March 7, 2024 • 59 mins
As the importance of city foods is growing, this episode of Cities Reimagined is all about the transformative potential of healthy and delicious (urban) cuisine We are jumping back and forth between the favelas of the metropolis of Sāo Paulo, Brazil 🇧🇷 and the allotment gardens in Leeds, in the UK 🇬🇧 and will explore how cities are redefining their foodscapes for a sustainable future.
Today’s guests are
- Marcella Arruda, an urbanist and permaculture designer and CEO of The City Needs You Institute [Instituto A Cidade Precisa de Você] from Sāo Paulo.
- Chiara Tornaghi. a critical human geographer and scholar-activist at Coventry University, with a focus on Political ecology, agroecology and politics of spaces from Leeds,
Be prepared to hear aspects of urban food you might have not considered before:
🍌 What stroganoff made of banana peals has to do with the favelas of São Paulo
🔍 Why the invisible production of food in cities is a reflection of a broken relationship to the planet
🥬 How agroecological inspires us to integrate aspects of sustainability, biodiversity, ecological balance and community resilience on the topic of food.
🇧🇷 How Marcella’s NGO A Cicade Precisa De Você works with farmers on informal land in the favela of Brasilandia.
🍲 How urban food can contribute to addressing the rising food poverty and what the difference between the UK and Brazil is
More information:
- Marcella’s NGO Instituto A Cidade Precisa de Você: https://www.acidadeprecisa.org/english
- The Urbanising in Place Project we talk about: http://urbanisinginplace.org
- Video on ECOCIDADES in São Paulo: https://youtu.be/_d4DvOWw5f8?si=-IuVUQx1kxM7JHmK
- Agroecological Urbanism: https://www.agroecologicalurbanism.org
- Landed Community Kitchen: https://www.agroecologicalurbanism.org/building-blocks/landed-community-kitchen
This is the last thematic episode of season 1 of Cities Reimagined. Up next is the season finale, where the truth comes out, cliffhangers are being built for season 2 and… and… where Jonas Bylund and I will have a good time summing up what happened so far and bringing that into a 🦖 godzilla context. Stay tuned.
If you like the content of Cities Reimagined, please consider subscribing to the channel, rate the show, follow us on Instagram for background stories or get connected to Johannes via LinkedIn or email (johannes@anthropocene.city).
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Agroecology is about having healthy soils, happy plants and thriving humans.
(00:10):
And unless you have these three together, you cannot have any of them alone.
Hi and welcome back to the Cities Rematch podcast.
I'm your voice of choice, Johannes Riegler, and this is Reimagining Urban Food Production.
(00:31):
So in this episode, we will be jumping back and forth between Sao Paulo in Brazil and
Leeds in the United Kingdom to explore how cities and communities are redefining their
food scapes for a sustainable future.
I'm joined by two remarkable guests who are at the forefront of revolutionizing urban
(00:52):
food systems through agroecology and community-driven projects.
Chiara Tanagi is a critical human geographer and scholar activist at Coventry University
with a focus on political ecology, agroecology and politics of spaces.
She lives in Leeds, the UK.
(01:12):
And my other guest is Marcella Arruda, who's an urbanist and permaculture designer.
And she's the CEO of the City Needs You Institute, an NGO that aims at providing public spaces
through collective social actions.
So join us as Marcella and Chiara share their stories, challenges and visions for a regenerative,
(01:35):
more equitable urban world through the lens of urban food and agroecology.
If you like the content, leave a comment or a rating, follow cities reimagine on Instagram
for more background stories and more background content and get connected to me on LinkedIn
or send me an email.
That is johannes at Anthropocene.city.
But enough about me having a monologue here.
(01:57):
Let's get to some food.
Here it is, reimagining urban food production.
Hi, Marcella and Chiara.
How are you doing?
Hello.
Great.
Hello.
Hi.
Nice to be here.
It's really nice to have you on Cities Reimagined today because there is a bit of a story behind
(02:19):
how we ended up here.
And I think I really like this story.
So Chiara, you have been, you were part of a JPI Urban Europe project.
JPI Urban Europe is the program I work with and it was called Urbanizing in Place, right?
So we, I remember we met at the kickoff in London.
When was that?
What year was that?
That was 2018.
(02:39):
2018.
Yeah.
So the project is done now.
In 2022, I was organizing a tour to Sao Paulo for the program.
And Chiara, you were part of that tour a couple of weeks or months going.
Before going to Sao Paulo, I actually met Leonardo Marquez at another conference at
(03:04):
the place making in Pontevedra in Spain.
And we had a really nice evening together and asking, hey, we go to Brazil or to Sao
Paulo, do you have any contact or any initiatives to visit?
And he said, yes, there's one.
There's this Acidade Precisa de Você.
You have to visit them or contact them if they have time.
And then we planned to visit there.
(03:25):
I planned that with your colleague Karen to go to the Favela of Brasilandia to meet there
and see what you're doing.
And I think we will hear about that today as well, the project there.
But then in the end, it didn't work out because Sao Paulo turns out to be a huge city and
distances are long and it takes forever to go from A to B. So it just didn't work out.
(03:50):
So I'm super happy to have you on Cities Rematchen today to somehow continue this talk we didn't
have back then.
But for the first question, I have a special one for you.
So when you think of agroecology and all your work, what is the food or dish which would
(04:11):
reflect your work best?
Well, maybe I would say the stroganoff, the peel of the banana, which is for me a dish
that's really Brazilian in a way because it's a Russian dish, but we use it's really common
(04:34):
to make it here in Brazil.
But it's like this reimagining of stroganoff because we make it, I learned in Brasilandia
with Saelia, which is a cook from there, that you can make it from the peel of the banana.
So you can actually eat the peel of the banana.
I didn't know that never and it becomes like really a nice texture.
(04:57):
It seems like a bit of meat in a way because of the fibers.
So it was something that really changed my whole idea of what actually is possible of
cooking.
So I also never thought about it.
Yeah, yeah.
But you could eat the peel of the banana.
How cool is that?
And you, Chiara?
(05:18):
Oh, for me, it's definitely a spring salad made with wild herbs that you can forage with
also flowers, petals, roses or dandelions, flowers.
I really love the wild plants and the energy that gives you a spring.
(05:40):
And I think it's just the wonders of it.
It really reminds me of the wonder of food.
It's like a really nice bouquet salad.
So what fascinates you about the topic of urban food?
Well, for me, I would say it's the food is the most taken for granted thing in the city.
(06:01):
For decades, we've really been thinking about everything else apart from food.
And the more you realize, the more you think about where the food comes from, the more
you realize that you have to change completely the way we live on earth.
And it's really a journey that you do over your time and engaging with the food and agroecology.
(06:29):
So it's completely transformative.
Yeah, I would say that it's really something that is invisibilized in a way because also
really practically like the trucks that come to make the distribution, they come at night
so people don't really see what's behind of the fruits in the shelf of the supermarket.
(06:56):
And at the same time, I think it shows a lot that the challenges we have as society in
a way that we are disengaged.
We are apart from the cycles from the relationship to where it comes from and where is it going
to afterwards.
(07:17):
So it's really important for us to actually open our eyes and perceive these relationships,
which are all the time transpassing our life in the city, but we don't actually have eyes
to see it or to perceive it.
Yeah, that's right.
And I know that you work on that topic a lot, bringing this together in your daily work,
(07:43):
right, Marcella, with having communities engaged in food and food growing themselves.
Could you describe a day in your life or a day of your work on urban food?
Well, as your first thing about our connection, it's really marked off the distances and the
(08:10):
relationship to movement in the city.
So when I'm working with the city needs you in Brasilia, the first thing is to get a bus,
a two-hour bus to actually arrive in Brasilia, and it's so incredible to see actually the
forest arriving in the city in the sense that I'm going from the center to the periphery.
(08:34):
So I'm heading towards the forest to Serra Cantareira, which is the leftover of Atlantic
Forest we have in Sao Paulo.
So this is so impressive for me, and this is actually a movement of reconnection.
So when I arrived there, I arrived in the Spasso Culturao Jardim da Masseno, which we
(08:57):
call as a food culture spot.
And I see the neighbors, I see the children trying out some green juice and, you know,
having another experience of what food can actually be like besides industrial, this
kind of things.
(09:17):
And also the women really talking there in the kitchen and also in the garden.
So yeah, it's really a familiar, intimate and yeah, really lazy.
It's like light, environment of relationship and coexisting there together.
(09:43):
So there would be a bit on that.
And later on, maybe after lunch, we would walk on the park and go to Serra Cantareira.
So there the climate is much more fresh.
You have the shadows of the trees and you see the beginning of the river that will become
the Tietê River, which is like the huge river in São Paulo, which is so polluted and its
(10:09):
margins occupied by cars.
And we, Chiara, I think when we were in São Paulo, we also saw this river.
Remember that visit when we were somehow caught between the river and the highway and couldn't
get away because we couldn't get an Uber.
