Food troublesome food

I leave some conferences inspired. Others angered. This one I leave troubled.

I went to Plunkett's Making Local Food Work conference because I do some work on local food and it's something that interests me a lot.

As always I met some interesting people and it is valuable to have the opportunity to stop and think about one area of work for a couple of days.

I am troubled because I felt that the challenges we face regarding the future of food were made abundantly clear. Yet I wasn't so sure that the solutions were in the room.

It was a room packed with early adopters. A sell-out conference. Anyone and everyone with a local food related job seemed to be there.

But as I've said before I don't think early adopters are the best people to take an idea to the mass market. I didn't need to travel all the way to Bristol to learn that our food culture is problematic. That we don't spend enough on food. That supermarkets make life difficult for us local fooders. That Italian mamas know best.

I needed to hear what we're going to do about it. I heard about lots of activity. Good activity. But on the whole grant-funded activity. As some speakers acknowledged, a lot of what they do will need continued subsidy.

But it bothers me that we get excited about a local producer of school meals, when that producer is not viable without external funding or subsidy. Maybe they deserve that subsidy. And perhaps society needs them. But as we enter a period of austerity do we really think those subsidies will be there? What will we do if they're not there?

I don't have a solution, other than to invent a time machine and go back to the time before the Industrial Revolution when more of us had a direct connection to the land and what we grew on it. If there is a solution it may come, as one of the speakers suggested, out of a crisis.

Sent from my iPhone

Rob Greenland
Social Business Consulting
07905 800 710
rob@socialbusinessconsulting.co.uk

Comments

[MIke Chitty]

You are right to be troubled Rob. The challenge is how to engage the apathetic and the uninformed - although firing up the zealots at the 'Party Conference' does little harm.

[Robert Ashton]

And that crisis draws ever nearer!

[Rob Greenland]

Yes, true, there's a value in getting together Mike. I suppose for me there was a disconnection between the looming food crisis and a lot of what I saw at the conference. Sadly I think it's my role in life to be "troubled" - out of such a state comes creativity!