The BBC has reported a fascinating story of short food supply chains booming in Greece’s economic depression. Called the ‘Potato Revolution’, farmers and consumers are organising to cut out the middleman and slash prices of basic foodstuffs, starting with potatoes and moving on to rice, flour and olive oil.

The BBC story can be read here and there’s also a video here (but it may not be accessible outside the UK).

This new movement started in the north of Greece, and is now catching on in Athens. I would really like to hear what others working on urban food systems and alternative food networks make of this.

It seems to me that this is a four-way reconfiguration of food provisioning in the country worst hit by the Eurozone crisis. Consumers are creating demand, producers are stepping in with supply, and local authorities, no doubt mindful of the political implications of food prices in economic crisis, are now playing a coordinating role. As for the supermarkets, they’re being forced to slash their prices as they’re being drastically undercut.

Supermarkets, the embodiment of the global, industrialised food system in our towns and cities, have enjoyed a mutually supportive alliance with local authorities for decades. After all, the multi-level policies that support the industrial system and its pantheon of middlemen stems from the post-war period when leaders of the global north pledged that their populations would never again teeter on the edge of famine. Kalimera, the CAP!

I’m intrigued by the potential long-term implications of this new ‘revolution’.

Is it a temporary coping strategy among people who can no-longer afford to put food on the table? Or, in an era where cheap potatoes are the new ambrosia, will supermarkets go the way of Demeter, ancient goddess of grains and harvests, and lose their deity over the food system forevermore?

Has Greece gone full circle from direct farmer-consumer food supply, to the global model, and back again? Or does this represent just a widening of the margin in which alternative food systems operate around the edges of Big Fat Greek Retail?

Hungrily waiting your thoughts, Purefoodies.

France has just adopted new rules on nutritional quality of food served in school canteens. I came across a video featuring agriculture minister Bruno Le Maire.

You can watch it here, but here’s a synopsis for non-French speakers:

France has a 3-point plan to guard against the degradation of nutritional standards and food culture in its schools:

1)      Adhere to nutritional standards for meals served in school canteens

2)      Educate children about taste and valuing French produce

3)      Ensure that sharing food at mealtimes remains a part of French culture.

France is taking action against a culture where people rush through meals in 30 seconds without paying attention to what they are eating, the nutritional quality, the quality of the produce, or the origin. It is aiming retain a model where the origin of produce, the seasons, and childrens’ health are respected.

Bruno Le Maire claims that France is a world leader in this respect. [Discuss!]. He says that everyone – including his four kids – knows meals in school and university canteens are not great, and he wants to do something about it.

This includes changing procurement rules so the emphasis is not on securing the cheapest price, but on quality and origin.

The new rules  are the first time France has had mandatory and controlled nutritional standards. Le Maire says he expects the country will extend these rules to cover not just schools but other collective eating establishments. In a country famed for gastronomy, it is important to ensure that good food is not just for a small number of people – but for all French people, and especially the young.

There is a great piece in this weekend’s Observer newspaper about growing demand for food charity handouts in the UK. FareShare, the charity that channels the redistribution of surplus to the requirements of food supermarkets and manufacturers, reports a rise in recipients from 29,000 to 35,500 this year. It now channels otherwise unwanted food through 700 public-facing charities that have signed up to its services – 100 more than last year.

Read all about it here.

Journalist Jay Rayner and his interviewees rightly cite the causes as economic and political. Rising unemployment and a time lag before benefits start to arrive, as well as changes to the benefit system and housing rules, have led to a shift in the demographic of those seeking food hand-outs from single men to families and those “who were, for want of a better term, normal working people. Those who have lost jobs or who were running their own businesses and still need to feed their families.”

Now, there are three principal actors in this story, and it seems to me they are all behaving strangely.

First, you have a food industry that produces more food than paying customers will buy so it can be 200% sure it can meet demand. Add to that the food that’s slipped past its sell-by date but is still good to eat and food in packages that have been mis-printed or beaten about in transit, and that’s one heck of a lot of landfill instead belly-fill.

The cost of producing too much food and allowing for wastage along the supply chain is lower than the costs risked through lost sales and brand damage of not having enough to meet a sudden demand surge. Go figure !

Next, you have government that is bending the welfare state out of all recognition and slashing public spending – and with it, thousands of jobs. What is more, the central ideologies of Localism and Big Society are shifting the sands of responsibility away from the state and towards cash strapped local authorities, charities, and community volunteer groups.

Finally, you have a charity that is playing see-saw between mitigating the effects of both those first two ‘actors’.

FareShare chief executive Lindsay Boswell is quoted as saying : “We started out purely interested in liberating waste… We are an environmental charity that gets bloody angry about food being wasted.”

Now, though, this role of holding the food industry to account and sending unwanted wares to where they are needed most has morphed into one where preventing as many people as possible from going hungry to bed is the major daily grind.

Hands up who thinks we live in a mad, mad world ?

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 20^th 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.