That was quite an experience.
But anyway, what about you, Chiara?
How would you describe your work on urban food?
(10:30):
A day of your work?
A typical day.
So I would probably wake up really early in the morning with a flight of Ryanair aircraft
on my head.
An airport, I live in urban fringe of Leeds and the airport here is built on agricultural
land.
So there are those thoughts about how does the city really impacts on the world we are
(10:54):
in.
And I would walk down the hill, take my daughter to school on the way back, pass by the allotment,
engage with the community, the community there.
That's the allotment I run with my own family.
And walking around before going back to the desk, I would probably look at the hills,
(11:16):
which are green, but they are mostly non cultivated for food.
So there is a huge potential for really creating a resilient food system around the city.
But at the moment, there is either a monoculture or just grass for sheep and for meat for export.
(11:41):
And then I would probably go back to the desk or either go to a workshop where I bring together
people from cities, kitchens, food partnership and farmers and try to develop my next research
projects.
So we are really working around a project on community kitchens.
(12:03):
And then I would probably come back home after the whole day and have a meeting with my own
friends from the medicinal agroecology circle we are part of and discuss how to use the
land that we have just been offered two weeks ago.
Oh, wow.
(12:23):
Is that in Leeds?
Yeah, it's actually is a market town just outside the main city, but it's part of the
metropolitan area.
And yeah, so we are looking into how to share agroecology in the community and rebuild medicinal
knowledge.
Speaking of agroecology, could you describe what that is?
(12:47):
Okay, well, so there are so many definitions that we have to decide where to start.
Someone says is a way of life.
And so I quite align with that idea.
There are also ways to say that he's bought a movement, a practice and a science.
(13:08):
So in that sense, it's really a way of bringing together the political work that the movements
have been doing in reestablish the importance of indigenous knowledge on how to take care
of the earth.
There is a science that is also trying to bring all the wisdom that has been sidelined
(13:31):
by revolution technology and approaches to the land.
And then there is also the actual practice of living in more in harmony with the earth.
And in that sense, a way of life is an important concept to share, because I really think that
(13:51):
agroecology shapes when you embrace it, it really shapes every aspect of your life from
the way you walk, the way you look at plants, the way you all the choices that you make.
And I came to agroecology, maybe from the back door, I would say I've been working on
public space for many years, and I was interested in insurgent planning.
(14:20):
And then when I came to the UK, I've realized how much urban agriculture was there as an
insurgent practice, and I started to be interested in urban food growing.
And then the more I realized how little I knew how to grow, and the more I wanted to
know, then I started to explore and to discover agroecology.
(14:43):
And I think that was a time when I was also becoming a mother.
So I think that maybe spiritual elements and questions around how we give birth and we
give life and how the earth gives birth and life to us became more central in my thinking.
Marcella, do you have some thoughts on that?
(15:07):
Yes.
Yeah, I think some principles which are really important for agroecology are like to be sensitive
about the culture, to be socially just and economically viable.
So in that sense, I think it's a really effective way of dealing with the soil, dealing with
(15:36):
plants, dealing with the whole ecosystem, living ecosystem of the earth.
And I come in agroecology a lot through permaculture design.
So the permaculture would be the culture of the permanence of life on earth.
(15:56):
So in that sense, I understand agroecology not only in the perspective of the agro as
the food that we eat, but in a perspective of how energy flows into this specific area.
So when we're talking about agroecology, we're talking about the resources, we're talking
(16:18):
about how the water comes from the rain and you can reuse it to water your plants in the
garden and how actually when you combine different species, you create a more harmonious and
harmonic environment and producing more cooperation and more abundance in that sense, because
(16:42):
you're putting together differences which are complementary.
So it's really trying to make the best out of the resources you have and using it with
co-responsibility, using it with intelligence and with care in that sense.
(17:05):
So I come from that and also from a lot, as Chiara was saying, my background is as a,
I'm an urbanist and architect.
And since 2012, 2013, I've been organizing and creating events of networks of people
who are activating, occupating public spaces.
(17:29):
So from that, I discovered the urban gardens also with André Villasotis, which is a really
nice friend and mentor in a way of this approach.
But it's really for me, I come from these relationships again of these different places
(17:51):
and ways of doing.
So yeah, it's a bit on that, I would say.
Yeah, nice.
And Marcel, your work is also much more than growing food or you described that just in
terms of agroecology, it also strengthens the network within vulnerable and informal
settlements.
(18:11):
What do you do exactly in this neighborhood, in Brasilandia?
And why does it go beyond food production in this area?
And how does the work improve the quality of life for people living in the neighborhood?
So I would say that we have this project called EcoCity in Brasilandia, and it started in
(18:36):
2021.
And I would say that the project went through a lot of metamorphosis in the sense that we
are in dialogue with the community and with the identity and needs of the territory.
So in the beginning, we started the project a lot from the whole, the perception of the
(18:56):
whole cycle, the food cycle.
So working with urban gardens, with the food culture spot as a place of consumption, distribution,
but also education on a more sustainable and healthy food culture.
And at the end of the cycle, working with composting in the sense also that closing
(19:19):
the circuit, yeah, in a more local and circular perspective.
But together with the community and with this process of the project in the past few years,
I would say that beyond that, beyond the food cycle, we are working to improve climate and
community resilience through the food cycle.
(19:41):
So right now we're not that much attached into the cycle itself and how to actually
close the cycle in a more, in the perspective of the neighborhood, because it's something
that would take a lot more time and effort than we as an NGO could actually establish
this kind of system.
(20:01):
But we are understanding how can we, again, work with the resources we have in the community
to actually improve this resilience.
We mapped the actors of the food cycle and we've been giving them technical assistance
to actually strengthen the work, to actually be able to make it more professional, access,
(20:24):
more generating income, right?
Because we're talking about an informal community in the periphery of Sao Paulo.
So it's really important to actually have opportunities of work.
And the second axis would be the networks.
So fostering networks, because we do believe that it's through networks that we create
(20:45):
collective intelligence and exchange technology.
So not only in the perspective of the neighborhood, but also in the city and in national level
and here, international also, in the sense that we are learning with this conversation.
The perspective of advocacy and incidents on public policies, because we do understand
(21:09):
that what we're doing is kind of a prototype, is a pilot, but how do we learn from this
experience and are able to give input in the public policies, right?
So we understand that through this local experience and through these networks of people who actually
(21:29):
organize themselves to pressure for public policies that respond to the needs of the
field.
The last axis is based on collective care.
So we do understand that which is the urban farmer, right?
(21:52):
What is his faith and age?
So we do believe that most of the farmers, especially in Sao Paulo, I would say, are
women and most of them are migrants also who bring with them the knowledge, the connection,
spiritual connection also to the earth, but they come to the big city and they lose it
(22:17):
in a way that they are, no, I need to make money, I need to...
So they forget, in a way, this knowledge, this relationship, and they don't value it
anymore because what has value in the city are other things, right?
So we do understand this intersectionality of categories, which are what it means to
(22:43):
be a woman, to be a migrant, to be living in the periphery, to have children.
So how can we care for these subjects, for these people, for this woman who has a lot
of different needs?
That's also, I think you run or you're involved in a community kitchen in the neighborhood
(23:03):
here as well, right?
Yes, yes.
It's what I just called food culture spot because it has a kitchen and which is interesting,
the model that was created with them because in a way it's based on solidarity and economy
in the sense that women, most of the times, donate their time to be there to cook and
(23:29):
they cook for all the children who are in the community space.
So it's really based on sharing and on caring.
But at the same time, these women, we have them to foster and make a collective of cooks.
So they are selling their services for local schools, for activities with universities.
(23:58):
So it's really nice that now they have a complimentary of their income.
And at the same time, it's really good because while they're working in the kitchen, the
children are playing outside, they're having different activities to actually be able to
take care of themselves while the women are there working.
(24:20):
So it's a really beautiful way of tackling all the necessities in just one place, one
community place, which has these multiple functions and activities.
So the value of Ermi Ecology is really more than just producing fresh and healthy food.
(24:42):
It's more than that by providing the quality of life and really empowering communities.
And Agri-Ecology is also more than that.
It is addressing a range of issues on topics which are existential for life and for life
on this planet.
Agri-Ecology can really contribute to addressing the climate and biodiversity crisis.
(25:03):
Chiara, do you have some thoughts on that?
Yeah.
Well, when I went to Argentina, our partners were always starting the discussion saying,
well, Agri-Ecology is about having healthy soils, happy plants and thriving humans.
(25:24):
And unless you have these three together, you cannot have any of them alone.
And I always found this view so inspiring.
So when we start practicing Agri-Ecology, we really understand the attitude of care
that you have there and you learn how plants and all the critters that live in the soil,
(25:51):
how they collaborate together.
So it's really community that thrive on collaboration and mutual dependency.
So I think that it's Agri-Ecology in that sense bring us to learn how to transfer this
more broadly in society.
