Food is a funny, fickle friend… or is that foe?
While we all need it, the industries concerned with producing, packing, distributing, and clearing up after foodstuff can make this dependency majorly problematic – for access, health, finances, and environment.
It’s such a complex fiend that we’ve split the Getting Started articles into three major themes.
However, it should be noted that it’s rare for any of these scenarios to occur in isolation – or to be absent from any city. Many of the issues overlap, and the skills and ideas we’ve identified transferable to dealing with other challenges.
The Case For Changing The Way We Eat
Processed food, too much meat, and an industry that churns out an unimaginable amount of greenhouse gases – there’s a lot to gain from changing the system at every stage from farm to fork.
The Case for Urban Agriculture
Urban populations are booming. That means demand for good grub is on the up. That increasingly puts a strain on supply lines, endangering food security. What if, instead, we could grow more on our doorstep? There’s a lot to be said for the idea, including a handful of benefits you might not even have thought of… but we have!
The Case for Reducing Food Waste
Food mountains, milk lakes, rotting vegetables, mouldy bread… there’s an embarrassingly long list of unused food in cities that at the same time are experiencing food shortages causing populations to turn to food banks. But from an ecological sense too, there’s a multitude of reasons we should rethink the way we dish up and dispose of what we do and don’t eat. To paraphrase Shakespeare: Read on, McDonald, and damned be them that fails to say, “That’s enough!”