Creative: Food System Blues

[slow blues baseline plays]

Tommy Wall (TW): My name is Tommy Wall. I’m a fourth-year communications and environmental studies student at Carleton University, and I’m interested in climate change and global environmental sustainability. Agricultural sustainability and food security are important issues in Canada and around the world. In the fall of 2017, a public discussion took place about a new book that attempts to tackle some of the problems associated with food and agriculture. Nourishing Communities: From Fractured Food Systems to Transformative Pathways, was published by Springer and focuses on community-based practices that can mend fractures in the food system. One of the participants in the public discussion that marked the release of the book, was Faris Ahmed from USC Canada. Faris leads USC’s policy work and closely collaborates with ecological agriculture, biodiversity, and food sovereignty networks in the global south and in Canada. Faris joins me today to discuss his response to the book release and to speak on his own work. Hello, Faris.

Faris Ahmed (FA): Hello, Tommy.

TW: Thank you for taking the time today to talk about your work and about the issues that you deal with. Can you tell me a bit more about your work, and the work of USC?

FA: Sure. USC is an organization based here in Ottawa and our work is basically about ensuring a healthy and diverse food for everyone. And, the way we grow our food should be strengthening biodiversity and ecosystems, and not diminishing them. And we also feel that the food that has grown is determined by the choices of the people who grow the food. We work with farmer organizations in 12 countries around the world, including in Canada, and a new program we started about five, six years ago. And, essentially, we support farmers and Indigenous people, women, youth, to grow healthy and resilient agricultural food systems. And their goal is to ensure that biodiversity—the diversity in plants, and seeds, and genetic resources in animals as well—is determined by their own research questions. So, they consider themselves researchers. And their goal is to enhance their biodiversity and seed systems because that has impact on a whole bunch of things. It has impact on their food, and their ability to eat around, around the year. It increases their resilience to climate shocks. If it’s too wet or too dry, they have the varieties to, to serve their needs. It engages young people in a way that other types of agriculture do not. They are very passionate about ecological agriculture, which is what we support. And it’s healthy, it’s nutritious, it creates livelihoods. And so, we find that this one intervention has quite a lot of impact on a whole bunch of things, and it’s driven by the farmer’s own needs. And now my own work at USC is about policy and ensuring that policies support the work of farmers and not constrain them. For example, trade and investment policy or seed policy that can inhibit what farmers do, that can impose restrictions on the kinds of seeds that they can produce and save and sell. Or trade that encourages the kind of market that will not support the prices of, the kinds of prices that farmers are expecting or wanting, or imposes restrictions on them that they can’t sell or exchange their own products. So, we try to create a conducive environment for farmers to really flourish in their food systems, to serve them as well as their communities.

TW: And so, you participated in the public book release for Nourishing Communities back in November. What’s your connection to the book and to its authors?

FA: Well, I’m lucky enough to have, to know and have worked with all five of them: Irena, Alison, Charles, Phil, and Erin. I’ve been involved in many things that they’ve initiated, or I’ve participated in research initiatives, workshops and so on. Also, with Peter Andrée and Patricia Ballamingie, both of whom are at Carleton. These people are leaders in their field, I’d say, I mean, they’re researchers in the truest sense. They’ve got the academic tools and the research methodologies, but they’re also grounded, and they’re connected to what they’re researching, whether it’s, you know, the food system and food justice organizations or practitioners, or farmer organizations, food providers. And I think that they have a sense of what the community needs because of that, and it makes them better researchers. So, when I saw the book, I was quite captivated by it. And, I did, I did read quite a lot of it, and it gave me all kinds of ideas. And it’s a culmination of researchers and practitioners working together. And these guys are some of the best.

TW: They come from a lot of very well-rounded backgrounds too, so, it’s good to have multiple perspectives on food security and agriculture coming from a lot of different people. And the book inspired you to do more than to just simply comment as well. How did you respond to the book and to its messages?

FA: Well, I first did a traditional book review as I was asked to do. And that was, I mean, rewarding enough. But that I was inspired by the diversity of the methodologies I guess, the tools and narratives in the book that came from different peoples and communities and different ways of even gathering the information. And, given that we were, you know, quote unquote on stage in Irene’s pub and my own love for music, and Irene’s is known for life performing, performances, and I’d never performed there. So, I just thought that a spoken word rendition of some of the voices and narratives in the book would be fun and hopefully complimentary. So, I just sat down at the computer and it came out pretty quickly and naturally. So, I constructed a spoken-word poem with five voices. And afterwards, decided to add a bassline to it.

TW: And so you have no shortage of musical resources at your disposal down here in your studio. So, we’re going to play for you, “Fractured Food System Blues in Five Voices,” and we’d like to thank Faris so much for his time today. Thank you, Faris.

FA: My pleasure, thanks.