Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
From launching new websites and online services to partnering up with local delivery companies, from starting up click and collect services to creating new subscription services, and of course numerous measures to keep staff and customers safe, businesses at Wapping Wharf, and across Bristol, have certainly put in the hard graft.
Solikyl aims to create the latter, a food commons, where food is seen as a shared resource through social practice rather than as a private good.
People of color and low-income communities have long gathered ingredients for meals, and foraging can help fill in the gaps in places where historic redlining has had lasting effects on supermarket options. In fact, some wild and feral foods can provide greater nutritional benefits than produce bought in stores.
Whilst the coronavirus crisis has presented extreme challenges and hardship for residents and organisations in Leeds, Sonja Woodcock hopes that the experience has strengthened the cities’ movement for fairer, sustainable food.
Richenda Wilson of the East London community-led food enterprise Growing Communities (GC) describes how dealing with the rollercoaster of COVID-19 – aside from being ridiculously hard work – has inspired thoughts about the future of UK food and farming, about change, closeness and resilience.
As we look ahead to re-open the country post-COVID, we also have the chance to re-work our public relationship to our food system, and mend its broken aspects in a way that will better meet community needs and values in our “new normal” future.
Our era is one of profound loneliness, and the proliferation of digital devices is only one of the causes. That emptiness also proceeds from the staggering retreat of nature, a process underway well before screen addiction.
I so often tell others that the reason I grow food is because I love eating. But let us not lost sight of the fact that ‘food is medicine and medicine is food’. We can brings plants together and manage them in a forest garden, to provide for ourselves, our families, communities and customers.
Rethink Food is working to help restaurants stay open while feeding the communities hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. The Brooklyn-based nonprofit, which recovers excess food from restaurants and grocery stores, launched several emergency programs to create jobs and distribute meals to people in need.
Appalachia knows need, and knows that in times of increased struggle, need increases for all. While much of the country might fall back at this time, Appalachia has stepped up in ways both official and grassroots. “Pandemic or not,” Keller said, “we still have a job to do.”
These are scary and uncertain times, but there may be lessons to heed as we move forward: let this redouble our commitment to eating and cooking together, practicing mindfulness, supporting local producers, and enjoying every last bite.
The short term gains from this system that have been made on prices may come back to haunt us sooner rather than later. The best remedy right now is to help keep smaller food businesses afloat and markets, if run safely, are a vital part of this medicine.
