Frontline Foodcast – Détails, épisodes et analyse

In this research-documentary episode, host Georgie Styles along with the Seeds for Climate Justice Team, explore the role of seeds for climate resilience in both the contexts of Wales and South Africa.
Dominant discourse around seed for climate adaptation focuses on productivity in the context of increased climatic conditions, such as floods or drought, but does not consider attributes of seed that are relevant to the wider food system, such as availability, adaptability and suitability to farmers’ contexts, livelihoods and bio-cultural knowledge, farmers' rights to save seed, contributions to human nutrition and sustaining ecosystem integrity.
This relatively narrow, mechanistic discourse risks the development of ‘techno-fixes’ for climate resilient seed, such as GM seed, that may solve specific short-term problems but cause more problems in the longer term or when viewed on a wider scale.
A shift in view toward seeing both seed and climate change as interconnected elements in complex systems would help to guide us toward truly climate resilient solutions.
This podcast episode is brought to you as a part of the Farming for Climate Justice project run by the Centre of Agroecology, Water and Resilience at Coventry University. It was produced by Georgie Styles, music by Oli Barton-Wood and funded by the British Council's Climate Challenge Fund.

The final part of this mini-series on Global Peasant Led Struggles is a soundscape reflections recording that went out live on As If Radio on 7th November 2021. We gathered panelists from Spain, Puerto Rico, Canada, Germany and the UK to further discuss the struggle and how Indigenous Peoples, Pastoralists, Fishers, migrant land workers and many more marginalised communities are on the frontline of the climate crisis. 

These COP26 podcasts are brought to you by The Landworkers Alliance and Frontline Foodcast to look at how food sovereignty and agroecology offer key solutions to the climate crisis and contribute significantly to the wider climate justice movement.

The Landworkers Alliance, along with the help of Georgie Styles and Frontline Foodcast bring you our COP podcasts.  These podcasts look at how food sovereignty and agroecology offer key solutions to the climate crisis and contribute importantly to the wider climate justice movement.

Mobilise! is the first of our podcasts and starts by looking at how farmers, growers, foresters and landworkers come together to bring solutions to the climate crisis from the grassroots.  Dee Butterly, from Southern Roots Organics and Landworkers' Alliance Programmes and Engagement Coordinator, speaks with Jesús Vázquez from Organizacion Boricua in Puerto Rico.  Together they share how farmers are experiencing climate change in their regions, how they organise collectively to work in solidarity to respond to extreme weather events and support resilient agroecological farming and land use systems that positively address climate and biodiversity crises.  And, importantly, they share how groups they're organising with mobilise politically to resist corporate systems that undermine the lives and livelihoods of their members.  

Mobilise! is a call to action ahead of COP26.  It is an invitation and a welcoming to anyone who wants to help strengthen our articulation of food sovereignty, agroecology and climate justice at COP26.  To find out more about how you can get involved please visit https://landworkersalliance.org.uk/cop26/

It is the first in our podcast series, with more coming forward on seed sovereignty, distinguishing between intensive factory farmed animal agriculture and animal agriculture in the context of agroecology, and much much more.

Part 5. 

On our quest to explore what resilience in our food and farming systems can look like beyond coronavirus, we have travelled to the indigenous regions of Tharaka in Kenya and Bikita in Zimbabwe. Here, we learnt that through the revival of traditional governance systems, seeds and indigenous cosmologies these communities have begun on a journey to true local resilience. But how does this translate to the context of the UK? To continue on our quest for resilience, in this episode, we hear from two young women farmers, Katie Hastings and Kate Roberts, who tell us about how in Wales, the revival of heritage seeds has sent them on a journey to unlock Welsh cultural history and find resilience in local seed diversity.

Don't forget to share, review and subscribe! Follow @georgie.styles on Instagram

Part 6.

This is the last episode in the Beyond Coronavirus series and it ends with a bang - calling for global change in our food systems! Featuring new entrant farmers in Stroud, Nell Benney and Rosie Aitken, Head Grower at Edible Futures in Bristol, Humphrey Lloyd and Vicki Hird from Sustain: the alliance for better food and farming, in this episode we speak to access to land, food poverty, Community Supported Agriculture (CSA's), solidarity schemes, food policy, food sovereignty and what we can do, as eaters, as citizens of our food systems, to change our food and farming practices for the better - making them more resilient in the face of the multiple crises of today. