Flowing robes, silly hats, and more fruit than one small village knows what to do with. At last Sunday’s Fête des Figues in Nézignan L’Evêque the fig was king and the villagers – all 1322 of us – turned out to watch the Fig-Eaters’ parade, then pigged out on fig bread, tarts and jam.
Fig-Eaters on the move
I love the frivolity of a good village knees-up as much as the next expat, but these figgy festivities have me pondering a pressing topic in sustainable food research: food sovereignty.
Could all this pomp and pageantry be food sovereignty in action?
Or is it just an excuse for well-fed, affluent French folk to pump up their own self-importance (and the importance of figs, of course) and attract curious tourists to spend some hard euros in the boulangerie?
A bunch of Fig-Eaters
Confréries (brotherhoods) like the Confrérie des Becos Ficos ( Fig-Eaters) are part of the institutional food fabric of France. There are thousands of groups all over the country, each celebrating, supporting, and promoting a food or drink with local connections.
I’m no fruit expert, so I can’t tell you what it is about Nézignan that fig trees love so much. But I do know that Nézignanais without their wits about them find saplings sneaking into their personal space…. beside the wall, between the paving cracks, at the bottom of the garden. Last week I even caught one trying to clamber out of the plug hole in my bath tub. (Ok, I didn’t. But you get the picture).
Sneaky
In 2000 Mayor Edgar Sicard, who doubles as the village doctor, took action and set up Becos Ficos to promote the use of figs in Mediterranean cuisine.
But it wasn’t a case of ‘eat them before they beat us’. Dr Sicard also designated a picturesque corner of the village as an experimental arboretum where figologists can study their habits of some 70 varieties. (Yes, figologist is a made-up word. Anyone got any better ideas?).
Every year, as the figs turn from green to purple or black and the plush red flesh lets off its sweet, earthy odour, the Fig-Eaters cook up several vats of jam, each combining 40kg of fruit with 20kg of sugar, in what may be the biggest pop-up jam factory in the south, and declare the season open.
Yum
What’s this got to do with food sovereignty?
What indeed do a French village mayor and his tree-hugging subjects have to do with a global movement that puts people – producers, distributors and consumers – at the heart of the food system, where they may forge their own policies on what they grow, eat and sell, how much, and for what price?
Well, this year the Fête des Figues coincided with a major food sovereignty conference, Nyeleni Europe 2011, in Austria, but I don’t think anyone in Nézignan L’Evêque noticed. (See www.viacampesina.org for the declaration, as well as the history and principles of food sovereignty).
In the grand, global scheme of food justice Nézignan is obscenely well off. Neither the fig jam nor the annual jamboree (sorry) are crucial for supporting livelihoods, even if tourism and agriculture (mostly wine) are important drivers of the local economy.
We also have at least 5 supermarkets within a 5km radius, and socio-economically we are 1 million km away from the communities that grow the coffee, the cocoa, the rice, the beans we buy, whether from Carrefour or from Claude’s little shop with the erratic opening hours. (Although Claude does stock local produce too).
Maybe. But food sovereignty starts at home (and Nézignan, despite my three-year displacement to London for Purefood, remains Halliday HQ).
On the surface last Sunday’s festivities were about celebrating a local foodstuff and saying: “Figs? We’ve got ‘em – and we’ve got big’uns. Fancy a bite?”
However every villager who appreciated the jam, breads and tarts should also appreciate the right of the Fig-Eaters to grow figs and sell their produce on their own terms, without an external force setting prices and conditions.
Having taken home that lesson from the Fête des Figues, the next step is to let that appreciation colour every choice we make as consumers and citizens. Every trip to the market, butcher, baker or – yes – the supermarket – should be made with food sovereignty in mind. We should ask: Where did this come from? Who grew it? Did they get a fair price? If not, why not?
It is tempting to say, if you don’t like the answers don’t buy the product. But even conscious decisions not to support a system we don’t agree with can have negative implications if alternative supports are not put in place: not buying beans because the farmer had no say can, through mass action, cause markets to collapse. The farmer, instead of selling a bag of beans for a bad price, sells none and gets nothing.
We should also ask, then, what can I, with my handful of euros and a great big lobbying voice, do about it?
There would be an outcry in this corner of France if the Fig-Eaters lost the right to do business on their own terms, led by the Dr-Mayor, no doubt. It’s not likely to happen, but since we’re alright we should lend our outrage to other communities, wherever they may be, that are not so lucky.
Where to start – a food sovereignty date for diaries
World Development Movement, which sent a campaigner to Nyeleni 2011, and 6 Billion Ways are holding an evening of short films, presentations and discussions on food sovereignty in London in 20th September. Oh, and there’ll be music and dancing too.
Tuesday 20 September, from 6.30pm
Ground floor bar, Rich Mix, 35-47 Bethnal Green Road, E1
Free event, paid bar available
More info is available from the WDM.
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Great article, Jess! I love figs. And Languedoc ‘does ‘em good’.
Somewhat more seriously, I just read a great article by Patrician Allen, and she starts out with a great line. (To be honest, I think I disagree with its universal validity, but that’s not so relevant at the moment.) This is it: ‘No one can deny that local food is good … To the extent that people are trying to solve problems of tastelessness … local food systems can provide solutions. For other food-systems issues, particularly those involving social justice, the role of food-system localization is less clear.’ And if we’re talking about food sovereignty, we’re talking about a matter that’s profoundly about social justice.
Here, I get that the Nezignanais have ‘solved problems of tastelessness’ with regard to figs. And I get that ‘food sovereignty (can) start at home’. But ‘defensive localism’ – at the extreme even something like an alimentary form of hostile xenophobia – can also start home, perhaps most easily ‘where the figs are good’ … So I want to ask: What’s your impression: Do the Nezignanais seem to take their own good figs (and their rightful pride in them) as a starting point for appreciating others’ similar ‘right to’ and ‘pride in’ their own good food? Or do they rather seem to take it as a springboard for exclusion, superiority, and/or hostility to others? Or do they just not think about it very much (do they just like to eat good figs)?
Hi Leah. Thanks for your comments. I will be bringing some fig jam back to London with me, so you can judge for yourself whether Nezignan has solved the fig-tastelessness problem
What was edited out of my article because it was running a little long, was that the parade column ranks were swelled by visiting dignitaries from 16 other confreries in the region: cheese guys, Muscat guys, cake guys… There is certainly no competitive element to the pride that confreries have in their chosen food – after all, they can all add up to a darn good meal (actually, they did all have a big meal together after the parade and the Mass). There are other fig confreries in France, the closest I know of is in Provence, but if they were to meet one day I very much doubt there would be hostility or fig-throwing strops. More likely some in-depth discussions about pruning techniques, soil types, and jam-making tips.
I think this cross-confrerie cameradie comes down to there being people, personalities and faces promoting the foods of French villages. Intra- and intercommunity networks of respect develop, which would nip any ultra-local food parochialism in the bud.
However, I would not want to perpetuate the myth that the French buy all their food from markets in pretty, medieval towns where they exchange pleasantries with the farmer. Supermarkets and hypermarket are HUGE business, and they do play a handy role in providing a nutritious, affordable diet. But it’s the two-track disconnect to respecting food and producers that bugs me: If we can buy good, tasty figs (or whatever) for an acceptable price from someone we know, and it’s convenient to do so, then we will. For everything else, we go to the supermarket, and there not only do we not know who the producer is, but we do not care anything about them.
I can see how the fig guys and the (kind of close) Muscat guys can support each other. The spatial proximity between them is still pretty close, and I think it’s ‘easy enough’ for the Nezignanais to imagine that the guys the next town over like their own special cheese. What I really want to know is: does that extend to the ‘shrimp guy in Bangladesh’? to the ‘green bean guy in Kenya’? to the ‘manioc guy in Brazil’? And so on … ?
Well, no. Not as a rule, on a whole-village basis. And that’s my point. People care about rights and conditions in their local area, where they know the people – or at least the culture involved. But when they are not confronted with a personal knowledge of the shrimp guy in Bangladesh, the green bean guy in Kenya, and the context in which THEY live and work, they do not make the leap from ‘support my village’ to ‘support their village’.
And I believe that everyone should learn the lessons at home, and transpose them to the origins of all the food they buy, wherever they buy it from.