A Manifesto on real food! Plan to celebrate WORLD FOOD DAY OCTOBER 16th

Real Food Heroes is an initiative from SEED FREEDOM which you can read about here.

Found here

MORE INFO HERE: 

Read letter from Vandana Shiva: http://seedfreedom.in/fortnight-of-actions-letter-from-vandana-shiva/

• Identify individuals in your community or in the world who make an outstanding contribution in the defence and promotion of Seed Freedom and Food Freedom

• Organise a celebration on World Food Day, 16th October in their honour

• Tell us about who you have chosen to honour and why. Either:

- Upload a Real Food Hero Certificate (see below) or photo with description to ourSeed Freedom Map

- Post a certifcate or photo with a caption to our Facebook Page

- Email your certifcates or photos and captions to: info[@]seedfreedom.in

We will then share your Heroes via social media and add them to our Real Food Heroes Gallery and Report. Please also post photos, videos and reports from your Real Food Heroes celebrations to our Facebook Page for us to share.

Using The Real Food Heroes Certificate

Download and save a Real Food Heroes certificate (or make your own) to present to your Hero on World Food Day:

Real Food Heroes Certificate_HI RES   (for hard copy use)

Real Food Heroes Certificate_LOW RES   (e-version for Seed Freedom Map and social media)

To complete and share your certificate electronically:

• Go to PDFescape http://www.pdfescape.com, a free online PDF editor
• Upload the low-res Real Food Hero file when prompted
• Upload photo of your Hero (max size 500KB) by clicking on ‘Insert’ and ‘Image’ on left menu. Once uploaded click on certifcate for photo to appear and be resized

• Click the ‘Text’ tab to add text in the same way

• Save and download your completed certificate by clicking the green button on left menu

• The certificate is now ready to print, share and upload to our Seed Freedom Map. We’ll share all uploaded certificates via social media and in our Real Food Heroes Gallery, you can also email us your certificates

Also found at Seed Freedom's facebook page is this post: 

Vandana Shiva with chef Esteban Yepes, founder of Alimento Vibracional and Manifesto on Real Food – MAD Symposium, Denmark

A MANIFESTO ON REAL FOOD

Feed yourself with Real Food

Not with packaged food

Change one small thing every week

Do the best that you can

Teach your children how to cook

Sow what you eat

Cook with your heart

Give up "eating numbers"

Celebrate meals in communities

Say a strong NO to GMOs

Support local farmers

Spread the word!

Celebrate and honour Real Food Heroes on World Food Day, 16th October: http://seedfreedom.in/real-food-heroes/

Join FAIR FOOD WEEK + Judging a photo competition

Its been a hugely busy period of transition for the Homage to the Seed project. Finally moving into the new home and studio 3 weeks ago but still waiting for internet connection has meant online communications were tailed down to rare posts, tweets and such... but ... things have been brewing.

painting the new studio!

Like this FAIR FOOD WEEK competition below which I am one of the judges for and is open till Sunday 25th 9pm. You have to live in Australia to be eligible for prizes but its open to all around the globe to be part of the conversation which aims to increase interest and understudying of what a FAIR Food System is and how all of us are called to take a part in ensuring we preserve the kind of food future we wish to preserve for generations to come! 

HAVE YOU GOT ANY GREAT PHOTOS OF YOUR FOOD GARDEN OR KITCHEN CREATIONS?

(Please share this info if you can!)

The story so far... results of round one:

Finalists

FLAVOURCRUSADER AUGUST 11, 2013 RESPOND

PHOTO COMPETITION
Are you a finalist?

Thank you to the farmers, gardeners and cooks for taking the time out of your busy lives to enter. Your stories are beautiful! You shared sweet moments, heavenly food and a little piece of you. Sophie Munns, the preliminary judge, evaluated entries by the criteria of impact, creativity and story. Below are the finalists from Round One. Congratulations!

If you didn’t make it this time, never mind. Try, try, try again! Don’t forget every entry is in the running for Peoples’ Choice, so share your favourite entry and ask your friends to vote! Seecompetition details for more information.

