@University of Lincoln: Edible City

Greetings everybody,

EXCITING NEWS! Biobunch are guest bloggers on the University of Lincoln Environmental sustainability blog and this post is our first post for their blog.

In association with Lincoln City Council and Transition Lincoln the University of Lincoln’s Environment team held a screening of Edible City: Grow the Revolution. A documentary about growing good food in an urban environment. Filmed in San Francisco Bay Area the film tells the stories of people who are digging their hands into the dirt, in order to make a healthy, renewable local food system.

Permaculture books and magazines available during the night to answer the questionable mind. 

A neighborhood with no source for vegetables or fresh food was transformed into an area with thriving organic gardens, with the help of a large range of activists, farmers and motivated organisations including Food First, Oakland Food Connection, Three Stone Hearth, Dig Deep Farms, Willow Rosenthal of City Slicker Farms, Alemany Farm, Roots of Change, Jim Montgomery of Green Faerie Farm, Mas humus, Soil Association, Hope Collaborative and LEAF.

Over 50% of the world’s population live in cities and our usage of fossil fuels have increased and continues to do so as the process of globalization continues. Natural gas, Coal and Oil commonly known as our fossil fuels fueled world war two, they were used to make nerve gas and making the bombs that defined an era. These same fuels are now being used for ‘conventional’ agriculture which now drives soil erosion, water depletion and deforestation to the extremes.

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Questions began to pop in our minds when watching Edible City like can we consider ourselves happy when our bodies are chronically deprived of needed nutrients caused by buying into the fast food industry? What will happen when the agriculture system collapses from peak oil? "Fresh food and clean air isn't optional, It is needed". So the good food movement developed in order to solve such issues, and what better place to resolve them than in the city?

Edible City touched on a lot of topics that the 21st Century has to face such as the concept of food security and the desperate attempt to secure our nation's food supply, turning empty wasted plots into a prosperous potential garden, placing larger emphasis on nutrition in the national curriculum and our reintegration into nature through the food industry.

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If there was one thing that you were to take away from the documentary, it should be that growing food in urban cities and investing in self sufficiency is a realistic plan. Realistic because the resources, money and technology are present, all that is needed are massive social movements to put it out there. It only starts with a tiny step, from one healthy individual to a healthy family eventually leading to healthy communities and thereafter a healthy nation. Why would you not want to invest into sustainable agriculture? Especially when it creates jobs.

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After the documentary viewing, there was a selected panel that participated in a question and answer session, covering a range of topics including community growing incentives under construction and running in Lincolnshire, pest control and alternatives to pesticides, social and marketing aspects of such projects, community garden tool kits, vertical gardens and much more.

From left to right: Rick Aron of Garden Organic, Deano Martin a permaculture practitioner and Mary Whiting of Green Synergy

Permaculture (derived from the PERMAnent agriCULTURE) is working with nature, specifically with agricultural ecosystems and creating something sustainable and self-sufficient. There are three core ethics of permaculture:

1. Earth care: ongoing nurturing of the earth to ensure it is healthy as without a healthy earth humans cannot flourish. Catering all life systems to advance and increase.

2. People care: Attention to self, kin and community by providing access to essential resources for their existence.

3. Fair share: setting limits and reinvesting surpluses back into the system.

Leaflet for the permaculture design course available for Lincoln residentials

We hope you attempt to adopt these ethics in your daily life as that will make the conversion from being heavily dependent  service consumers  to becoming  independent and productive citizens successful. It will build skills and most likely improve the quality of our individual lives.

The next screenings in the University of Lincoln - Environmental series

Biobunch.
Over and out.