Food Supply + Food Security culiblog: Food Supply + Food Security Archives
Food, food culture, food as culture and the cultures that grow our food

CPULs
when bad acronyms
happen to good people

June 09, 2006

It's pronounced 'SEE, PULSE' and stands for Continous Productive Urban Landscapes. Architects Viljoen, Bohn and Howe's postively radical notion of combining productive urban landscapes with continuous landscapes, proposes a new urban design strategy that would change the appearance of contemporary cities towards an unprecedented naturalism. Think urban agriculture, allotment gardens, increased biodiversity, decreased carbon emissions and strategically connected green space - and you will start to get an idea of what the authors are suggesting. Although this is in no way within the scope of the book, never have I encountered a more holistic approach to urban planning that so thoroughly takes into account our imminent plunge into energy descent and the extreme effect that this will have on our food supply.


Diagrams showing a projected development of CPULs © Bohn & Viljoen Architects, reformatted for culiblog and used entirely without permission

Despite sporting a singularly unsexy title and a graphic design utterly devoid of charm, CPULs is a compelling vision for urban planners and (landscape) architects. The book is loaded with truly useful facts and case studies yet somehow remains a rivetting read for layfolk, comme moi. The authors were wise enough to begin the book with a succinct glossary defining all of the concepts so that within five pages you're already an adept at juggling terminology like vertical and horizontal intensification and you know the difference between an organiponico and a heurto intensivo.


Farmers at the Organiponico de Alamar, a neighborhood agriculture project in downtown Havana, weed the beds. Photo by John Morgan used entirely without permission

According to people who are in a position to compare, CPULs offers a rich documentation of UK allotment history and vivid reports of successful urban agriculture in contemporary Cuba, one of the few countries to have yet experienced peak oil. In 1990 when Cuba stopped receiving cheap juice from the Mothership and subsequently lost its largest client for agricultural produce, Havana citizens suddenly found themselves without access to sufficient food as expressed in 30% fewer calories in their diet! Instead of engaging in some futile rioting, they took up gardening en masse, and by gardening, I mean organic gardening. Later the government jumped on the bandwagon and started facilitating the urban agricultural effort in the form of responsible planning and infrastructure development. Presently Cuba is considered to be a living laboratory of how small urban farms and gardening collectives can successfully provide a significant portion of the urban food supply in spite of energy descent. Listen up, everybody! The CPULs authors were enlightened enough to note that a population accustomed to collectivism is more likely to be successful at community projects and that Northern European urban agricultural initiatives of the future will need to develop a native form to ensure their success.


Oil drum lids used as markers in Havana organiponicos. Photos by Tom Phillips from CPULs used entirely without permission

CPULs' authors articulate the benefits and obstacles to their proposal and offer cogent strategies for creating city land use policy in which urban green and brown are treated as productive space, considering the unbuilt as an event of equal intensity as the built. A vision of a thriving CPULs in London 2045 provides a powerful scenario that I can imagine myself being a part of at any stage in my life. This is something I would not characterise as a common feature in most urban planning. In CPULs city planning the well-being of people is a central and distinguishing factor. In fact, its completely seductive.


A map of London expanded to accomodate mini- and SUPER-market gardens, from a 1998 study © Viljoen and Bohn Architects, photographed from the book and used entirely without permission

Robert Hopkins from Transition Culture weblog notes, 'It is only in the last 30 or so years that we have perfected the art of creating totally useless landscapes. New industrial estates and business parks typify this, planted with 'low maintenance' shrubs, specifically bred to be entirely unproductive.' Bohn and Viljoen point out that though European cities have planned for a variety of approaches to open space including urban parks, urban river fronts, urban squares, urban stages, urban forests and urban beaches, there are as yet no urban fields. 'Living and growing food in the contemporary urban space, CPULs could formally be similar to urban parks.' I am inspired by the notion that landscape architecture could be pivotal in designing for a future in which peak oil will have tremendous impact on the urban food supply.

As someone who writes about food and culture and as an an art and design educator, I cannot recommend this book highly enough. I hope that its concepts are embraced by those who are in a position to implement urban planning of this nature. The notion of CPULS deserves to feature prominently in design and architecture curricula, informing a new generation of people designing our cities and potentially our well-being through our access to healthy food.

