The Feeding Ourselves Local Food Symposium, held on 30 October in Regent’s House, Trinity, marked a major milestone in the Strengthening Local Food Economies in Ireland project — a two-year collaboration between Talamh Beo, Cultivate, and Feasta, supported by the Irish Environmental Network and in and delivered with over a dozen partner organisations. So what happened?

Who’s in the house? 

Our structure on the day was simple but not simplistic. It allowed us to set the scene for how things are, to imagine a better future, and to do the harder work of starting to map out how it can be achieved.

Feeding Ourselves is a Community of Practice, with participant from dozens of organisations represented and contributing in an ongoing way. With 140+ people in attendance for this Dublin event, and from a very wide range of relevant areas, this was a step up for the good food and good farming movement in Ireland.

We saw a holistic span of people from an impressive range of backgrounds. What really resonated was how building stronger local agroecological food systems can address intertwined crises of health, climate, biodiversity loss, and precarious rural livelihoods. 

So our spectrum ranged from decolonial agriculture to community health, with the more familiar ground of agroecology and food sovereignty in between.

This meant that farmers, community groups, policymakers, research and demonstration centres, academics from an array of backgrounds,  youth activists, health professionals, environmental advocates, media folks, and many more, all participated.

This was really reflected in the  Voices From the Field opening session  – which brought forward the lived realities of local producers and food organisers, where the pressure of cheap imports, the fight for  local abattoirs, the need for community gardens, the healing role of therapeutic farms, and the transformative impact of basic income pilots for farmers all emerged. 

These testimonies grounded the policy discussions in real things.

Eimear McNally in action, harvesting graphically

Our opening then, set the context – where are we at with food now? The dominance of agribusiness interests, of ultra processed foods, of gendered power relations, of socio-environmental stresses, of a debt-based economy all emerged. As did how these and other factors lead to entrenched realities – the game is rigged towards agri-business while the odds are stacked against small scale producers and against horticulture, as two examples.

“The EU focuses on how little labour there is – the less labour the more progressive or successful it is. Its not. 70% of the world’s farmland is dedicated to livestock. But peasant farmers are actually feeding the world. We need everyone on board”. Caroline Whyte Feasta.

Magic moments

Opening Mystica with Talamh Beo farmers

Interestingly, our mystica (above, photo Martina Mullins) grounded people too. This approach, typical of La Via Campesina events globally, grounded and moved people at the same time – no small feat. Here, in the hallowed halls of the centre of the historical ascendancy, we brought soil and soul to the city. 

Farmers, following a bodhrán deftly drummed by Fergal Anderson of Talamh Beo,  brought themselves and produce from their farms front and centre – and it centred us too. Seeds and soil, eggs and cabbages, and all manner of apples have a way of doing that. As do the people, the producers, themselves. 

Elements from the land as part of the mysticia

Anchoring change

The role and potential spending power of anchor institutions stood out as a positive opportunity, especially through sustainable procurement. Bohemians football club, St. James’ hospital and Trinity itself have all started to step up – with Bohs already really building community wealth in a myriad of ways in and around Phibsborough. 

(L to R – Beck Vining, Rupa Marya, Thomas O Connor, Sean McCabe, Ruth Hegarty)

“Our food system is not broken its working as its supposed to – a colonial extractivist project. How can we reverse this – how can we bring it home? Rupa Marya Deep Medicine Circle.

Bohemian FC’s Sean McCabe, whose presentation on Community Wealth Building demonstrated that climate justice and local economies can be practically rebuilt through cooperative models. His examples— from the Phibsborough climate-justice hub to Mondragon and Cleveland study visits, Community Supported Agriculture schemes, repair workshops and a forthcoming insurance mutual — showed that communities can build their own roadmaps for democratic local economies at scale. The Community Wealth Building framing resonated strongly across the entire symposium.

“We are a net food-calorie importer despite claims of “feeding 50 million people” John Gibbons. (Photo Martina Mullins)

Time for a time machine 

The time is 2035. You have just stepped out of a time machine. What do you see, hear, feel, smell? How is it now – and how did we get there? What did we do to make it work so much better for people and planet? 