The launch of the UK’s new draft National Planning Policy has food and environmental groups fearing for the future of the country’s green spaces and town centre, as the coalition government’s idea of ‘sustainable development’ has a strong pro-development flavour.

The draft, available here, was launched last week and is open for consultation until October.

It is often easiest to understand the implications of policy proposals by listening to groups wearing the goggles of their own interests, giving them an incredible ability to read between the lines:

A framework that slashes back over 1000 pages of policy to just 58 means slicing through bundles of red tape and turning new projects into reality more quickly and more cheaply. Hurrah, say the developers and building companies.

But a growing body of planners, civil society groups, architects and academics who are enlightened to the crucial role of planning in the food system are not celebrating. Such a light-weight framework is too way light-touch, they believe. It is business-, not community-oriented, and it will become much harder to protect prime growing and organic land from development.

Speaking (ahead of the framework’s official publication) at a one-day conference on Food and Spatial Planning organised by Sustain and the Royal Institute of Town Planning (RITP) on 15^th July, Friends of the Earth food campaigner Helen Rimmer, called it “an assault on the planning process”.

Suzanne Natelson of Sustain’s Local Action on Food also expressed concern at the pro-development turn and said Sustain “will be working to influence it”. Sustain already published a report on Good Planning for Good Food, and its cooperation with the RITP has led to the latter developing guidelines on food for planners.

A major taking point of draft framework is how it defines ‘sustainable development’. According to Damian Carrington, writing in The Guardian, the definition provided is “heavily weighted on saying yes to all building work and rather light on avoiding harmful developments”.

Carrington picks out the phrase “a presumption in favour of sustainable development”, and reads it as “development plans – houses, supermarkets, roads, business premises and so on – will be given the green light, unless there’s good case made for not doing so”.

Yet even when civil society and community groups keep an obsessive eye on applications to ensure no such good cases pass unchallenged, developers in the guise of big business have huge clout to mount appeals that local authorities, with coffers accountable to the electorate, cannot counter.

Business first?

Call food problematic and many people will reply: “Where’s the problem? We just go to the supermarket”.

Sure, the globalised, retail-led food chain has made cheap food available to the masses in a way that it has never been before. Far fewer people fret about going hungry today than a hundred years ago.

Yet it’s more complicated than just hushing the hunger pangs. Supermarkets are the crucial, final link in the globalised, industrial food supply chain that has lifted cities out of their food context, and placed them in a global one that feeds off oil reserves and exploitation of land and cheap labour.

Food may be cheap at the till, but the bleep of the barcode scanner does not show the externalised costs beyond the price tag. The costs of infrastructure to haul food long distances, for example; the cost of countering emissions from transport and processing; of caring for people suffering the health effects of eating cheap food laden with fat, sugar and salt; of disposing of uneaten food and packaging; and so on. These costs are not paid by supermarkets, but by shoppers – not in store, but in their annual tax bill.

That is why feeding the city should never be left to supermarkets as a single, simple solution. Even when they promise to build new brand new apartments or fund a new classroom, the social sweeteners designed to wear down opposition will never be enough to cover the whole, global bundle of externalities.

And however socially-aware they may wish to be seen, supermarkets must make money – and that means having a high profile in places where there’s a demographic fit with their core target shoppers. If no supermarket is able to see commercial value in poorer, run-down areas, a business-oriented planning strategy could end up widening inequalities in our urban areas.

As Carolyn Steel, architect and author of The Hungry City, explained at the Sustain conference, the city’s problems are not viewed through the lens of food, big cities become food desserts, where “the only people that get fed are the rich people”.

In her view, “supermarkets were invented to eradicate the human – to take the human out of the food chain”.

And if you’ve got no humans, how can you have a community?

Better be a good redundancy package.

Meat grown in laboratories could be a sustainable solution for people who want a greener diet but can’t face foregoing the flesh, according to reseachers at Oxford and Amsterdam Universities.

In a paper accepted for publication in Environmental Science & Technology, lead researcher Hanna Tuomisto and team report that lab-grown meat would generate 96 per cent less greenhouse gas than meat produced the traditional way. You know, from animals. It could use between 7 and 45 per cent less energy, too.

The calculations were based on a process of growing muscle cells using the bacterium Cyanobacteria hydrolysate as a nutrient and energy source.

The Guardian newspaper says this could be a solution to how to feed a growing world population without demanding more of the Earth’s resources…  but it doesn’t delve into the all-important question of consumer acceptability. At this stage, it’s all theoretical.

“We are not saying that we could, or would necessarily want to, replace conventional meat with its cultured counterpart right now,” The Guardian quotes Tuomista as saying.

“However, our research shows that cultured meat could be part of the solution to feeding the world’s growing population and at the same time cutting emissions and saving both energy and water. Simply put, cultured meat is, potentially, a much more efficient and environmentally friendly way of putting meat on the table.”

Who would you trust to put a steak on your plate – a scientist or a farmer?