So I think how we can, if we leave behind productivist approaches, just focus on profit
(26:15):
and we start collaborating rather than fighting each other.
That's how we can thrive as a society.
So I think that the bio-cultural element of Agri-Ecology, so the diversity of our cultures,
of us as humans, men and women, and all different other ways in which we manifest ourselves
(26:40):
are important.
And I think this brings us more to the social dimensions of Agri-Ecology.
For example, it's also very important to have fair working conditions, justice in access
to food and getting rid of other structures of oppression in society, like patriarchy,
(27:04):
for example.
So I think that the philosophy of Agri-Ecology brings more than just good food and fresh
food, but the approach to care.
For the planet and care for the environment, that is really a pillar.
So that's for me really a very important approach that I've learned through the years.
(27:33):
There's increased, let's say, concern about food poverty in Europe, and especially the
UK, I believe.
How do you think Agri-Ecology and urban food production and community-based food initiative
can offer access to nutritious and affordable food for all?
(27:54):
I think that it's very different from what, to some extent, very different from what Marcella
was talking about and from the experiences we have visited in Argentina with our previous
research.
I think you have to consider that in Europe and especially in the UK, the vast majority
of people in food poverty are in employment, maybe employed on salaries well below the
(28:22):
real living wage.
They have care work or they are single parents and the amount of people who are really struggling.
Also with health, with mental health, following the pandemic, it's really increasing.
So it's not always that people in difficulty can be directly involved in growing food directly,
(28:48):
but there is really a wealth of experiences and the Agri-Ecology groups and initiatives
which are building solidarities between farmers and between kitchens where a whole range of
volunteers and people create really a hub for the community.
So in that sense, we get close to the kitchen and the project that Marcella was talking
(29:11):
about.
So there are various forms of engagement.
There is political work around issues of patriarchy or isolation, mental health, but there are
also activities to train younger generation to support them with employment, a bit of
retraining around agriculture and growing food in case people have access to land.
(29:35):
Generally, they don't, especially in big cities.
And I think that it's interesting to see how these kitchens are developing, collaboration
with the farmers because farmers, they also struggle typically to have a decent living
wage.
So how can we pay the farmers a serious amount for their food and at the same time, maybe
(29:58):
this food available for people who struggle to even to buy cheap food from the main retail
sector.
So that's where the political work that the kitchens, the kitchen farming coalitions are
doing, the community is very important.
So they are creating and sensitizing the community in creating alternative economies, equity
(30:19):
funds, ways where people who can, can pay more and can pay more, not just to have other
food to add to give away to others, but can pay into and support economically the old
political projects of those kitchens.
So this is a very important distinction because they don't want to create charity.
They really want to create a movement of broader solidarities when we understand that people's
(30:48):
wellbeing is a good, something that we all want to build.
So it's really extraordinary to see how many forms these coalitions are emerging.
So I do see really this as a way forward.
With all the rising populations worldwide and growing cities and so on, can we actually
(31:11):
afford going this extra mile with small scale farming practices or are the forms of food
growing not only accessible by them, by the well-off who can afford that by the, let's
say, Bohemian hipsters who have the financial resources to pay extra for, let's say, well-produced
(31:32):
organic food?
I think, I do think we can and we can go the extra mile.
I mean, we have also to say that we think that there is a lot of pressures on land,
especially middle cities, but I must say I've always been offered land for free by local
(31:55):
municipalities.
So there is land available for small projects.
And the problem is that if you are trying to set up an agroecological farm, probably
the land is not enough or you don't have the right legal structure there to be able to
set a company or a business.
(32:17):
So in a sense, there are limits on how you can access land for a start in terms of what
new entrant farmers need.
But we have also, your point is about the pressure on land is absolutely important because
80% of the land we are losing across Europe is in urban fringes.
(32:39):
So there is definitely an issue there.
I think community groups are fighting back on this idea that we are sealing and losing
land to development and they are doing this in many different ways.
(33:01):
So I think we are doing this through legal cases.
Like in Belgium, there have been communities and farmers bringing the city council to court
(33:25):
because they've been selling land and they managed to win the case.
And we have in the UK, there are movements who are trying to preserve council land that
is sitting there unused.
Like for example, old greenhouses, they were used to grow flowers or county farms that
(33:49):
are not to use anymore and trying to retain them to create different food projects and
bring them back in the hands of the community.
And I think these are important sources where we can then create employment and regenerate
a local economy and look into the economy for this, for making food affordable.
(34:14):
That's super interesting also because I'm exchanging with a friend called Stefan Fugger,
he was on the show on local journalism a couple of months ago.
He told me that, so a bit of a context, so we come from the same city, which is of 100,000
(34:34):
people, not nearly as big as Sao Paulo, I would say, but there's a lot of pressure on the
land there.
Because in the fringes of the city, there's a lot of agriculture happening on a very small
scale which gets sold, the produce gets sold on the market.
But more and more these farmers, their leases do not get prolonged and the land gets rezoned
(34:58):
into, get rezoned so that they can build industry or some kind of other functions, build on
the land, seal the land at least.
And what is interesting in Austria is that there's a growing concern about that.
There's almost every day there's something on soil sealing at the moment in the newspaper.
(35:18):
What he told me is that also when he just checks the clicks and so on, how many clicks
his articles generate, he sees that this is going up and up and up for these kind of topics
and they increase in public awareness, which is interesting.
So, Marcella, do you have some thoughts from Brazil on soil sealing, on the expansion of
(35:42):
urban land into agricultural land?
Yes.
And yeah, I would say that that's the biggest challenge in the sense, as Chiara was saying,
of the pressure on land.
At the same time, we live here in Brazil, especially in São Paulo, a lot of pressure
(36:07):
on community and citizen initiatives.
So it's not only focusing on the land, but also on expelling this kind of initiatives
which should have been supported by public sector because public sector cannot arrive
in the places that mostly need them, right, need the services.
(36:30):
So we are facing this challenge now with our main partner in Brazil, that the municipality
made a reintegration call, I don't know, to actually expel people from this community
center, from this community kitchen.
(36:51):
And that's not an isolated case.
We have it on even five more urban gardens and community spaces in São Paulo.
So we actually face the social challenge, mainly that the local conservative power actors
(37:12):
from the city don't support and even want to actually exterminate the community initiatives.
And this comes a lot from the relationship with the housing squads in the center of the
city, all this relationship to movement and to not legitimizing and even making violent
(37:40):
actions against the social movements.
So this is a big alarm that we are facing for years now, decades, and we're still struggling
with this kind of situation that relates to the lack of regularity, regularization of
(38:02):
the initiatives.
I just wanted to add a point here, and I think that especially during the pandemic, people
realize how fragile is our food system.
I think there has been a growing awareness around the question of land and what happened
with the land and food.
(38:23):
And if we look like we have this month, we have seen farmers across Europe on the streets
and on the squares.
So there are different types of farmers there, asking for very different things.
I think there is lots of media attention.
And another thing that is happening at the moment in the UK, we have a right to grow
movement that has been a campaign for a number of years.
(38:48):
And now we have just had the news that one council in the UK, the whole municipality
has decided to accept and to embrace this demand to grow on public land.
And we have to see yet where it is going.
And the idea is really to understand that public farmland is an asset.
(39:10):
So I think that things are changing and we are really looking more at the resources that
there are and how can be used to create more resilient communities.
And also in that sense, I would put that for us to have a pressure on the local government
and also raise their awareness of the decision makers.
(39:33):
It is necessary, actually.
Of course, we have a society pressure on them, but also that we have evidence to actually
prove the social and ecological function of these kind of places.
Staying with that a little bit, besides the data, what is needed, do you think, to unfold
(39:56):
the transformational potential of agroecology or urban food practices?
How do you make people realize the role it can play, especially decision makers who might
have a different perspective or might not be aware of the potential of reducing greenhouse
gases in the atmosphere with these kind of practices or healthy produce and keeping people
(40:22):
healthy in the cities?
Yeah, I would say that we need to work with this, with the awareness of society and of
the decision makers.
And in that sense, for us in Brasilianja, it was really important to bring the decision
makers into the field for them to actually see and leave this experience to actually
(40:43):
understand the impact that it has.
So we brought a local municipal level, like the...
And also we brought in the national level.
So we brought both ministries of agriculture and of environment to actually visit the cases
(41:05):
and understand this relationship and how do they actually make tangible, sustainable proximities?
Because we talk a lot about sustainable development and how to actually be able to change it,
but we need to put it in the ground.
How do we understand sustainable development in the relationships, in the territory, in
(41:30):
this small scale?
And that's when we're going to have multiple connections and places which are actually
making it tangible and making it real.
So I would say that would be something around there.
Chiara?
Well, I would say that over the past years, that's the struggle we have been trying to
(41:58):
win.
How to bring together what the work the agroecology is doing with the work that is happening in
cities.
So we have planners and municipalities often thinking about from the consumption side,
problems of food waste and problems of the food chains, but without really thinking all
(42:21):
the ecological aspects of food and the livelihood of the farmers and the difficulty.