CPULs do not yet exist.
In type, they will be new,
in type they will be productive.

See, pulse, with a silent meow at the end.

Posted by debra at 01:51 PM | post to del.icio.us

Joe's Fish Net in Newcastle

May 21, 2006


The ladies of Joe's Fish Net

This last week I was in Newcastle to meet up with the old and new folks from Dott 07 (Designs of the Time). As part of our getting aquainted with the area we were asked to do some directed wandering and meet some people outside of Newcastle's shiny centre. I wandered into Joe's Fish Net, a family owned fish store in Byker and met owners Anica (pictured on the right) and her brother, Richard Grey.


Joe's Fish Net shop interior

Although I arrived during closing time, the entire place was under suds and chatter. Both Richard and Anica were happy to talk about the fish biz once I assured them I wasn't from Mark & Spencers or Tescos and therefore about to steal their shop location. Richard and I talked about the effectively extinct cod and he gave me an industry publication titled Fish Update which ended up being completely interesting. Anica talked about the new line of prepared fish dinners that she is about to launch and about how to publish an electronic cookbook. I forgot the names of the other ladies in the shop, maybe they'll see this and let me know?


Architect Ralph Erskine's Byker wall


continuation of Byker Wall - beautiful brickwork


street scene in front of Byker Wall with Dutch beer ad somehow communicating to the reader to 'relax!' and a poster ad of a puppy


Joe's Fish Net
9 Denmark Street
Newcastle upon Tyne
Tyne and Wear
NE6 2XF

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Kitchen garden before
Ice Saints

May 02, 2006


My kitchen garden on the 27th of April

Some people grow up with socialist folk songs, others grow up with Catholic weather knowledge. Until now, I'd never even heard about Ice Saints, but that was before I had a kitchen garden. Ice Saints refers to the 11th, 12th, and 13th May, the feast days of St. Mamertus, St. Pancras, and St. Gervais, purportedly the cut-off date for night frost. And the date after which you can start wearing cut-offs when you potter about with summer crops in the potager.


My kitchen garden on the 1st of May

Oddly, these May dates are the same from the Netherlands, way up in the Polar Circle, all the way down to Occitania. The cut-off town is Beziers, 100km from here, where its warmer and they have different days, different saints and they can grow meyer lemons outside. No cut-offs though.


Tomato foetuses bracing themselves for a rigourous session of acclimatisation

I'm not having any of it, and even though it seems like Occitania lost a month of growing season this year due to the cooling effects of global warming, my sunflowers and lupines are growing visibly each day. But the men of the kitchen gardens are laughing at us Ladies-who-put-our-tomato-foetuses-out-early. Thursday, the gents will really split a gut watching me sow cantaloup, galia melon, cukes, luffah, gourds, pumpkins, spaghetti squash, courgette and watermelon into the bare naked ground. As a tribute to the Saints I'll repurpose some plastic ice cream containers into little hot houses. See ya later Propagator.


Lettuce and tomato section sorted


Covercrops before being plowed into seed beds


Mustard microsalad

Posted by debra at 01:49 PM | Comments (8) | post to del.icio.us

Urban gardening lessons for Dutch children

April 21, 2006

On an island in Amsterdam's Westerpark, a horizontal grid of 1m2 garden plots are being prepared for the children. The sign says that around 500 children will receive weekly education about nature and the environment on these plots. Although this garden grid offers an extreme image of mini-allotments filled with one carrot, one lettuce, one rhubarb, one sunflower, one fennel, one this and one that, I cannot say that I think this is a negative idea in terms of education. In fact, gardening in this way has the potential to teach children about density and clustering. It's like an MVRDV-isation of grammar school education. By this I am referring to educarion informed by architects MVRDV's notions of density and as explored in their publications FARMAX (floor area ratio) and KM3, (cubic kilometer) Excursions on Capacities from Actar Publishers. Next step, vertical gardening for urban children!

(The image has been enhanced to increase readability of the sign.)