FINALISTS FOR ROUND ONE

Produce by ppmak
It’s not always about what you can grow to eat. Green manure is both tasty and essential for soil vitality! #myfoodstory

Produce by ppmak
This thyme is my favourite plant in the garden. It’s been through neglect and drought. 8 years and still giving more than I give. I love running my hands through it and breath in that earthy smell. #myfoodstory

Dish by spooky_girl
My entry for #MyFoodStory. Homemade pasta for my lasagna. Definitely not for everyday, this #dish is an all day affair that is eaten in an instant!

Dish by Bec
This lovely Roast Vege soup is made from roasted root vegetables, including a variety of lovely home grown pumpkins. We grow heaps of different pumpkins and squash each warm season, then store them on our back patio table over Winter. They store well, and slowly get used up in mash, soup, risotto, and with a good old roast dinner. While the oven is on for the roast, I add cubed pumpkin and root vegetables, to then make this soup!

Produce by Bec
These are a selection of our home grown, dried beans, with gorgeous scarlet runner beans in front. The beans are left on the vine until they are fat and start to dry, then we pod them, dry the beans thoroughly, store them, and use them through Winter!

Produce by Sandra
Asparagus Pea Flower I love experimenting with unusual veggies- the sort you’ll never find in the supermarket. The bonus is when they’re beautiful as well, like these bicolour scarlet flowers that I get before the pods form.

Produce by ppmak
A scraggly harvest of spring onions that will go in my lunch. They’re just waking up for spring! What are you growing in your garden? Do you have a food story? Play along with Flavour Crusader, just by adding #myfoodstory #dish or #produce to your post!

Produce by Belinda
In 2011 my tomatoes went nuts! I had an abundance of Mini Romas and Tomatoberries, although the possums got a few and the neighbours’ kids were welcome to share. Hunting for recipes to use them up, tomato and goat cheese tarts went down a treat for Christmas lunch, and delicious semi-dried tomatoes lasted well into Winter.

Produce by Cynthia
Summers produce from our garden in Seymour.

Want to share your food story?

Enter Now

These were the finalists from Round One, from competition start until 9pm AEST Friday 16th, 2013. Check back soon for Round Two!

FOR COMPETITION TIPS & UPDATES
Follow FlavourCrusader (Facebook or Twitter) and Fair Food Week (Facebook or Twitter).

FOR DELICIOUSNESS AND MISCHIEF
Sign up to FlavourCrusader.

ABOUT FAIR FOOD WEEK: 

Fair Food Week — 19-25 August 2013

FFW JUNE 23, 2013 5

What is Fair Food Week?

Coordinated by Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance (AFSA), to support the Peoples’ Food Plan, Australia’s first-ever Fair Food Week shines a light on our new story of food.

Over the week — 19-25 August 2013 — you will discover events across the country that will attract, intrigue and entertain you:

• forums 
• workshops
•  speakers
•  films
•  farmers’ fairs
•  food swaps
•  community garden and farm tours
•  and more, much more.

The week’s events will celebrate the work of Australia’s fair food pioneers – the women and men doing the vital work of creating a fairer food system for all of us.

What’s fairness got to do with food?

Lots. Let’s start with farmers not being paid well by major retail chains for the food they grow and raise for us. Then there’s excessive food imports that unfairly disadvantage not only Australian farmers and farm workers but our food processors as well. And about much of that imported food… do we really know how it was grown and processed… and what was put on it to make it grow or easier to process… whether farm and factory workers enjoyed healthy, good and fair working conditions?

And there’s one more thing about fairness, and that’s about fair access to good, tasty food for the thousands of Australians and their children living on low incomes.

So, what’s that got to do with me?

It’s your chance to do what it is that you do best when it comes to food wherever you sit in the paddock-to-plate-and-back-again journey. You’ll have our support to grab attention via print and social media, word of mouth advertising, promotion at markets, restaurants, cafes, and libraries.

All over the country during the Fair Food Week people will create and participate in story-telling, workshops and other events the possibilities of which are limited only by your imagination.