So there is really a gap that we have been trying to fill and the development of the
concept of agroecological urban is wants to be a container, a place where to start thinking,
when we have a form of urbanization that is centered around the caring work of the farmers.
(42:46):
And so the work that we have been doing is exactly the one of highlighting what areas
of work, where do we need to rebuild social relations around different fields of policy
and practice.
So we have been highlighting eight domains and they include questions around housing,
(43:09):
the management of waste, neighborhood infrastructures, what happened to urban fringes.
I really like highlighting what kind of work can we be doing?
What can we learn from best practice in each of these eight areas across the world?
So we have an online resource, it's a website called agroecologicalurbanism.org, for example,
(43:34):
that is a starting point.
And the way we are working now is really to work around the developed research projects
or actual research across each of the eight to work with specific communities and supporting
them in cross-sectional learning and cross-fertilization and do this work with the policy maker.
(43:58):
If you allow me.
Sure.
I need to react.
No, because I think what Chiara said is crucial because again, agroecology is so multiple
and so complex that we need to frame it into different domains and understand these relationships
(44:18):
and bring these technical, political actors to actually understand this complexity.
When they think and understand this complexity, I think that we will go far beyond where we
are now.
So amazing work.
Likewise.
We should work together.
(44:42):
I think I already see the next project coming up, hopefully.
With the two of you at least.
Do you think that the potential of urban agriculture is present enough in policy debates that links
a little bit with the question from before?
But do you think that there has been a shift in Europe or Latin America to elevate this
(45:03):
topic higher on the agenda?
Do you see a little bit of a change there?
Because in Europe, I think there's a lot of discussions, as you said, Chiara, on farming
practices.
There's a lot of push, but also pull where larger farmers do not want to go the extra
mile to, let's say, take a step back from conventional farming.
(45:28):
What has been happening over the last years and what is the development there?
I think, well, I don't think in general we could just say that farmers don't want to
step back.
But I think that at the moment, for farmers to go into alternative farming practices,
(45:49):
they need more human resources and they need more knowledge and they need to be paid better.
So the way the current food system is set at the moment is very, very hard for farmers
to survive.
So we have the two extremes, the people in extreme poverty in cities cannot afford food
(46:12):
and we have farmers who can't afford to operate.
So they are both really unhappy.
So I think part of the reason of the farmer we see on the street related to the demand
that there are on them to improve, but not enough financial support.
So we are used to the food being extremely cheap.
And if we want to make food more sustainable, we need to have different policies there.
(46:35):
I don't think there is any issue with how much land we have because at the moment we
waste 50% of the food we produce.
So we could easily feed the whole world with the land which is currently under cultivation.
But we need to understand that we need to invest more and we need to pay more for food.
(46:56):
And I think that in this respect, there have been some attempts to improve.
I mean, the Green New Deal is now being maybe scaled back, it's not being implemented, but
there was there a division to say good food should be there for everyone.
And in terms of particularly the agroecology movement, I think there is a broader understanding
(47:20):
that farming needs to change.
I think that the city actors might not yet be there in thinking or at least thinking
how can we make food available to everyone?
How can this come from the peri-urban or the region?
Because the economic models are not yet fully developed or the state is not willing to change
(47:41):
the way they support the farmers in the same way that they support an educational system.
But there is a bit of experimentation.
There are approaches in Belgium, for example, where they are looking into include access
to agroecological food through the NHS, sorry, the NHS, the health system, to a voucher scheme.
(48:03):
So I think there are some experiments mostly coming from the agroecology, but not yet institutional
answers.
Yeah, here in Brazil, we are in, even though we're still facing this kind of challenges
of regulation of the initiatives and sometimes this challenge with the local municipal level,
(48:29):
we are advancing a lot, we see a lot of advances in the municipal level in Sao Paulo and also
in the national level, even now, especially with this new president and yeah, teams, because
(48:50):
in the municipal level, we have an agriculture, a coordination of agriculture.
So that's really forward thinking in the sense that is a group, a team of people who are
(49:10):
really understanding the relationship to the health coordination, to the education, how
do we bring the gardens into the schools, for example, or integrate with the health
centres so that they have medicinal plants to actually be able to get it to the public.
(49:33):
So in that sense, it's really forward thinking.
And also in national level, we have now that we contributed for the development of national
program of urban and peri-urban agriculture that united four different ministries.
(49:55):
So it was something really special that came out of also a huge research and investigation
of the state of the status of the municipal public policies for urban agriculture.
And so I would say that we are facing a special moment that we have different public policies
(50:22):
which are addressing urban agriculture.
But still, it's curious because still in urban development, we have so many steps to go.
Like the discussion is going forward in health and education, even sometimes in culture,
(50:51):
but in planning and development, still a lot of steps behind.
So that's why it's so important that we talk about the Ecosystem and Agricultural Urbanization
in the sense that we bring this back to, okay, who owns the land?
(51:11):
Okay, which kind of shared management pact that we make among these local actors?
Zoning, there are so many aspects in urban planning that we need to tackle.
So a lot of work still to do.
(51:32):
And I would say that in Europe, we are far behind in this sense, but one similarity,
which is the difficulty of really bringing along the planning departments, that's very
similar.
I think probably because that's where many speculative interests are.
And they have always been traditionally very close places where very difficult to establish
(51:53):
intersectional, interdepartmental work across municipalities.
Planning departments are closed.
So that's a difficulty really.
So slowly coming to an end of our conversation.
Chiara, what are your three wishes for the future of agroecology?
(52:19):
Okay, so I am...
Well, I want to think about that in terms of what you know, agroecology as a movement,
practice and the practice, I could say, if we think agroecology as a movement, really
my wish for urban agroecology is to really build strong bridges with the rural part of
(52:43):
the movement.
Because we're, yes, I think lots of farmers and organizations really have the idea of
the back to the land and they are not always fully aware of the way the city is expanding
and is making their livelihoods difficult.
So the ability to build pedagogies, really build pedagogies for the movement and tools
(53:11):
to understand how to articulate their battles and their struggles around the way urbanization
is an urban way of life are problematic for them.
So that's really my wish.
And I think that when I was in Brazil and I had the opportunity to see the way the MST
(53:32):
movement is strategizing, really coming to cities, running kitchens, running festivals,
I think was exceptional.
And I think we have lots to learn from Latin Americans movement.
My wish for urban agroecology as a practice, it is to see lots more landed community kitchens,
(53:54):
so farmers and kitchens coalitions that are supported by policy.
So I think that that's where they are doing lots of innovation, like bringing together
the care for the food with the care for the people, fighting intersectional struggles
for emancipation and therefore quality of life.
(54:14):
And at the moment, they are not supported by policy, there is very little appreciation
for that work.
And urban agroecology is a science, I would say.
I would like to see my next project funded so that I can actually provide more systematic
(54:35):
analysis of all what's new that is coming from different countries and the movement
across different countries.
So I'm working with movement actors at the moment to develop a research project so that
we can understand better and then we can share this knowledge across them.
(54:57):
And I wish this could become more policy briefs and more videos making and animations to go
to the policy community to support.
Yeah, we wish you all the best for that.
And I hope you get the funding for that because then we might come back to you on the show
once to have a status update on what is going on there.
(55:21):
Marcella, from your work with EQCIDES and the Cidade de Précise, they will say what
are three things you would advise anybody who wants to change their city for the better?
Yeah, it's always difficult to make it practical, right, to make it real.
But I will try here.
(55:42):
So I would say that the first idea would be to actually activate spaces and community
around you and building this sustainable proximity, this sustainable practice in the territory.
So that would be the first thing.
Like look around you.
Who is around you?
(56:02):
Which places are empty?
Which are resources that most of the time we see and we don't recognize?
So open your eyes to see around you.
The second one would be the change of perception.
So how can we actually perceive the value of what we call residues?
(56:23):
So we call it residue, but where does it go to?
Can you actually use it to something else besides just throwing out, remembering that
there is no out?
So really important to think about it and rethink the way we perceive.
And the third one would be to think of the cycles, like to understand the life's long,
(56:48):
the pathways, the flows, the things that we do, which are the relationships that are supporting
them.
And in that sense, I would remember a principle from permaculture that is there is no autonomy
without interdependence.
So trying all the time to remember that, okay, we can do the best with what we have, but
(57:16):
which kind of systems we are building in these relationships.
So I would say that.
Very nice, Marcela.
Thank you so much for this talk, I enjoyed it so much.
I always find it so inspiring to hear cases and hear from people working in Latin American
or Brazilian context, as Chiara said, we have so much to learn also from this context in
(57:41):
Europe.
And it's really fascinating to build these connections between Europe and Brazil.
So every time I have conversations with initiatives from there, it's really I learned so much
from that.
And I'm sure our listeners also learned a lot.
So thank you so much for all your insight and your knowledge.
(58:02):
And I hope to have you on the show at some point again, with maybe a project among you
or something like that.