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Episode 1, emergency food distribution and the role of the cameras

March 19, 2006


video still from Episode 1, © Renzo Martens

In January 2004, Dutch artist Renzo Martens produced his forty-four minute art film, Episode 1, a documentation of an extensive art performance. Martens travelled to the hottest hot spot war that he could find at the time of making the film (Chechnya, 2002), and in this 'setting' he pointed the camera, not at the war's victims and/or perpetrators like most (news) cameras do, but back upon himself. In Episode 1, Martens asks his Chechen and Russian Federation subjects, 'What do you think about me?'

Enough about you, let's talk about what you think about me.

Martens subjects are the normal cast of characters in every war; heavily armed soldiers on border patrol, civilians lining up for food, civilians trying to get on with it, civilians suffering before their destroyed homes and lives, refugees, but also all manner of NGO employees with their food programmes and journalists with their stories. Within minutes we understand that this is not simply a film about war, but a film about the role of the camera in war, about ethics, the dehumanising effect of pointing the camera and about what is so humanising about turning the camera back around at one's self.



video stills from Episode 1, © Renzo Martens

In the tense environment of a Chechen UN press conference, in territories under fire, the conference moderator asks a group of journalists, NGO employees and UN workers, 'Does anyone have any questions?' Martens pipes up, 'Yes, I have a question!' 'What do you think about me?' Peals of laughter, no one can believe their ears. Ultimatey Martens' question is ignored and the journalists and NGO employees disband to their SUV convoys, rushing off to yet another 'opening' of a milk powder storage facility. Martens interviews the director of the operation, and together they quickly establish the fact that where there are cameras, there can be food relief. No cameras, no aid. In light of this, how could the World Food Programme build its computer game Food Force without even one single PR tier?



video still from Episode 1, © Renzo Martens

Episode 1 takes us through many such media-laden scenarios. In an open market destroyed no more than thirty minutes ago by Russian Federation soldiers with tanks and heavy artillery, a woman recounts how she and the other market women formed a human shield to halt the execution of a group of Chechen boys. Speaking to the camera, in an oddly well-rehearsed role of who stands where and who says what to the camera, the woman is still shaking from the experience. The scene ends with Martens staring shamefaced at the ground, unable to gather enough gumption to ask her what she thinks of him.

At a food distribution centre, Martens addresses a group of women lined up to receive rations of oil and flour. 'I just want to ask you what you think of me!' and this time there is an answer. The grim situation of lining up to receive basic foodstuffs, fades in the face of humanising laughter and warm sparkling eyes, women just being women. For a moment the food queue has all but disappeared. 'Boy, I think you're handsome, with your blue eyes!' 'What's your theme?' 'Are you a journalist?' 'No, he's an artist.' 'I think he's a journalist.'



video stills from Episode 1, © Renzo Martens

Ultimately Martens 'act' of showing up with his camera and popping the question brings humanity to every situation that he creates. When he meets a young woman in a refugee camp (who bears an uncanny resemblance to his true love back in Belgium), his question changes, 'How should a man let a woman know that he loves her?' the woman's answer, delivered with beaming smile and sparkling eyes, dissolves the miserable tent landscape and suddenly it's just two people (and their translators) talking about love and life.

Of course Martens created this film for an art context, and the film articulately addresses contemporary art issues. Quite possibly Martens would be appalled that I consider his film to be 'useful', not just for artists and an art public, but as a tool to talk about the causes of war, hunger and the politics of emergency food distribution. And the question that Martens dares to ask amidst flying bullets, UN press conferences, annoyed Russian soldiers, women in food queues and refugees living in tent camps, the initial struggle that it initiates in the interviewee and in me, the audience, as I am simultaneously embarrassed by this question, but know that it is a question that can air-lift all of us actors out of the immediate and into a larger, more important discussion. Complexity is not complicated. Episode 1 brings us to the next tier, where a complex situation can be discussed with the nuance it deserves.



video still from Episode 1, © Renzo Martens

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Food Force computer game: force-feeding inaccurate notions of the causes of hunger

March 17, 2006


images courtesy of Food Force, © United Nations World Food Programme - all rights reserved

Two weeks ago I sat dumbfounded watching a French TV report in which journalism students practiced reporting a fictional national emergency. I couldn't help but think that what's cool about practice is that it makes perfect. If you practice having enough crises, you might actually get really good at having one! This hackle-raising report about teaching young adults to respond positively to crisis, just didn't seem to me like a simple exercise on getting prepared. The TV experience was absolutely colouring my thinking when I came across the UN's World Food Programme (WFP) website and discovered a new computer game for school kids called 'Food Force'.

