. She reflects that: "Our diets are typically deficient in fibre, we inhabit over sanitised environments and are dependent on antibiotic treatments. All these factors can influence the gut microbiome and so may be affecting our behaviour and psychological well-being in currently unknown ways."
We’ve long been aware of the powerful connection with our guts – with popular terms like ‘gut feeling’ and ‘gut instinct’. It’s fascinating that science is now exploring the mechanisms behind this. Hopefully this growing awareness will lead to us living in greater harmony with our microbial communities and reaping the health benefits this brings.
The most powerful prebiotic foods include:
• Jerusalem artichokes
• Garlic and onions
• Bananas (especially on the greener side)
• Dandelion greens
• Whole oats
• Apples
Be a pro
'Prebiotic' means encouraging growth of gut bacteria, whereas 'probiotic' means containing live bacteria (e.g. fermented foods).
Do we give enough thought to the vast microbial communities we host inside our bodies?
Fight food waste on Olio Use this popular sharing app to give and get free things locally. Olio has a particular focus on food, but you can find all sorts of other items, too. Download Olio from Google Play or the App Store.
Rehome items from FreeCycle or Trash Nothing There are several sites that help local communities to share unwanted stuff for free. Two good ones to try are freecycle.org and trashnothing.com.
Visit your local library of things
A 'library of things' loans out items to people in the local community – often tools, DIY equipment and other bulky or expensive things that you may only need occasionally. Search online for one near you.
Hitch a ride on Liftshare
Got space in your car, or need to get somewhere? Liftshare matches passengers with drivers heading in the same direction, reducing your carbon footprint and saving money. Liftshare.co.uk.
Cuddles and company with Borrow My Doggy
Miss spending time with a dog, or have a furry friend of your own that you could use a hand with, for walks or even a holiday? Borrowmydoggy. com will help you find trusted local people (and dogs!).
Be part of Community Supported Agriculture
In the CSA model, local farmers sell a certain number of ‘shares’ in their farm at the start of a season. In return for this direct, upfront support, you receive regular portions of the farm’s produce. Find your nearest at community supportedagriculture. org.uk/find-a-csa.
Pop into the actual library Libraries are full of good stuff. You can visit for a welcoming space, free books and audiobooks, and computer access – or join online to borrow e-books via an app. Many libraries also host craft sessions, talks and cultural events as a great way to meet people.
community of things
Illustrations by Victoria Holmes via Skribbl, a collection of hand-drawn illustrations by independent artists, available to download from weareskribbl.com.
@poppy.okotcha
Sometimes, standing in this little garden, particularly at this time of year when we’re in the awkward space somewhere between winter and early spring and the beds are mainly empty, I doubt the radicalness of growing.
The space feels so small and, to be honest, unproductive food-wise, because last year I only managed to get three kale plants in the ground to overwinter. The Elephant garlic is just visible poking up through the soil if you look closely, and one bed of broad beans stoically squat in the face of the cold and wet, albeit miles from giving me any beans.
But standing in this little garden, I do feel safe, I feel strong and I feel calm. I don't know if I'm solving the problems of the world, but then again, life was never about solving anything, only a constant muddling. It’s a bit like when you try to untangle a necklace and there's not much of an end in sight, so eventually you start to quite enjoy
the process. Growing and sharing food seems to help with the muddling. Lots of others have thought so too.
“Some people ask me: ‘But where is imperialism?’ Just look on to your plates when you eat. You see the imported corn, rice or millet. This is imperialism. No need to go further. We must produce more, because the one who feeds you usually imposes his will upon you.” These are the words of Thomas Sankara. Thomas was a militant social justice campaigner, committed to freeing his country, Burkina Faso, from its colonial past. Sankara was living through a time in which it was becoming more evident that following political independence, many newly liberated African countries suffered from a lack of economic independence.
Colonies left behind infrastructure which had been designed to make the extraction of raw materials efficient, rather than create a cohesive and functioning country. Most states lacked the means to add value to
any of the products they could produce. They were dependent (and many still largely are to this day) on trade with their former colonisers.
Sankara believed in preventing famine through agrarian self-sufficiency and land reform, rather than accepting handouts in the form of food aid, which he felt was “counter-productive and has kept us thinking that we can only be beggars who need aid. We must put aside this type of aid and succeed in producing more." To combat the desertification that was occurring in the country and compromising farming, he had over 10 million trees planted. Central to his policy was the idea of revolutionary selfreliance as a means for liberation.
There are countless movements through history that recognise and even centre the power in food; freedom and food seem somehow inseparable. Another of my favourites is the Black Panther Party’s ‘Free Breakfast For Schoolchildren Program’, which was recognised by the head of the FBI as “potentially the greatest threat to efforts by authorities to neutralise the BPP and destroy what it stands for."