That would be wonderful.
That would be great.
Thanks a lot.
Thank you.
See you soon.
Thank you.
See you soon.
Thank you.
See you soon.
Thank you.
See you soon.
Thank you.
That was Reimagining Urban Food Production.
(58:24):
And this episode also marks the last thematic episode of season one of Cities Reimagined.
I'm saying thematic episode because there is one more in this season and that is a reflection
with my colleague and friend, Jonas Bülond.
So we will have a discussion or a talk on what comes out or what came out of Cities
(58:45):
Reimagined of the episode, what is missing, what are the hooks we need to build up for
the next season.
And it will ultimately be the season finale.
So the truth will come out.
So I hope you will tune in for that one whenever it comes out, probably next week or in two
weeks.
Let's see how it goes with the schedule.
(59:07):
Anyway, if you like the content, consider leaving a comment or rating or send me an
email at johannes at Anthropocene.city.
Follow Cities Reimagined on Instagram.
Yeah.
And maybe you want to dive deep into the other episodes of Cities Reimagined.
I would like that.
(59:28):
I hope you do too.
So that's it for today.
I hope to catch you soon.
Agroecology is about having healthy soils, happy plants and thriving humans.
(00:10):
And unless you have these three together, you cannot have any of them alone.
Hi and welcome back to the Cities Rematch podcast.
I'm your voice of choice, Johannes Riegler, and this is Reimagining Urban Food Production.
(00:31):
So in this episode, we will be jumping back and forth between Sao Paulo in Brazil and
Leeds in the United Kingdom to explore how cities and communities are redefining their
food scapes for a sustainable future.
I'm joined by two remarkable guests who are at the forefront of revolutionizing urban
(00:52):
food systems through agroecology and community-driven projects.
Chiara Tanagi is a critical human geographer and scholar activist at Coventry University
with a focus on political ecology, agroecology and politics of spaces.
She lives in Leeds, the UK.
(01:12):
And my other guest is Marcella Arruda, who's an urbanist and permaculture designer.
And she's the CEO of the City Needs You Institute, an NGO that aims at providing public spaces
through collective social actions.
So join us as Marcella and Chiara share their stories, challenges and visions for a regenerative,
(01:35):
more equitable urban world through the lens of urban food and agroecology.
If you like the content, leave a comment or a rating, follow cities reimagine on Instagram
for more background stories and more background content and get connected to me on LinkedIn
or send me an email.
That is johannes at Anthropocene.city.
But enough about me having a monologue here.
(01:57):
Let's get to some food.
Here it is, reimagining urban food production.
Hi, Marcella and Chiara.
How are you doing?
Hello.
Great.
Hello.
Hi.
Nice to be here.
It's really nice to have you on Cities Reimagined today because there is a bit of a story behind
(02:19):
how we ended up here.
And I think I really like this story.
So Chiara, you have been, you were part of a JPI Urban Europe project.
JPI Urban Europe is the program I work with and it was called Urbanizing in Place, right?
So we, I remember we met at the kickoff in London.
When was that?
What year was that?
That was 2018.
(02:39):
2018.
Yeah.
So the project is done now.
In 2022, I was organizing a tour to Sao Paulo for the program.
And Chiara, you were part of that tour a couple of weeks or months going.
Before going to Sao Paulo, I actually met Leonardo Marquez at another conference at
(03:04):
the place making in Pontevedra in Spain.
And we had a really nice evening together and asking, hey, we go to Brazil or to Sao
Paulo, do you have any contact or any initiatives to visit?
And he said, yes, there's one.
There's this Acidade Precisa de Você.
You have to visit them or contact them if they have time.
And then we planned to visit there.
(03:25):
I planned that with your colleague Karen to go to the Favela of Brasilandia to meet there
and see what you're doing.
And I think we will hear about that today as well, the project there.
But then in the end, it didn't work out because Sao Paulo turns out to be a huge city and
distances are long and it takes forever to go from A to B. So it just didn't work out.
(03:50):
So I'm super happy to have you on Cities Rematchen today to somehow continue this talk we didn't
have back then.
But for the first question, I have a special one for you.
So when you think of agroecology and all your work, what is the food or dish which would
(04:11):
reflect your work best?
Well, maybe I would say the stroganoff, the peel of the banana, which is for me a dish
that's really Brazilian in a way because it's a Russian dish, but we use it's really common
(04:34):
to make it here in Brazil.
But it's like this reimagining of stroganoff because we make it, I learned in Brasilandia
with Saelia, which is a cook from there, that you can make it from the peel of the banana.
So you can actually eat the peel of the banana.
I didn't know that never and it becomes like really a nice texture.
(04:57):
It seems like a bit of meat in a way because of the fibers.
So it was something that really changed my whole idea of what actually is possible of
cooking.
So I also never thought about it.
Yeah, yeah.
But you could eat the peel of the banana.
How cool is that?
And you, Chiara?
(05:18):
Oh, for me, it's definitely a spring salad made with wild herbs that you can forage with
also flowers, petals, roses or dandelions, flowers.
I really love the wild plants and the energy that gives you a spring.
(05:40):
And I think it's just the wonders of it.
It really reminds me of the wonder of food.
It's like a really nice bouquet salad.
So what fascinates you about the topic of urban food?
Well, for me, I would say it's the food is the most taken for granted thing in the city.
(06:01):
For decades, we've really been thinking about everything else apart from food.
And the more you realize, the more you think about where the food comes from, the more
you realize that you have to change completely the way we live on earth.
And it's really a journey that you do over your time and engaging with the food and agroecology.
(06:29):
So it's completely transformative.
Yeah, I would say that it's really something that is invisibilized in a way because also
really practically like the trucks that come to make the distribution, they come at night
so people don't really see what's behind of the fruits in the shelf of the supermarket.
(06:56):
And at the same time, I think it shows a lot that the challenges we have as society in
a way that we are disengaged.
We are apart from the cycles from the relationship to where it comes from and where is it going
to afterwards.
(07:17):
So it's really important for us to actually open our eyes and perceive these relationships,
which are all the time transpassing our life in the city, but we don't actually have eyes
to see it or to perceive it.
Yeah, that's right.
And I know that you work on that topic a lot, bringing this together in your daily work,
(07:43):
right, Marcella, with having communities engaged in food and food growing themselves.
Could you describe a day in your life or a day of your work on urban food?
Well, as your first thing about our connection, it's really marked off the distances and the
(08:10):
relationship to movement in the city.
So when I'm working with the city needs you in Brasilia, the first thing is to get a bus,
a two-hour bus to actually arrive in Brasilia, and it's so incredible to see actually the
forest arriving in the city in the sense that I'm going from the center to the periphery.
(08:34):
So I'm heading towards the forest to Serra Cantareira, which is the leftover of Atlantic
Forest we have in Sao Paulo.
So this is so impressive for me, and this is actually a movement of reconnection.
So when I arrived there, I arrived in the Spasso Culturao Jardim da Masseno, which we
(08:57):
call as a food culture spot.
And I see the neighbors, I see the children trying out some green juice and, you know,
having another experience of what food can actually be like besides industrial, this
kind of things.
(09:17):
And also the women really talking there in the kitchen and also in the garden.
So yeah, it's really a familiar, intimate and yeah, really lazy.
It's like light, environment of relationship and coexisting there together.
(09:43):
So there would be a bit on that.
And later on, maybe after lunch, we would walk on the park and go to Serra Cantareira.
So there the climate is much more fresh.
You have the shadows of the trees and you see the beginning of the river that will become
the Tietê River, which is like the huge river in São Paulo, which is so polluted and its
(10:09):
margins occupied by cars.
And we, Chiara, I think when we were in São Paulo, we also saw this river.
Remember that visit when we were somehow caught between the river and the highway and couldn't
get away because we couldn't get an Uber.
That was quite an experience.
But anyway, what about you, Chiara?
How would you describe your work on urban food?
(10:30):
A day of your work?
A typical day.
So I would probably wake up really early in the morning with a flight of Ryanair aircraft
on my head.
An airport, I live in urban fringe of Leeds and the airport here is built on agricultural
land.
So there are those thoughts about how does the city really impacts on the world we are
(10:54):
in.
And I would walk down the hill, take my daughter to school on the way back, pass by the allotment,
engage with the community, the community there.
That's the allotment I run with my own family.
And walking around before going back to the desk, I would probably look at the hills,
(11:16):
which are green, but they are mostly non cultivated for food.
So there is a huge potential for really creating a resilient food system around the city.
But at the moment, there is either a monoculture or just grass for sheep and for meat for export.
(11:41):
And then I would probably go back to the desk or either go to a workshop where I bring together
people from cities, kitchens, food partnership and farmers and try to develop my next research
projects.
So we are really working around a project on community kitchens.
(12:03):
And then I would probably come back home after the whole day and have a meeting with my own
friends from the medicinal agroecology circle we are part of and discuss how to use the
land that we have just been offered two weeks ago.
