Categories
Food and agriculture Uncategorized

Almost two years – Presque deux ans

Bientôt, je fêterai mes deux ans au Réseau pour une alimentation durable. Le temps passe vite! Depuis le mois d’aout, j’ai fait la COVID au mois d’octobre, on a organisé un super évènement au mois de Novembre – Cultiver le Changement: Une transition juste vers un système alimentaire régénérateur, et on a eu notre assemblée annuelle en janvier. En plus, j’ai été nommé au Conseil consultatif de la politique alimentaire du Canada au mois de février et on a eu une séance publique épatante concernant la politique alimentaire au mois de mars.

One of the highlights for me was being successful in inviting the great Buffy Sainte Marie to participate in our Cultivating Change online event. The great African-American musician, arranger and producer, Quincy Jones, said that music can touch the hearts and minds of millions of people. Buffy Sainte-Marie is that kind of artist and probably the world’s most iconic Indigenous singer-songwriter. Her work spans 55 years and runs the gamut of politically informed classics such as “Now that the Buffalo’s gone.” Her work has also crossed into the popular domain with the likes of Elvis Presley, the late Joe Cocker and Scottish singer Donovan covering her compositions, among others. She remains until today the only Indigenous person to win an Oscar for her song “Up Where We Belong”, one of my personal favourites with vivid imagery of eagles and mountains and helping us think of getting through life and its obstacles day by day. The great Buffy recently turned 80 and remains an inspirational icon to so many around the world, including me.

Merci pour ces belles experiences! Malgré les défis et la pandémie, le soleil revient et nous souhaitons la bienvenue au printemps.

Categories
Food and agriculture Higher education and research

Botanical Gardens: Allies in Food Security and Nutrition

Thanks to Food Tank: The Food Think Tank for publishing my guest blog coauthored with Tara Moreau of UBC Botanical Garden on the role of botanical gardens in food security. Much of this is due to Norbert Steinhaus inviting me to become involved in the EU-funded “Big Picnic” project. You can access the article here.

Categories
Asia Food and agriculture Knowledge mobilization

Commonwealth People’s Forum, Nov 23-26, 2015

I’m delighted to have been invited to speak at the Commonwealth People’s Forum in Malta taking place from November 23-26. This civil society gathering – organized by the Commonwealth Foundation – is a precursor to the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) taking place from November 27-29th. I will be chairing an exciting panel on food challenges as well as speaking at a plenary session on the theme of: Equity and Resilience: Access to critical resources and services for all. I look forward to meeting and interacting with approximately 300 delegates from across the Commonwealth’s 53 member states.

As I was invited to contribute a blog entry in advance of the forum, here is the link below to my remarks:

http://cpf.commonwealthfoundation.com/societal-resilience-food-security-and-social-protection/

I welcome your comments!

Categories
Food and agriculture

Feeding Cities in the Horn of Africa

In 2002, I had the privilege of being invited by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) to do some work on a forum in Addis Ababa entitled “Feeding Cities in the Horn of Africa”. A report of the workshop involving local authorities, researchers and representatives from the public, private and not-for-profit sectors is available for downloading here. The workshop was based on some earlier work in a report produced in the year 2000 available here. Furthermore, a CD-Rom was produced with various other documents including, for example, some wonderful photographs taken by Olivio Argenti of FAO, some of which I have uploaded below. Visiting the ancient land of Abyssinia and birthplace of our species was a dream come true and I hope to go back to visit again some day.

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Categories
Asia Food and agriculture

Feeding Asian Cities – Nourrir les villes d’Asie

In 2001, I was asked to edit and write the introduction to a collection of papers presented at a regional seminar in Bangkok in 2000, which I was also engaged in, on the topic of Feeding Asian Cities. The full text can in English can be downloaded here: http://www.cityfarmer.org/FeedingAsianCities.pdf.  La version française est disponible ici:  ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/007/y3399f/y3399f00.pdf.