Most of all, during Fair Food Week, go out and enjoy food produced fairly — that’s fairly in the social, economic and environmental sense.

How can we help make it happen…

Fair Food Week is a good idea we want to see take off because it’s about food fairness for all of us.

So, it’s time to put on our thinking caps and plough into that random access memory of our brains, there to find creative, crazy, innovative and intriguing ideas for you and your friends to make something wonderful happen during Fair Food Week.

And… we would LOVE to hear back from you ASAP so that we can begin to shape this week into wonderful reality.

• submit your event/s
• enter the photo competition to win over $750 of food-lover’s prizes
• join our twitter conversation — #fairfoodweek.
• like us on facebook.

Contacts AFSA organisers in different cities and regions.

The Bunya nut

Today when up the coast from Brisbane I visited a Nursery at Forest Glen that is part of a large Organic venture... with Foodstore and Cafe.

Its was good to see Bush Tucker featured in this Garden Centre and a variety of native Plants and other interesting features.

The Bunya Pine is an indigenous plant and food source that was celebrated by the traditional owners of this region.

Bunya pine with Bunya nuts shown at the base of the pot

The Bunya pine or Aurucaria bidwillii : from Wiki

Araucaria bidwillii, the bunya pine, is a large evergreen coniferous tree in the plant family Araucariaceae. It is found naturally in south-east Queensland Australia and two small disjunct populations in north eastern Queensland's World Heritage listed Wet Tropics. There are many fine old planted specimens in New South Wales, and around the Perth, Western Australia metropolitan area. They can grow up to 30–45 m.

The Bunya Pine is the last surviving species of the Section Bunya of the genus Araucaria. This section was diverse and widespread during the Mesozoic with some species having cone morphology similar to A. bidwillii, which appeared during theJurassic. Fossils of Section Bunya are found in South America and Europe. The scientific name honours the botanist John Carne Bidwill, who sent the first specimens to Sir William Hooker in 1843.^[1]

They are a curious tree with cones that are extremely heavy and therefore dangerous when they fall.

image from  here

Found here

Ive not read this book (above) so can't recommend it personally but have read this book below and was fascinated by the telling of this man's life and his unusually close relationship with local indigenous people around Brisbane from the time he was a young boy.

from here

bunya cones and nuts

This image above comes from the Slow Food Australia website and details the inclusion of this food in the Ark of Taste for Australia.

Except from Slow Food website listing:

Ark of Taste, Australia

Queensland bunya nut

THE bunya nut was a traditional food of the Australian aboriginal people in a limited area of rainforests, predominantly in south-eastern Queensland, and especially in part of the Great Dividing Range now known as the Bunya Mountains national park. The nut resembles a chestnut and is equally tasty, maturing in summer. Hostilities were suspended as Aborigines travelled long distances to feast on the nuts. Their native habitat was mostly cleared, but some early white farmers planted bunya pines for household use. There is renewed interest in bunya nuts among the Australian Aboriginal and settler population. In 2002 a Bunya symposium was held at Queensland’s Griffith University. The large population increase in south-eastern Queensland during the next 20 years is likely to reduce the number of bunya pines.

Ive tasted this nut and found it quite interesting and would definitely like to cook with it and try various suggested approaches. 

It was inspiring to see it at this nursery today and I hope many plant this species if they have access to a large area away from people traffic and houses!

writing on the project...

2013 has been a year of fits and starts for the Homage to the Seed Project. Sure to be memorable later on... much of it has been spent addressing an important relocation. Common human experience is the phenomenon of undertaking things that at the time can seem intensely demanding but later worth every minute of effort.

5 months house-hunting whilst doing a make-over at the home we were selling led to the eventual departure from the family home in late June, and now we're in limbo for a month before we move to the new residence.

The studio residency at Percolator gallery in Paddington, Brisbane concluded in March after the Exhibition 'From One Small Seed', with studio contents going to storage and focus on attending to necessary details of relocation. It was a smart move, even if a little unsettling. Painting, for me, is such a complete immersion it was easier not to paint during all this chaos then try dividing focus.