Oh, wow.
(12:23):
Is that in Leeds?
Yeah, it's actually is a market town just outside the main city, but it's part of the
metropolitan area.
And yeah, so we are looking into how to share agroecology in the community and rebuild medicinal
knowledge.
Speaking of agroecology, could you describe what that is?
(12:47):
Okay, well, so there are so many definitions that we have to decide where to start.
Someone says is a way of life.
And so I quite align with that idea.
There are also ways to say that he's bought a movement, a practice and a science.
(13:08):
So in that sense, it's really a way of bringing together the political work that the movements
have been doing in reestablish the importance of indigenous knowledge on how to take care
of the earth.
There is a science that is also trying to bring all the wisdom that has been sidelined
(13:31):
by revolution technology and approaches to the land.
And then there is also the actual practice of living in more in harmony with the earth.
And in that sense, a way of life is an important concept to share, because I really think that
(13:51):
agroecology shapes when you embrace it, it really shapes every aspect of your life from
the way you walk, the way you look at plants, the way you all the choices that you make.
And I came to agroecology, maybe from the back door, I would say I've been working on
public space for many years, and I was interested in insurgent planning.
(14:20):
And then when I came to the UK, I've realized how much urban agriculture was there as an
insurgent practice, and I started to be interested in urban food growing.
And then the more I realized how little I knew how to grow, and the more I wanted to
know, then I started to explore and to discover agroecology.
(14:43):
And I think that was a time when I was also becoming a mother.
So I think that maybe spiritual elements and questions around how we give birth and we
give life and how the earth gives birth and life to us became more central in my thinking.
Marcella, do you have some thoughts on that?
(15:07):
Yes.
Yeah, I think some principles which are really important for agroecology are like to be sensitive
about the culture, to be socially just and economically viable.
So in that sense, I think it's a really effective way of dealing with the soil, dealing with
(15:36):
plants, dealing with the whole ecosystem, living ecosystem of the earth.
And I come in agroecology a lot through permaculture design.
So the permaculture would be the culture of the permanence of life on earth.
(15:56):
So in that sense, I understand agroecology not only in the perspective of the agro as
the food that we eat, but in a perspective of how energy flows into this specific area.
So when we're talking about agroecology, we're talking about the resources, we're talking
(16:18):
about how the water comes from the rain and you can reuse it to water your plants in the
garden and how actually when you combine different species, you create a more harmonious and
harmonic environment and producing more cooperation and more abundance in that sense, because
(16:42):
you're putting together differences which are complementary.
So it's really trying to make the best out of the resources you have and using it with
co-responsibility, using it with intelligence and with care in that sense.
(17:05):
So I come from that and also from a lot, as Chiara was saying, my background is as a,
I'm an urbanist and architect.
And since 2012, 2013, I've been organizing and creating events of networks of people
who are activating, occupating public spaces.
(17:29):
So from that, I discovered the urban gardens also with André Villasotis, which is a really
nice friend and mentor in a way of this approach.
But it's really for me, I come from these relationships again of these different places
(17:51):
and ways of doing.
So yeah, it's a bit on that, I would say.
Yeah, nice.
And Marcel, your work is also much more than growing food or you described that just in
terms of agroecology, it also strengthens the network within vulnerable and informal
settlements.
(18:11):
What do you do exactly in this neighborhood, in Brasilandia?
And why does it go beyond food production in this area?
And how does the work improve the quality of life for people living in the neighborhood?
So I would say that we have this project called EcoCity in Brasilandia, and it started in
(18:36):
2021.
And I would say that the project went through a lot of metamorphosis in the sense that we
are in dialogue with the community and with the identity and needs of the territory.
So in the beginning, we started the project a lot from the whole, the perception of the
(18:56):
whole cycle, the food cycle.
So working with urban gardens, with the food culture spot as a place of consumption, distribution,
but also education on a more sustainable and healthy food culture.
And at the end of the cycle, working with composting in the sense also that closing
(19:19):
the circuit, yeah, in a more local and circular perspective.
But together with the community and with this process of the project in the past few years,
I would say that beyond that, beyond the food cycle, we are working to improve climate and
community resilience through the food cycle.
(19:41):
So right now we're not that much attached into the cycle itself and how to actually
close the cycle in a more, in the perspective of the neighborhood, because it's something
that would take a lot more time and effort than we as an NGO could actually establish
this kind of system.
(20:01):
But we are understanding how can we, again, work with the resources we have in the community
to actually improve this resilience.
We mapped the actors of the food cycle and we've been giving them technical assistance
to actually strengthen the work, to actually be able to make it more professional, access,
(20:24):
more generating income, right?
Because we're talking about an informal community in the periphery of Sao Paulo.
So it's really important to actually have opportunities of work.
And the second axis would be the networks.
So fostering networks, because we do believe that it's through networks that we create
(20:45):
collective intelligence and exchange technology.
So not only in the perspective of the neighborhood, but also in the city and in national level
and here, international also, in the sense that we are learning with this conversation.
The perspective of advocacy and incidents on public policies, because we do understand
(21:09):
that what we're doing is kind of a prototype, is a pilot, but how do we learn from this
experience and are able to give input in the public policies, right?
So we understand that through this local experience and through these networks of people who actually
(21:29):
organize themselves to pressure for public policies that respond to the needs of the
field.
The last axis is based on collective care.
So we do understand that which is the urban farmer, right?
(21:52):
What is his faith and age?
So we do believe that most of the farmers, especially in Sao Paulo, I would say, are
women and most of them are migrants also who bring with them the knowledge, the connection,
spiritual connection also to the earth, but they come to the big city and they lose it
(22:17):
in a way that they are, no, I need to make money, I need to...
So they forget, in a way, this knowledge, this relationship, and they don't value it
anymore because what has value in the city are other things, right?
So we do understand this intersectionality of categories, which are what it means to
(22:43):
be a woman, to be a migrant, to be living in the periphery, to have children.
So how can we care for these subjects, for these people, for this woman who has a lot
of different needs?
That's also, I think you run or you're involved in a community kitchen in the neighborhood
(23:03):
here as well, right?
Yes, yes.
It's what I just called food culture spot because it has a kitchen and which is interesting,
the model that was created with them because in a way it's based on solidarity and economy
in the sense that women, most of the times, donate their time to be there to cook and
(23:29):
they cook for all the children who are in the community space.
So it's really based on sharing and on caring.
But at the same time, these women, we have them to foster and make a collective of cooks.
So they are selling their services for local schools, for activities with universities.
(23:58):
So it's really nice that now they have a complimentary of their income.
And at the same time, it's really good because while they're working in the kitchen, the
children are playing outside, they're having different activities to actually be able to
take care of themselves while the women are there working.
(24:20):
So it's a really beautiful way of tackling all the necessities in just one place, one
community place, which has these multiple functions and activities.
So the value of Ermi Ecology is really more than just producing fresh and healthy food.
(24:42):
It's more than that by providing the quality of life and really empowering communities.
And Agri-Ecology is also more than that.
It is addressing a range of issues on topics which are existential for life and for life
on this planet.
Agri-Ecology can really contribute to addressing the climate and biodiversity crisis.
(25:03):
Chiara, do you have some thoughts on that?
Yeah.
Well, when I went to Argentina, our partners were always starting the discussion saying,
well, Agri-Ecology is about having healthy soils, happy plants and thriving humans.
(25:24):
And unless you have these three together, you cannot have any of them alone.
And I always found this view so inspiring.
So when we start practicing Agri-Ecology, we really understand the attitude of care
that you have there and you learn how plants and all the critters that live in the soil,
(25:51):
how they collaborate together.
So it's really community that thrive on collaboration and mutual dependency.
So I think that it's Agri-Ecology in that sense bring us to learn how to transfer this
more broadly in society.
So I think how we can, if we leave behind productivist approaches, just focus on profit
(26:15):
and we start collaborating rather than fighting each other.
That's how we can thrive as a society.
So I think that the bio-cultural element of Agri-Ecology, so the diversity of our cultures,
of us as humans, men and women, and all different other ways in which we manifest ourselves
(26:40):
are important.
And I think this brings us more to the social dimensions of Agri-Ecology.
For example, it's also very important to have fair working conditions, justice in access
to food and getting rid of other structures of oppression in society, like patriarchy,
(27:04):
for example.
So I think that the philosophy of Agri-Ecology brings more than just good food and fresh
food, but the approach to care.
For the planet and care for the environment, that is really a pillar.
So that's for me really a very important approach that I've learned through the years.
(27:33):
There's increased, let's say, concern about food poverty in Europe, and especially the
UK, I believe.
How do you think Agri-Ecology and urban food production and community-based food initiative
can offer access to nutritious and affordable food for all?
(27:54):
I think that it's very different from what, to some extent, very different from what Marcella
was talking about and from the experiences we have visited in Argentina with our previous
research.
I think you have to consider that in Europe and especially in the UK, the vast majority
of people in food poverty are in employment, maybe employed on salaries well below the
(28:22):
real living wage.