'A major crisis has developed in the Indian Ocean, on the island of Sheylan. We're sending in a new team to step up the World Food Programme's presence there and help feed millions of hungry people.'

That's pronounced 'shay-lawn' by the way. The Food Force computer game is essentially a communications campaign of the UN's WFP, cleverly disguised as an educational tool. Although the game really does teach kids about mid-crisis food distribution, its purported goal, teaching students about the causes of hunger, is framed exclusively in the short term and completely ignores all of the long term causes.


images courtesy of Food Force, © United Nations World Food Programme - all rights reserved

Food Force has six game tiers reflecting the basic elements of emergency food distribution: air surveillance (helicopter reconnaissance, counting clumps of roving refugees), energy packs (achieving nutritional and economic balance from rice, beans, vegetable oil, sugar and iodized salt), food drop (aim and drop those rations), locate and dispatch (Tetris-like global food collection), the food run (choosing the right route through hostile territory), and future farming (dealing with a combination of long term hunger solving factors).

Predictably my favourite game tier was 'future farming', where I was taught that paying people in food to attend job training programmes and so investing in the community, was the straightest path to community self-sufficiency and societal well-being. Together with the food pack nutritional assembly tier, this was the game tier with the highest educational value, going beyond point and drop and mouse dragging I mean racing.


images courtesy of Food Force, © United Nations World Food Programme - all rights reserved

Food Force has a website chock-full with extra video, images and an educational package enabling teachers to work this computer game seamlessly into the curriculum. I pored over the WFP site in search of information addressing what I believe to be the long term causes of hunger and the long-term perspectives on solving the problems. Alas, I could find none. According to Food Force, hunger is caused by drought and civil war.

Of course I find no fault with the WFP's symptomatic relief efforts per se, nor do I see intentional evil with a communication strategy that illustrates this practice to children in the form of a computer game. But I do have a problem with placing this game in a curriculum that teaches children that the cause of hunger is simply drought and war. What are the some of the causes of drought? What are the some of the causes of war? What causes such a lack of food security that climactic fluctuations can take out several million people? Food Force offers no macro vision, and I do find fault with weaning children of the notion that food security is rested in global food politics. The macro vision of many commonly accepted causes of hunger, such as the small farm community-destroying effects of large-scale agricultural practice and the methods of monoculture, are left completely unaddressed by the WFP's computer game.


images courtesy of Food Force, © United Nations World Food Programme - all rights reserved

I often wonder if teaching children about hunger couldn't happen in a more nuanced way. Wouldn't it be more productive than training them to throw a little money at the problem? Well, maybe not with the 'throwing a little money at it' method of famine-control being so lucrative.

Tomorrow, I'll give an example of a solution.
I promise.

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Yesterday's news: anti-advertgames

February 03, 2006

mcdo.gif

"Making money in a corporation like McDonald's is not simple at all. Behind every sandwich there is a complex process you must learn to manage: from the creation of pastures to the slaughter, from the restaurant management to the branding. You'll discover all the dirty secrets that made us one of the biggest companies of the world."

So state the Italian artist-activist makers of the McDonalds anti-advertgame, Molleindustria. I don't know if the fact that the rainforest is being destroyed to grow soy beans for hamburger meat or that cows are fattened with industrial garbage in feed lots is a secret anymore, but playing the online game illustrates that it definitely is a challenge balancing the economic factors of selling a burger without turning into a blood sucking evil-ass. After playing McDonalds for an hour, I had not once succeeded in making a profit and in fact I caused the company to go bankrupt every few minutes.

And if you're thinking, 'couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of guys', have a go.

The tip off is from Regine at we-make-money-not-art, a trend and technology blog. Thank you!

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Grow your own dang food

January 30, 2006

Back in the eighties, as a student at the University California at Santa Cruz, I lived in a vegetarian commune with a bunch of hippies. As hippies, we produced our own sprouts, yoghurt and salsa fresca for the entire commune, approximately thirty people. I had all but forgotten this part of my life until recently, when my Food Atelier students at the Design Academy Eindhoven started working on ways to grow their own food. The work of two enthusiastic students got my wings flapping enough for me to dare revisit my past. These are the images from the first trials, theirs and mine.