What is being gained is a comfortable, spacious, well situated home, a little further from the city than we've been used to, but close to a transport junction, good Public Library, Aquatic Centre, bike path along a creek, an environment centre where a friend volunteers on seed-saving... and easy shopping access.

This photo taken in 1902 is very close to where our house is now.

The earliest photo of the hamlet of Downfall Creek was taken in 1902. It was taken as a Hamilton family photo of Janie Hamilton, later Janie Wayper with her pony Silver and her dog. Fortunately for history it also shows much of the hamlet in the background. Downfall Creek was about 33 years old when the photo was taken from the present Burnie Brae Park. (Courtesy Hamilton Family)

Nearby is a community garden and large park plus local history Museum I noticed the other day which I'll visit soon. The city of Brisbane was settled in 1824 so its not a very old city... and I'm keen to learn more about where we will live.

From Wiki:

Prior to European settlement, the Brisbane area was inhabited by the Turrbal and Jagera people.^[6] They knew the area that is now the central business district as Mian-jin, meaning "place shaped as a spike".^[7]The Moreton Bay area was initially explored by Matthew Flinders. On 17 July 1799, Flinders landed at what is now known as Woody Point, which he named "Red Cliff Point" after the red-coloured cliffs visible from the bay.^[8] In 1823 Governor of New South Wales Thomas Brisbane instructed that a new northernpenal settlement be developed, and an exploration party led by John Oxley further explored Moreton Bay.^[9]

The suburb I'm moving to was settled in the late 1860's and known as Downfall Creek... at some point renamed Chermside... a pity really. Place names including geographical features can remind people of the landscape on which they're situated, and to my thinking are far more poetic than places names after prominent men. It was inspiring to read that some early settlers bought large areas of land and didn't parcel it up for housing. Parts of that land remain accessible to the public as green spaces today.  

Discovering this area is something I am really looking forward to as we establish home and I set up my new studio. Downfall Creek, where the Environment Centre is also located, has a bike path running beside it so that is a good starting place.

This map is fascinating...our street is just next to the area that was being offered as Five Mile Estate... obviously 5 miles from the heart of the city which is due south.

This lithograph would have been printed before 1898 which was the year Andrew Hamilton died. His son Thomas carried on the family business and the land sales.

This information was found here. Read about the Environment Centre.

With 17 days to go before we resettle I've been able to resume working on my book. In late 2010 I produced a 68 page book about the Homage to the Seed project which was launched at the end of the year long residency at Brisbane Botanic Gardens.

Since then Ive conducted three more residencies and have one in planning at the moment yet to be announced. With so much material now collated around this project a book is almost a necessity to synthesise the experience.

The recent pack up meant sorting through a great deal of material from the last 4 years of the project ... some reaching much further back where threads of the work began.

Images from a slideshow on the project have been a start to telling the story. This image below refers to the October 2011 residency at the UK's Kew Gardens Millennium Seedbank in West Sussex.

Shaping words and text for Homage to the Seed has been an ongoing process ... I'm glad to be making headway during this nomadic 'in-between' phase.

The challenge is to cover the story of seeds from the deep past right up to now... through the somewhat personal lens of the experiences I've had, individuals Ive met or ideas pondered. It is an artist's journal in word and image rather than a textbook on the history of seeds. 

Image from the May 2012 Residency at Brisbane's Institute for Molecular Bioscience collaborating with Plant Scientist Dr Joshue Mylne.

This is an exciting challenge ... stay tuned for more!

National Geographic invites the whole world to take part in the Great Nature Project

Nature is getting ready for its close-up!

13 June 2013 | News story

IUCN Member, the National Geographic Society, is urging everyone to go outside to explore nature, whether in their own backyard, a local park or anywhere that nature thrives.

From 21-29 September 2013, National Geographic invites the whole world to take part in the Great Nature Project, an unprecedented attempt to document and appreciate Earth’s biodiversity.

Great Nature Project participants — anyone with a camera or camera phone — are asked to take photos of any plants, animals, or other living things they come across and share them with the world by uploading them to Twitter, Instagram or Flickr, using the tag #GreatNature.

