Archive for the ‘Opinion’ Category
Farming is the new Rock ‘n’ Roll!
Isn’t it great to root in the earth or to strum around on a spade?
Just like Rock ‘n’ Roll, food is a way to distinguish yourself. Everything you eat, you have decided upon. Food is more than just a product to consume, it is about lifestyle, fashion, attitudes, status and politics. Similarly, farming is more than food production, it is also a lifestyle and about delivering services and goods to society.
A lack of transparency of the conventional food chain and concerns on animal welfare, public health, environmental impact results in initiatives to create an alternative to this conventional production system. As in Rock ‘n’ Roll, mainly young people and people from different racial groups, try to make a difference from the conventional system by starting their own initiatives. Guerilla gardening, box schemes, community gardens, city farms and new orchards form together a new food movement.
This new food movement tries to break boundaries and start the debate on the future of our food, and they succeed. The growing attention for food and farming is reflected in films[i], festivals[ii], books[iii], newspapers[iv], clothes[v], language[vi] but also in campaigns of NGO’s[vii]. Especially projects in urban areas are growing rapidly and vary from initiatives to grow food in parks, to have chickens on the roof, pigs in the backyard, aquaponic systems in café’s and organizing eat-ins and crop-mobs. With the new food system, people try to modify the existing system, in other words, a new revolution is starting… the revolution on food. Make sure you don’t miss the new Rock ‘n’ Roll because it sounds great!
Text: Evelien de Olde
Picture: Friends of the Earth Adelaide – Reclaim the Food Chain
[i] Food, Inc., No Impact Man, Greenhorns, The Future of Food
[iii] For example: Hungry City (Carolyn Steel) and Urban Agriculture (David Tracey)
[iv] The number of newspaper articles on local produced food and urban agriculture published in the Dutch newspapers Trouw, Volkskrant and NRC Next are increasing.
[v] Organic and gardening clothes but also T-shirts with ‘Grow your own’ or ‘Support local agriculture’
[vi] Do you know the words: polytunnel, aquaponics, hydroponics, eat-in, crop-mob?
[vii] Campaign of several organisations such as the grow campaign, good food campaign, the real food campaign and the right to food campaign.
Column deel 3 – afstudeer ervaringen
Van de Londense Underground naar een Volvo op biogas.
Na het verwerken van alle interviews die Peter en ik afnamen in Londen was het weer tijd om een nieuwe stad te bezoeken. Hoewel we al een aantal interviews telefonisch hadden gedaan besloten we alsnog Malmö in Zweden te bezoeken om een beter beeld te krijgen van de projecten die daar gaande zijn.
Een auto met een Nederlands kenteken en studenten erin moest natuurlijk wel even aangehouden worden bij de grens. De douanier vroeg wat we gingen doen… Tja.. we zijn studenten en doen onderzoek naar het groeien van groente in de stad, oftewel, stadslandbouw. We gaan naar Malmö, om te kijken hoe het daar gaat en om interviews te doen. Oke, maar of toch de kofferbak even open mocht. Onze kampeerspullen leverde nog wat verwarring op, onderzoek doen en kamperen, maar goed, we mochten door.
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