It is the humble power in our food that originally drew me to it. Food's power is rooted in its ability to nourish, not its ability to destroy. It draws people in with the promise of vitality, rather than the threat of annihilation.
It pulls us together, invites recognition of common ground and often it invites us to do something very powerful indeed – to share. Food nourishes us on a practical level, but it also has the potential to bring beauty into our lives. As the saying goes: ‘Bread for all and roses too.' We need both to thrive.
Standing in this little garden I do feel safe, I feel strong and I feel calm.Above: People have always recognised the power in food.
In reeds rippling, a white heron almost vanished from view, Little Egret. Its friend, Great Crested Grebe, too, once nearly extinct, for beauty, so crude: murderous millinery. Hats? So, rude! Saved by leagues of fur, feathers and plumes. Elizabeth and Eliza fighting for laws, their voices a shield, singing strength and force. Flocking together, birds of a feather, giving power to all to protect and support, like plumage in wings, to lift, fly and soar, This white heron singing its shore song to all. The power is yours, the power is yours, to unite and restore.
Life and beauty, uncaptured and caught, a force for nature, full of wonder and awe.
This poem is part of Natural Wonder, a poetry collection and trail supported by Arts Council England. | www.ruthiecollins.co.uk.
Nature has inspired art for thousands of years, and two ground-breaking new exhibitions at Kew Gardens are exploring this evolution via intricate botanical paintings and sculptural work exploring faith and cultural exchange.
In Pakistani-American contemporary artist Anila Quayyum Agha’s installation, All the Flowers Are for Me, a gallery space is filled with elaborate patterns inspired by Islamic art and architecture, surrounding a large steel cube. The work encompasses ideas of peaceful co-existence within the context of an increasingly fractious world.
Alongside this, a wall-mounted piece is inspired by Great Piece of Turf by the botanical artist Albrecht Dürer, depicting a variety of wild plants. Created over 500 years after Dürer’s piece, Stealing Moments demonstrates the constant evolution of botanical art forms.
“As an artist who draws constant inspiration from the beauty, shapes and structures of our precious natural world, I’m delighted to be bringing my work to Kew Gardens for the first time this April,” said Quayyum Agha.
Running simultaneously is Plants of the Qur’ān, an exhibition of 25 new botanical paintings by Sue Wickison. After travelling in the Middle East, Wickison worked alongside Kew scientist Dr Shahina Ghazanfar to research and record plants referenced in the Qur’ān, including garlic, pomegranate, date palms and henna. Highlighting the cultural, agricultural and botanical significance of a variety of species, the exhibition allows visitors to explore the cultural context of these often-everyday plants, alongside their role in modern medicine, as food, and in gardens around the world. “After six years of researching, sourcing and illustrating the many plants which are described in the Qur’ān, it’s wonderful to be able to celebrate the culmination of this work with this new exhibition,” she explained. Kew Gardens' Maria Devaney said: “Whilst their working styles vary hugely in terms of technique, both share a profound connection to nature, recognising the breadth of inspiration which can be drawn from the world around us.”
Until 17 Sept 2023, Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art, Kew Gardens. Gallery entry included in admission.
Art speaks where words are unable to explain.
Two new exhibitions at Kew explore the role of
Allium Extravaganza
May | Arundel Castle, West Sussex
A celebration of thousands of alliums in bloom, described as 'the fireworks of gardening'. £14.
Farm & Food Literature Festival
13 May | FarmED centre, Cotswolds
A celebration of words, stories and experiences from across the worlds of agroecology, regenerative farming and sustainable food. From £35.
British Library Food Season 2023
Until 7 June | King's Cross, London
Speakers include Nigella Lawson, Henry Dimbleby and Olia Hercules on topics including food culture, media and female chefs. From £3.25.
Until 5 Nov | Killerton House, Devon
From dresses made of parachutes to jackets passed down through generations, this exhibition spotlights how clothes have been repaired, recycled and reused throughout history, and aims to inspire people to reapply these forgotten skills. Free with £14 house entry.
Crossword | Answers on pages 4-35...
ACROSS
1. Democratic right eroded by Public Order Bill (7)
3. See it live for a collective atmosphere (5)
5. Site of recent land access debate (8)
8. Social media platform enabling home cooks (6)
10. Add to salad as a final flourish (4)
11. Movement of foodies born in Italy (4)
14. The church has lots of it (4)
15. Staple of southern African diets (5)
16. Perennial, in season (7)
17. Bring people together over food (4)
1. Used in urban farms and to protect crops (10)
2. Visible across the public sector (7)
4. A group of people (9)
6. Vast collection of bacteria (10)
7. Former Archbishop (5)
9. Teaching food and culture (6)
12. Linked to money. Wepor (anag) (5)
13. Trust (5)
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