Fri 16 July – Conference 1

Fri 16 July – Conference 1

I said goodbye to the Reid family, and Gill, and Ewan kindly drove me to the train station but took the country laneways route, rather than the motorway. It was lovely to see a bit more of Kirrilee’s ‘charge’ and their setting.

Train then to Derby with a change in York. I had to settle for a view of Yorkminster from the train and a glimpse from the station! It was an all day journey and finally arrived at the conference centre around 6pm. This conference is the annual Peace & Justice conference put on by the National Peace and Justice Network, a Roman Catholic organisation. The conference is entitled: Our Daily Bread: Food Security, People, and Planet.

After a vegetarian dinner (all meals vegetarian except Sat night if one chose to have the ethically locally sourced lamb – I’m still to find out what ethical slaughtering really is...) we went up to the main hall for the opening session. There are approx 400 delegates here in all. Most are Roman Catholics but there are certainly others, but I am the only Aussie as far as I can tell. Tonight’s speaker, Alistair Macintosh, was originally a Presbyterian, now Quaker. He grew up on one of the Hebridean islands (Isle of Lewis) and has a particular focus on soil and community. Entitled “Food as Sacred Relationship”, he began with a quote from George McLeod (founder of the Iona community)
“Only a demanding common task builds community.” I was reflecting on this a few months ago thinking how disasters build community – common experience of grief, loss, rebuilding (eg Victorian bushfires), but what are the good, positive things that really build community? (Rhetorical question for now!)

Something else I had been reflecting on a lot recently was the saying of ‘grace’ before/after meals and how, to me, it misses the mark. Alistair commented that ‘we struggle to say grace because we have no relationship with the food’. We have no knowledge of its source, whether exploitation was involved in its production, etc. He did not elaborate on what he meant by exploitation, but to me it includes – human labour, animals (eg factory farming in particular), the soil itself.

Alistair gave us all much food for thought, so to speak. He spoke of how our food supply is driven by oil – many shops only carry stock for, possibly 2 days – they rely on daily deliveries. He gave examples of shopkeepers on the islands having great difficulty if the ferries do not run, such as in unforseen bad weather. Because we are all importers and exporters of goods, the fuel miles are astronomical.

Alistair suggested we needed to regain resilience, as was known in the first half of the 20th C, and earlier. The advent of technology including rapid transport, has meant we have lost resilience. There were 3 factors:
1. Ecosystems: We need to stop depleting natural resources such as fish stocks.
2. Knowledge: we need to be re-grounded, get our hands dirty, and grow in knowledge of how things work. Past generations knew how to store a crop of potatoes in a ditch, under hay and then soil on top. These days, we have no idea.
3. A resilience of spirit, and of soil. We need to consume in such a way that we can resolve such consumption in our own heart, whether it be animal welfare issues, or fair trade etc.

In the Q&A that followed, although figures vary, it is estimated that we are losing 100 species per day. And it is us, the intelligent (!) human species that is causing it. I suspect that tomorrow will offer many further challenges.