Food Revolt

resistance, food sovereignty & climate justice

A ONE DAY FOOD GATHERING 12 NOVEMBER 2011 – KINGHORN, FIFE, SCOTLAND (book your place at  Eventbrite here.) The day incorporates the Fife Diet AGM (open to all members). You can come to both or just the Food Revolt gathering.

Get your programme here

AGM – 9.00 – 10.30 am
Food Revolt Gathering – 10.30 – 6.30 pm

How the does the local food movement relate to wider global issues?

With representatives from Via Campesina and food projects from across Europe we’ll be exploring the local food movement in the global context.

How does eating local relate to famine, trade, aid and land use? Did the rising price of food stoke the Arab Spring? How do you resist ghost acres, land grabs and hedge funds?  How does what we eat relate to climate justice?

The event will look at these themes, bringing together inspiring practical innovators to discuss future collaborative action. With solidarity food including Zaytoun Olive Oil, Malawian Rice and a Zapatista Coffee Bar.

To book a ticket go to our Eventbrite booking page here.

Speakers and Workshop Leaders to include:

Stan Blackley: from Climate Change to Climate Justice

Stan Blackley is Chief Executive of Friends of the Earth Scotland. Over the last four decades, Friends of the Earth Scotland has established itself as one of the country’s most effective environmental campaigning organisations. It is one of 76 organisations that make up the Friends of the Earth International  network and campaigns with its sister organisations for environmental justice  – no less than a decent environment for all, and no more than a fair share of the planet’s resources for everyone. FoES’s successes include the Scottish Climate Act – arguably the best piece of climate change legislation in the world, plus gaining Scottish Government backing for no nuclear power stations or GM crops in Scotland. In recent weeks, FoES won a court battle that has changed Scots Law  to allow access to the courts for communities and campaigning groups, to allow them to challenge poor planning decisions in the public or wider interest. Stan joined FoES earlier this year after eleven years of running his own ethical campaigning communications consultancy, and with more than two decades experience of working within the environment movement as a campaigner and communications professional. He is a lover of slow food and real ale, and also reviews restaurants for an annual eating and drinking guide.

Joanna Blythman is an food writer, investigative journalist and broadcaster.

She has won five prestigious Glenfiddich Awards for her writing, most recently the 2005 Best Book award for Shopped – The Shocking Power of British Supermarkets and was also 2004 winner of the Derek Cooper Award, one of BBC Radio 4′s Food and Farming Awards.

Her most recent book is Bad Food Britain – How A Nation Ruined Its Appetite. Joanna has written three other groundbreaking books: The Food We Eat, How To Avoid GM Food, and The Food Our Children Eat. She is a restaurant critic and writes regularly for a wide range of magazines and newspapers. See all books here.

Liz Murray: Food Speculation and Market Reform

Liz Murray is head of Scottish campaigns for the World Development Movement (WDM). WDM is a UK-based anti-poverty campaigning organisation with a reputation for tackling hard-hitting, controversial issues.  WDM believes that aid is not enough and that the root causes of poverty must be tackled.   WDM investigates, exposes and challenges government policies and corporate actions that harm vulnerable communities and trap people in poverty.  Working alongside activists in the global south, WDM researches and promotes positive solutions to poverty. Liz will explore how the European Union and UK should regulate the food commodity markets and the financial traders and pension funds who bet on the price of food.

Daniel López García: Food Sovereignty and the Spanish Indignados Movement

Daniel López García is member of the Agroecology and Food Sovereignity Area in Ecologistas en Acción, a Confederation of 300 local ecologist groups in Spain; and he’s representing it on “Plataforma Rural-Alianzas por un mundo rural vivo”, a national coordination of farmers, NGO, ecologists, consumers and rural organizations. He works as researcher and advisor in Agroecology and Sustainable Rural Development in Spain, developing alternative food supply chains for organic products. He has written a few books and articles about Food Sovereignity Social Movement in Spain and alternative food supply chains, and is the editor for the “Food Sovereignity and Organization” section on “La Fertilidad de la Tierra”, the organic farming’s most important magazine in Spain.

Juliana Lutz: Putting the local food movement in the wider international context

Juliana Lutz works at the Institute of Social Ecology (Alpen Adria University,Vienna) and is currently involved in SpeiseLokal! – an initiative inspired by the Fife Diet that aims on encouraging people to enjoy local, organic food. SpeiseLokal! sells products from the farmers around and organises and promotes activities concerned with local food and sustainability issues.

Gemma Sethmith and guests from Zapallo Verde Cooperative in Ecuador: Resilience of indigenous people to climate change
Gemma Sethsmith works with LifeMosaic, an organisation that produces and disseminates  films to support indigenous peoples to defend their rights and territories. She will focus on how climate change affects the food sovereignty of indigenous peoples and how indigenous traditional knowledge and practices such as seed saving, lead to resilience. Excerpts from LifeMosaic’s films about indigenous peoples and climate change will also be shown.

Zapallo Verde “It is an experience auto managed from the South that tries to construct another economy, another nourishment and another way of relating. It seeks to establish an organizational form that raises a different way of producing, of commercializing and consuming healthy food. It promotes an economy to local scale, which defends the agricultural and cultural diversity. It’s all about solidarity – both social and environmental co- responsibility. For this people of the field and of the city have joined to form a cooperative of organic products.”

We’re delighted to be working with Eadie Manson a young chef from Glenrothes who has also worked with the Seafood Restaurant and whom you may know from TV’s The Hour. Eadie writes: “I started cooking at a local hotel as a Commis chef after he dropped out of university where he was studying Geography. After a couple of months he started at Glenrothes College studying Hospitality. During my first year was lucky enough to win Scotland and Ireland Young chef of the Year. I then got involved with the Scottish Junior Culinary team from 2002 – 2006 and was a member of the main team that won the world Championships at Expogast 2002. In the next couple of years I travelled to places such as Stockholm, Chicago, Barcelona, Erfurt, Paris, Luxembourg City, and Dublin. Where I had the opportunity to compete and work.”

Mike Small is the founder of the Fife Diet project and this year co-ordinated Blasda, Scotland’s Local Food Feast. He is a writer, researcher, publisher and activist focusing on positive responses to ecological crises and collapsonomics.

He has written on regional and bioregionalism, deep citizenship and generalism. He teaches at Turin University on eco-sustainable development and was listed by the Observer Food Monthly as ‘Top 40 Eco Foodies’ (Observer Food Monthly, 2008)