An innovation at this iteration of Feeding Ourselves was our visioning exercise. Here, participants got their imagination muscles working as they imagined, in groups of three, what a better world would look like in 2035. Groups formed ,the chat flowed, and the noise echoed like a swimming pool on a Saturday morning. 

Chatting about 2035 in the time machine exercise

Imagining Ireland in 2035 with community-run food hubs, equitable land access, harsh taxes on the ever fewer ultra-processed foods left, organic as rule rather than exception, edible landscapes, food forests, decommodified healthcare, and a reformed governance of all aspects of land rural farming and food – was a creative and fun thing to do. 

Dozens of groups opined. Here’s just one, from myself, Aoife Hammond (of Common Knowledge) and Brid Torrades (chef from Osta in Sligo) 

We will have degressive basic income  – the smaller the acreage the higher the payment per acre –  based on socio-ecological utility and impact not past productivity (as is currently the case); producers operate collaboratively based on regional need; there is an agroecological infrastructure including food hubs which support people from finance to processing to distribution to training, all underpinned by and part of a basic income and services modality with support from multiple government departments including health; a multi-stakeholder land observatory will be overviewing the terrain to assess sustainability needs and capacities, from land price to pollution potential; this will be within an anarcho-syndicalist structure at the regional to national levels  – at least. Global agri-food trade operates in a solidarity cooperative exchange framework mostly for (long life) durables with global rules on shipping and flight emissions, in a world that is grappling with and achieving a real and deep just transition with a global south perspective.

Sorted!

Work in the Middle – how do we get there?

“Farming is cultural work shaped by time, place, and care — it’s not merely about economic output”. Fergal Anderson.

So how do we get there? As well as our time machine above, our ‘vision to action’ section made space for working on this too.

(Left to right Beck Vining, Rupa Marya, Thomas O Connor, Sean McCabe, Ruth Hegarty)

Panels on From Vision to Action emphasised key enablers: integrating healthcare and food systems  – Farming is Medicine –  land reform and access for young farmers, procurement reform, Community Wealth Building a political and economic strategy, and building cross-generational, cross-cultural alliances — including migrant farm workers and trade unions.

(Professor Colin Doherty, above; Photo Martina Mullins)

The closing reflections, especially from Professor Colin Doherty, underscored the opportunity of the moment: Trinity, St James’s and other anchor institutions now more than ever recognise their role and indeed responsibility in transforming Ireland’s food future. 

For a finish, the film Farming is Medicine was shown, which takes a deep land care and decolonisation perspective on how we heal and nourish ourselves, cognizant of the ongoing impacts of historical injustices, from Palestine to Turtle Island. 

An epically evocative, emotive and immersive conversation followed, where this author and Rupa Marya traversed so much of the terrain of land, farming and food, from Gaelic Ireland and the land wars to indigenous land back and how we can heal ourselves, together.

Ending it

(Screening of Farming is Medicine)

And then it was over. For now. Our Community of Practice collectively took a step up, toward centering local, just, agroecological food systems. A somehow sprawling whirlwind of ideas and practices, or innovations and opportunities, of initiatives and enchantments, whizzed past, scattering seeds and building coalitions along the way. 

The Feeding Ourselves Local Food Symposium was just one iteration of a two year Local Food Economies project. But it’s part of years of work going back to the first Feeding Ourselves in 2011 in Cloughjordan.  And it’s also part of decades and more of work by the people for the people, always wrestling with power for a better world. 

And yes, “with power” has two meanings, as it should…

The Feeding Ourselves Local Food Symposium was organised by Feasta, Talamh Beo & Cultivate
as part of the collaborative project: Strengthening Local Food Economies in Ireland
Supported through the Irish Environmental Network. It was run in collaboration with the Open Food Network Ireland, Food Policy Ireland, Bohemian FC Spark Project, Deep Medicine Circle, Siolta Croí, Trinity Sustainability, EU4Advice, and CODECS.