After initial attempts at growing mung sprouts in bread (see above), Cygalle Shapiro is successfully growing a ready-made 'salad on salad'.


images top to bottom: sprouts in bread, salad on salad, sprouting experiments courtesy of Cygalle Shapiro, copyright Cygalle Shapiro 2005 - 2006. Contact culiblog for further information.

Liora Rosin is growing sprouts in labneh, a fresh yoghurt cheese, commonly made at home. For Rosin it is important that the seeds are grown within the labneh in order to transmit the flavour of the sprouted seed into the delicately tangy cheese.


images top to bottom: home sprouting installation, soaking, lactic fermentation sill; courtesy of Liora Rosin, copyright Liora Rosin 2005 - 2006

Wouldn't the world be a better place if we all had a designated windowsill for lactic fermentation?

Having resolved to practice what I preach in 2006, I am also working on growing sprouts on labneh and find that the experiments coördinate nicely with my developing a good recipe for yoghurt ravioli.

This is a cute disaster of basil seeds rotting into overly dry labneh. Seeds that become gelatinous when they are moistened (e.g., basil, buckwheat, watercress) are poor candidates for immediate immersion on or in the yoghurt medium.


images top to bottom: sprout collection 2x, basil on labneh, playing with mistakes, pretending sampler, curd seed brittle; Debra Solomon

The results of an unsuccessful attempt at growing woody spice seeds (dill, coriander, cumin, kummel) in yoghurt medium with the intention of flavouring the labneh were not especially delicious, although visually exciting. The linen and the seeds texture the labneh beautifully and I look forward to spin a few successful recipes from these experiments soon.


Here are other urban gardening solutions, mostly rooftop gardening related:

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Posted by debra at 11:52 AM | Comments (8) | post to del.icio.us

Rural design conference scheduled for September 2006

January 21, 2006


(above: Wheatfield, a large public work by Agnes Denes, image copyright Agnes Denes)

Chapeau to John Thackara at the Doors of Perception blog who reports today about a rural design conference scheduled to take place September 4-7 2006 (somewhere) in the UK. Just have a look at what's being developed for the programme! I am pleased to see that it is all about establishing and strengthening real connections between (urban) cultural producers and rural agriculture producers to the benefit of both.

In a conference forerunner in July of 2005, this is what they were talking about: farmers as curators - an international Rural Biennale for 2007, sustainable farm diversification, rural tourism, food marketing initiatives and staging the Rural Biennale as an integral part of a European Region of Rural Cultures and Farmer Creativity celebration.

To the list of interesting subjects already discussed and in the planning for September 2006, I would like to add: 'rural farmer to urban farmer advisory partnerships for urban gardening/farming initiatives'. I can't help but wonder if the experience and knowledge of the rural farmer can help urban farming inititives such as this wonderful urban farming project in East L.A from being under threat of closure due to urban land-use issues. Injecting (cultural) life into family farms suffering brunt of (European) Agricultural Policy might be just the ticket for rejuvenating a way of life under threat of extinction. Might not the urban farmer benefit from being part of this discussion and network?


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Posted by debra at 11:47 AM | Comments (1) | post to del.icio.us

French disaster relief local food challenge

September 10, 2005

I should have cancelled heading up north last Wednesday morning when by 6 a.m. I had already made my way across two rivers, almost ruining the treasured Martin Margiëla heels! The bus ride down to Montpellier was spectacular, spectacular meaning that there's something in the scene that can kill you. And although it was in no way on the order of the weather going on across the pond, my return to the Low Country was defined by big Occitanian weather. Curtains of lightening illumniated the pre-dawn Pic St. Loup valley into liver coloured snapshots of wild boar narrowly escaping death by our bus.

It didn't occur to me that this weather would have any affect on me until we arrived at the transferium Occitanie in Montpellier where the gushing, thundering and lightening took on new proportions. Stuck in a hoard people seeking unavailable shelter, I was quickly soaked down to the innermost microfibres of my culotte and suffered the onset of hypothermia for an hour until summoning the courage to change into my dryest clothes au plein publique. Montpellier was one meter under water and all transportation had been halted until... no one knew.

Please read more... "French disaster relief local food challenge"

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