They have care work or they are single parents and the amount of people who are really struggling.
Also with health, with mental health, following the pandemic, it's really increasing.
So it's not always that people in difficulty can be directly involved in growing food directly,
(28:48):
but there is really a wealth of experiences and the Agri-Ecology groups and initiatives
which are building solidarities between farmers and between kitchens where a whole range of
volunteers and people create really a hub for the community.
So in that sense, we get close to the kitchen and the project that Marcella was talking
(29:11):
about.
So there are various forms of engagement.
There is political work around issues of patriarchy or isolation, mental health, but there are
also activities to train younger generation to support them with employment, a bit of
retraining around agriculture and growing food in case people have access to land.
(29:35):
Generally, they don't, especially in big cities.
And I think that it's interesting to see how these kitchens are developing, collaboration
with the farmers because farmers, they also struggle typically to have a decent living
wage.
So how can we pay the farmers a serious amount for their food and at the same time, maybe
(29:58):
this food available for people who struggle to even to buy cheap food from the main retail
sector.
So that's where the political work that the kitchens, the kitchen farming coalitions are
doing, the community is very important.
So they are creating and sensitizing the community in creating alternative economies, equity
(30:19):
funds, ways where people who can, can pay more and can pay more, not just to have other
food to add to give away to others, but can pay into and support economically the old
political projects of those kitchens.
So this is a very important distinction because they don't want to create charity.
They really want to create a movement of broader solidarities when we understand that people's
(30:48):
wellbeing is a good, something that we all want to build.
So it's really extraordinary to see how many forms these coalitions are emerging.
So I do see really this as a way forward.
With all the rising populations worldwide and growing cities and so on, can we actually
(31:11):
afford going this extra mile with small scale farming practices or are the forms of food
growing not only accessible by them, by the well-off who can afford that by the, let's
say, Bohemian hipsters who have the financial resources to pay extra for, let's say, well-produced
(31:32):
organic food?
I think, I do think we can and we can go the extra mile.
I mean, we have also to say that we think that there is a lot of pressures on land,
especially middle cities, but I must say I've always been offered land for free by local
(31:55):
municipalities.
So there is land available for small projects.
And the problem is that if you are trying to set up an agroecological farm, probably
the land is not enough or you don't have the right legal structure there to be able to
set a company or a business.
(32:17):
So in a sense, there are limits on how you can access land for a start in terms of what
new entrant farmers need.
But we have also, your point is about the pressure on land is absolutely important because
80% of the land we are losing across Europe is in urban fringes.
(32:39):
So there is definitely an issue there.
I think community groups are fighting back on this idea that we are sealing and losing
land to development and they are doing this in many different ways.
(33:01):
So I think we are doing this through legal cases.
Like in Belgium, there have been communities and farmers bringing the city council to court
(33:25):
because they've been selling land and they managed to win the case.
And we have in the UK, there are movements who are trying to preserve council land that
is sitting there unused.
Like for example, old greenhouses, they were used to grow flowers or county farms that
(33:49):
are not to use anymore and trying to retain them to create different food projects and
bring them back in the hands of the community.
And I think these are important sources where we can then create employment and regenerate
a local economy and look into the economy for this, for making food affordable.
(34:14):
That's super interesting also because I'm exchanging with a friend called Stefan Fugger,
he was on the show on local journalism a couple of months ago.
He told me that, so a bit of a context, so we come from the same city, which is of 100,000
(34:34):
people, not nearly as big as Sao Paulo, I would say, but there's a lot of pressure on the
land there.
Because in the fringes of the city, there's a lot of agriculture happening on a very small
scale which gets sold, the produce gets sold on the market.
But more and more these farmers, their leases do not get prolonged and the land gets rezoned
(34:58):
into, get rezoned so that they can build industry or some kind of other functions, build on
the land, seal the land at least.
And what is interesting in Austria is that there's a growing concern about that.
There's almost every day there's something on soil sealing at the moment in the newspaper.
(35:18):
What he told me is that also when he just checks the clicks and so on, how many clicks
his articles generate, he sees that this is going up and up and up for these kind of topics
and they increase in public awareness, which is interesting.
So, Marcella, do you have some thoughts from Brazil on soil sealing, on the expansion of
(35:42):
urban land into agricultural land?
Yes.
And yeah, I would say that that's the biggest challenge in the sense, as Chiara was saying,
of the pressure on land.
At the same time, we live here in Brazil, especially in São Paulo, a lot of pressure
(36:07):
on community and citizen initiatives.
So it's not only focusing on the land, but also on expelling this kind of initiatives
which should have been supported by public sector because public sector cannot arrive
in the places that mostly need them, right, need the services.
(36:30):
So we are facing this challenge now with our main partner in Brazil, that the municipality
made a reintegration call, I don't know, to actually expel people from this community
center, from this community kitchen.
(36:51):
And that's not an isolated case.
We have it on even five more urban gardens and community spaces in São Paulo.
So we actually face the social challenge, mainly that the local conservative power actors
(37:12):
from the city don't support and even want to actually exterminate the community initiatives.
And this comes a lot from the relationship with the housing squads in the center of the
city, all this relationship to movement and to not legitimizing and even making violent
(37:40):
actions against the social movements.
So this is a big alarm that we are facing for years now, decades, and we're still struggling
with this kind of situation that relates to the lack of regularity, regularization of
(38:02):
the initiatives.
I just wanted to add a point here, and I think that especially during the pandemic, people
realize how fragile is our food system.
I think there has been a growing awareness around the question of land and what happened
with the land and food.
(38:23):
And if we look like we have this month, we have seen farmers across Europe on the streets
and on the squares.
So there are different types of farmers there, asking for very different things.
I think there is lots of media attention.
And another thing that is happening at the moment in the UK, we have a right to grow
movement that has been a campaign for a number of years.
(38:48):
And now we have just had the news that one council in the UK, the whole municipality
has decided to accept and to embrace this demand to grow on public land.
And we have to see yet where it is going.
And the idea is really to understand that public farmland is an asset.
(39:10):
So I think that things are changing and we are really looking more at the resources that
there are and how can be used to create more resilient communities.
And also in that sense, I would put that for us to have a pressure on the local government
and also raise their awareness of the decision makers.
(39:33):
It is necessary, actually.
Of course, we have a society pressure on them, but also that we have evidence to actually
prove the social and ecological function of these kind of places.
Staying with that a little bit, besides the data, what is needed, do you think, to unfold
(39:56):
the transformational potential of agroecology or urban food practices?
How do you make people realize the role it can play, especially decision makers who might
have a different perspective or might not be aware of the potential of reducing greenhouse
gases in the atmosphere with these kind of practices or healthy produce and keeping people
(40:22):
healthy in the cities?
Yeah, I would say that we need to work with this, with the awareness of society and of
the decision makers.
And in that sense, for us in Brasilianja, it was really important to bring the decision
makers into the field for them to actually see and leave this experience to actually
(40:43):
understand the impact that it has.
So we brought a local municipal level, like the...
And also we brought in the national level.
So we brought both ministries of agriculture and of environment to actually visit the cases
(41:05):
and understand this relationship and how do they actually make tangible, sustainable proximities?
Because we talk a lot about sustainable development and how to actually be able to change it,
but we need to put it in the ground.
How do we understand sustainable development in the relationships, in the territory, in
(41:30):
this small scale?
And that's when we're going to have multiple connections and places which are actually
making it tangible and making it real.
So I would say that would be something around there.
Chiara?
Well, I would say that over the past years, that's the struggle we have been trying to
(41:58):
win.
How to bring together what the work the agroecology is doing with the work that is happening in
cities.
So we have planners and municipalities often thinking about from the consumption side,
problems of food waste and problems of the food chains, but without really thinking all
(42:21):
the ecological aspects of food and the livelihood of the farmers and the difficulty.
So there is really a gap that we have been trying to fill and the development of the
concept of agroecological urban is wants to be a container, a place where to start thinking,
when we have a form of urbanization that is centered around the caring work of the farmers.
(42:46):
And so the work that we have been doing is exactly the one of highlighting what areas
of work, where do we need to rebuild social relations around different fields of policy
and practice.
So we have been highlighting eight domains and they include questions around housing,
(43:09):
the management of waste, neighborhood infrastructures, what happened to urban fringes.
I really like highlighting what kind of work can we be doing?
What can we learn from best practice in each of these eight areas across the world?
So we have an online resource, it's a website called agroecologicalurbanism.org, for example,
(43:34):
that is a starting point.
And the way we are working now is really to work around the developed research projects
or actual research across each of the eight to work with specific communities and supporting
them in cross-sectional learning and cross-fertilization and do this work with the policy maker.
(43:58):
If you allow me.
Sure.
I need to react.
No, because I think what Chiara said is crucial because again, agroecology is so multiple
and so complex that we need to frame it into different domains and understand these relationships
(44:18):
and bring these technical, political actors to actually understand this complexity.
