Sharing

Just wanted to share this video about Manawatū Community Fruit Harvest; my friend Debra coordinates our local group, & they capture a huge amount of backyard fruit & share it with schools, food banks, community orgs & the public.

It’s entirely volunteer-run. Radical sharing/mutual aid at its best!

& The channel that the video is on, ‘Impact Collective’ make short films highlighting community-led projects…& there’s some other food resilience videos on their channel, like the Bulls Food Pantry, etc…

https://youtu.be/4jaGL5biixA

Would love to hear of any other story-telling resources about current/active community-led food resilience projects, if anyone knows of anything out there. (Aside from Happen Films, that is, …they’re awesome, hey?)

Are there any NZ-based podcasts that get into food resilience issues?

Thanks. 💚

Thanks Helen. I don't know of any NZ podcasts in this space sadly, but there is a great little series of mini doco's by Ngai Tahu here -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwVMlODvWNc

In the same vein, these Tūhoe-led stories of the kererū are an awesome insight into both their aspirations and what a healthy food/eco system here might look like x https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leEfkY_q2C8&t=5s&ab_channel=ManaakiWhenua-LandcareResearch

On last night's call (18 Nov) -–minutes pending and will be posted in the hui thread – one of the topics discussed was the challenge of keeping community food spaces active + some different strategies for supporting that...

Rebecca from Village Agrarians down south shared how they'd been able to get some funding to cover 20 hours of time looking after Aparima College School and Community Gardens in Riverton which has been successful and was continuing on for a second(?) year; Urs from Parihaka explained that his experience indicates the need or at least usefulness of having a paid coordinator with allocated hours; Aaron from Seeds for Pala confirmed that this was an explicit focus during the early days of the Auckland Urban Farm OMG, helping to shape their market orientation and eventual use of a CSA model (supported by free rent, water and power from Auckland Council/the City Rail Link) - so there is room, as always, for some degree of hybridity.

I shared that this conclusion - the importance of paid 'professional' help – is also supported in the research literature and posted a link to a paper looking at community garden governance in Christchurch and Germany; Helen from Manawatū Food Action Network asked for me to post the paper in case others would like to read it....so here we are! Attached below

ps - happy to use my institutional access to 'open source' any academic stuff people are interested in (and can also share summaries on nz specific research if there's interest) - so request away :)

Thanks Dan, was just going to message you to ask for this link! - Rebecca

In that vein, I'd like to share this write up from the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact about a town in France that decided they wanted their students to eat 100% organic food made in the schools so converted municipal land to organic farms and hired three farmers to grow the produce. The outcomes are pretty neat, it's a compelling story, related to our conversation about councils hiring food producers rather than contracting with mowing services.

https://www.milanurbanfoodpolicypact.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/SDN-Mouans-Sartoux_2019.pdf

This is so cool, what an awesome precedent :)

Just reading a bit more - the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact sounds great ... "an international agreement among cities from all over the world, committed 'to develop sustainable food systems that are inclusive, resilient, safe and diverse, that provide healthy and affordable food to all people in a human rights-based framework, that minimize waste and conserve biodiversity while adapting to and mitigating impacts of climate change'." Good way of summing up some of the interlinked bits we're talking round here!

Yeah I agree! I met someone recently from Wellington City Council who had signed the council onto the pact - seems like a great framework. Hollie