Communities in London are under threat, many already destroyed by rampant development and greed. In order to both defend and rebuild, we need to have a vision of the kind of community we want. This will involve quality housing and locally- grown food, at truly affordable prices, as well as green spaces and community facilities, all within a context of a climate emergency.

This meeting will bring together housing and food growing activists to discuss how they can work together to create the kind of communities we want to live in.

There is an international movement which aims to end food insecurity  and promote social and environmental justice. Many of the answers to the  key questions of hunger and health, environmental degradation, and  inequality are already answered; the problem is putting them into  practice. The economic and political power structures and institutions  that dominate global agriculture and the inequalities in land ownership  create serious obstacles to transformation of the food system.  The UK  is implicated in this, through its own agribusiness corporations,  colonial legacy in land grabbing, and consumption patterns that  aggravate social and economic injustice and environmental destruction.

We  have seen in previous  seminars that people in the UK are also  struggling  against a system that harms the environment, produces poor  quality food, and exploits agricultural and food industry workers.  Instead we aim for  a transformation of the food system to benefit us  all.   What can we learn from what is happening in the Global South?

Speakers:

Global Justice (https://www.globaljustice.org.uk/campaigns/food)

Gabriela Samart from Brazil

Kiran: Angry Workers (https://www.angryworkers.org/)

Chris  Smaje  (https://smallfarmfuture.org.uk/)

Other resources

https://viacampesina.org/en/.

https://www.gaiafoundation.org/

Increasingly people in urban and peri-urban areas are growing food.  There are many advantages to this: producing more good quality food,  bringing producers and consumers closer together, bridging the  rural/urban divide, improving food security, creating land justice. This  seminar will explore the thinking behind these initiatives and  policies, the benefits to people and the environment and what needs to  be done to facilitate more food growing and production in or near urban  areas.

Speakers:

Fiona McAllister (Capital Growth) and Rob Logan (Fringe Farming) from Sustain(https://www.capitalgrowth.org/)

(www.sustainweb.org/foodandfarmingpolicy/fringe-farming-peri-urban-food-growing/)

Arlene  McKenzie: Project Manager with Rootz into Growing, whose aim is to  engage greater diversity in the food growing landscape. The project is  managed by Ubele Initiative with support from Organic Lea, Land in our  Names, and Black Rootz. (https://www.ubele.org/rootz-into-food-growing).

Glasgow Community Food Growing Network (https://glasgowfood.net/)

Manchester Urban Diggers (https://www.wearemud.org/about-us)

Organic Lea (https://www.organiclea.org.uk/)

The second seminar Land and Food seminar series was a great success with excellent contributions from both speakers and participants. Oli from the Ecological Land Co-op and Land Workers Alliance gave an overview of the difficult situation of small ecological farms in the UK and highlighted the systematic changes that are needed to transform the food system. Sinead of Aweside Farm shared her personal journey from aspiration to putting the dream into practice. This was not always a happy story and she was keen not to downplay the difficulties many face, especially those from working class backgrounds. Duncan from New Economics Foundation focused on the kind of land reform policies that would have a positive impact on more people gaining access to land for farming. He stressed the importance of reducing the price of land so that more people can afford to buy it. This would involve several buckets of policies: taxation, stopping land being a speculative asset, and capping the amount of land anyone can own unless they can show they are contributing to the common good.

The general message was : You cannot resolve the climate crisis and the food crisis we are now in without having a land solution.

Seminar Series: Land and Food: Social Justice and Ecological Responsibility

Brexit will involve the biggest shake-up to UK agriculture in decades. It is potentially an opportunity to address many of the weaknesses of the current system, such as facilitating environmentally responsible farming, supporting small agroecological producers and ensuring food security for all. But will this be the case?