When they think and understand this complexity, I think that we will go far beyond where we
are now.
So amazing work.
Likewise.
We should work together.
(44:42):
I think I already see the next project coming up, hopefully.
With the two of you at least.
Do you think that the potential of urban agriculture is present enough in policy debates that links
a little bit with the question from before?
But do you think that there has been a shift in Europe or Latin America to elevate this
(45:03):
topic higher on the agenda?
Do you see a little bit of a change there?
Because in Europe, I think there's a lot of discussions, as you said, Chiara, on farming
practices.
There's a lot of push, but also pull where larger farmers do not want to go the extra
mile to, let's say, take a step back from conventional farming.
(45:28):
What has been happening over the last years and what is the development there?
I think, well, I don't think in general we could just say that farmers don't want to
step back.
But I think that at the moment, for farmers to go into alternative farming practices,
(45:49):
they need more human resources and they need more knowledge and they need to be paid better.
So the way the current food system is set at the moment is very, very hard for farmers
to survive.
So we have the two extremes, the people in extreme poverty in cities cannot afford food
(46:12):
and we have farmers who can't afford to operate.
So they are both really unhappy.
So I think part of the reason of the farmer we see on the street related to the demand
that there are on them to improve, but not enough financial support.
So we are used to the food being extremely cheap.
And if we want to make food more sustainable, we need to have different policies there.
(46:35):
I don't think there is any issue with how much land we have because at the moment we
waste 50% of the food we produce.
So we could easily feed the whole world with the land which is currently under cultivation.
But we need to understand that we need to invest more and we need to pay more for food.
(46:56):
And I think that in this respect, there have been some attempts to improve.
I mean, the Green New Deal is now being maybe scaled back, it's not being implemented, but
there was there a division to say good food should be there for everyone.
And in terms of particularly the agroecology movement, I think there is a broader understanding
(47:20):
that farming needs to change.
I think that the city actors might not yet be there in thinking or at least thinking
how can we make food available to everyone?
How can this come from the peri-urban or the region?
Because the economic models are not yet fully developed or the state is not willing to change
(47:41):
the way they support the farmers in the same way that they support an educational system.
But there is a bit of experimentation.
There are approaches in Belgium, for example, where they are looking into include access
to agroecological food through the NHS, sorry, the NHS, the health system, to a voucher scheme.
(48:03):
So I think there are some experiments mostly coming from the agroecology, but not yet institutional
answers.
Yeah, here in Brazil, we are in, even though we're still facing this kind of challenges
of regulation of the initiatives and sometimes this challenge with the local municipal level,
(48:29):
we are advancing a lot, we see a lot of advances in the municipal level in Sao Paulo and also
in the national level, even now, especially with this new president and yeah, teams, because
(48:50):
in the municipal level, we have an agriculture, a coordination of agriculture.
So that's really forward thinking in the sense that is a group, a team of people who are
(49:10):
really understanding the relationship to the health coordination, to the education, how
do we bring the gardens into the schools, for example, or integrate with the health
centres so that they have medicinal plants to actually be able to get it to the public.
(49:33):
So in that sense, it's really forward thinking.
And also in national level, we have now that we contributed for the development of national
program of urban and peri-urban agriculture that united four different ministries.
(49:55):
So it was something really special that came out of also a huge research and investigation
of the state of the status of the municipal public policies for urban agriculture.
And so I would say that we are facing a special moment that we have different public policies
(50:22):
which are addressing urban agriculture.
But still, it's curious because still in urban development, we have so many steps to go.
Like the discussion is going forward in health and education, even sometimes in culture,
(50:51):
but in planning and development, still a lot of steps behind.
So that's why it's so important that we talk about the Ecosystem and Agricultural Urbanization
in the sense that we bring this back to, okay, who owns the land?
(51:11):
Okay, which kind of shared management pact that we make among these local actors?
Zoning, there are so many aspects in urban planning that we need to tackle.
So a lot of work still to do.
(51:32):
And I would say that in Europe, we are far behind in this sense, but one similarity,
which is the difficulty of really bringing along the planning departments, that's very
similar.
I think probably because that's where many speculative interests are.
And they have always been traditionally very close places where very difficult to establish
(51:53):
intersectional, interdepartmental work across municipalities.
Planning departments are closed.
So that's a difficulty really.
So slowly coming to an end of our conversation.
Chiara, what are your three wishes for the future of agroecology?
(52:19):
Okay, so I am...
Well, I want to think about that in terms of what you know, agroecology as a movement,
practice and the practice, I could say, if we think agroecology as a movement, really
my wish for urban agroecology is to really build strong bridges with the rural part of
(52:43):
the movement.
Because we're, yes, I think lots of farmers and organizations really have the idea of
the back to the land and they are not always fully aware of the way the city is expanding
and is making their livelihoods difficult.
So the ability to build pedagogies, really build pedagogies for the movement and tools
(53:11):
to understand how to articulate their battles and their struggles around the way urbanization
is an urban way of life are problematic for them.
So that's really my wish.
And I think that when I was in Brazil and I had the opportunity to see the way the MST
(53:32):
movement is strategizing, really coming to cities, running kitchens, running festivals,
I think was exceptional.
And I think we have lots to learn from Latin Americans movement.
My wish for urban agroecology as a practice, it is to see lots more landed community kitchens,
(53:54):
so farmers and kitchens coalitions that are supported by policy.
So I think that that's where they are doing lots of innovation, like bringing together
the care for the food with the care for the people, fighting intersectional struggles
for emancipation and therefore quality of life.
(54:14):
And at the moment, they are not supported by policy, there is very little appreciation
for that work.
And urban agroecology is a science, I would say.
I would like to see my next project funded so that I can actually provide more systematic
(54:35):
analysis of all what's new that is coming from different countries and the movement
across different countries.
So I'm working with movement actors at the moment to develop a research project so that
we can understand better and then we can share this knowledge across them.
(54:57):
And I wish this could become more policy briefs and more videos making and animations to go
to the policy community to support.
Yeah, we wish you all the best for that.
And I hope you get the funding for that because then we might come back to you on the show
once to have a status update on what is going on there.
(55:21):
Marcella, from your work with EQCIDES and the Cidade de Précise, they will say what
are three things you would advise anybody who wants to change their city for the better?
Yeah, it's always difficult to make it practical, right, to make it real.
But I will try here.
(55:42):
So I would say that the first idea would be to actually activate spaces and community
around you and building this sustainable proximity, this sustainable practice in the territory.
So that would be the first thing.
Like look around you.
Who is around you?
(56:02):
Which places are empty?
Which are resources that most of the time we see and we don't recognize?
So open your eyes to see around you.
The second one would be the change of perception.
So how can we actually perceive the value of what we call residues?
(56:23):
So we call it residue, but where does it go to?
Can you actually use it to something else besides just throwing out, remembering that
there is no out?
So really important to think about it and rethink the way we perceive.
And the third one would be to think of the cycles, like to understand the life's long,
(56:48):
the pathways, the flows, the things that we do, which are the relationships that are supporting
them.
And in that sense, I would remember a principle from permaculture that is there is no autonomy
without interdependence.
So trying all the time to remember that, okay, we can do the best with what we have, but
(57:16):
which kind of systems we are building in these relationships.
So I would say that.
Very nice, Marcela.
Thank you so much for this talk, I enjoyed it so much.
I always find it so inspiring to hear cases and hear from people working in Latin American
or Brazilian context, as Chiara said, we have so much to learn also from this context in
(57:41):
Europe.
And it's really fascinating to build these connections between Europe and Brazil.
So every time I have conversations with initiatives from there, it's really I learned so much
from that.
And I'm sure our listeners also learned a lot.
So thank you so much for all your insight and your knowledge.
(58:02):
And I hope to have you on the show at some point again, with maybe a project among you
or something like that.
That would be wonderful.
That would be great.
Thanks a lot.
Thank you.
See you soon.
Thank you.
See you soon.
Thank you.
See you soon.
Thank you.
See you soon.
Thank you.
That was Reimagining Urban Food Production.
(58:24):
And this episode also marks the last thematic episode of season one of Cities Reimagined.
I'm saying thematic episode because there is one more in this season and that is a reflection
with my colleague and friend, Jonas Bülond.
So we will have a discussion or a talk on what comes out or what came out of Cities
(58:45):
Reimagined of the episode, what is missing, what are the hooks we need to build up for
the next season.
And it will ultimately be the season finale.
So the truth will come out.
So I hope you will tune in for that one whenever it comes out, probably next week or in two
weeks.
Let's see how it goes with the schedule.
(59:07):
Anyway, if you like the content, consider leaving a comment or rating or send me an
email at johannes at Anthropocene.city.
Follow Cities Reimagined on Instagram.
Yeah.
And maybe you want to dive deep into the other episodes of Cities Reimagined.
I would like that.
(59:28):
I hope you do too.
So that's it for today.
I hope to catch you soon.
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