Participants can also submit photos to the Great Nature Project on iNaturalist or Project Noah, which are online citizen science platforms.

The uploaded, tagged photos will be aggregated on greatnatureproject.org, where visitors to the website can view the images and take advantage of opportunities to learn more about biodiversity through educational and scientific resources.

The website launches in July 2013, but participants can register online now to become part of the September celebration.

Also from National Geographic Magazine: The Svarlbard Seed vault

Give Peas a Chance

Photograph by Jim Richardson, National Geographic

A conservationist cradles two vials of peas destined for deposit in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. The remarkable facility set on a rugged Arctic island off Norway is the ultimate global safety net for food security. It's able to protect up to 2.25 billion seeds from even "doomsday" scenarios like asteroid impacts and nuclear war.

But crop varieties are already vanishing at an astonishing pace for more mundane reasons, from shifting local weather patterns to disuse by farmers adopting new hybrids. The vault represents a chance to save as many as possible.

"I'd say doomsday is happening everyday for crop varieties," said Cary Fowler, executive director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust, which helps manage the facility. "Lots of people think that this vault is waiting for doomsday before we use it. But it's really a backup plan for seeds and crops. We are losing seed diversity every day and this is the insurance policy for that."

Even a seemingly simple crop, such as wheat, may have 200,000 different varieties. And each variety has a suite of individual traits that determine how it fares in high or low temperatures, during droughts, or against certain diseases or pests.

"Even conservative projections of changing climate now indicate that by mid-century huge areas of some countries, in Africa for example, will be experiencing climates that are unlike any that have existed since the beginning of agriculture in those countries," Fowler explained.

"How will they become adapted to future climates? One way they can is by tapping into this rich storehouse of diversity and breeding new crops with traits that allow them to succeed in those climates. It's essential to future food security," Fowler said.

(Read more about seed banks around the world in National Geographicmagazine.)

—Brian Handwerk

Published July 2, 2012

Banking Seeds for Doomsday

Posted by David Braun of National Geographic on March 5, 2012

This is an excellent article worth reading about this Seed Vault ... here is an excerpt from the original article:

The “Doomsday Seed Vault”—so called because it is protecting agriculture systems worldwide from disasters natural or manmade—has now secured over 740,000 samples or “accessions” on Norway’s remote Svalbard archipelago, the Global Crop Diversity Trust said in a recent news release to mark the fourth anniversary of the project.

The Trust maintains the seed vault, in partnership with the Norwegian government and the Nordic Genetic Resources Center, as a back-up to the living crop diversity collections housed in “genebanks” around the world.

“Rare wheat collected from the ‘Roof of the World’ in the Pamir Mountains in Tajikistan; amaranth, with its exotic blood-red stalks that are used in a ‘Day of the Dead’ drink; barley that helped spawn the craft beer revolution; and once- forgotten forage crops that could sustain livestock in these climate-stressed times are among the 24,948 seed samples arriving [last week] for the fourth birthday of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault (SGSV),” the Trust said.

“The incredible range and importance of the seeds that have been sent here this week for safekeeping provide vivid examples of why we need to carefully collect and preserve our planet’s crop diversity,” said Cary Fowler, executive director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust. “Our crop diversity is constantly under threat, from dramatic dangers such as fires, political unrest, war and tornadoes, as well as the mundane, such as failing refrigeration systems and budget cuts. But these seeds are the future of our food supply, as they carry genetic treasure such as heat resistance, drought tolerance, or disease and pest resistance.”

Among the contributors for the fourth anniversary are the United States Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS) National Plant Germplasm System (NPGS), the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) in Syria, the International Center for Tropical Agriculture in Colombia (known by its Spanish acronym CIAT), and the national crop genebanks of Tajikistan and Armenia. Both CIAT and ICARDA are part of the CGIAR Consortium of International Agricultural Research Centers, which is the largest single contributor of seeds to the vault.

December 27, 2007 Coloful houses lie near the mountains in Longyearbyen, a village on the island of Spitsbergen, part of Norway's Svalbard archipelago.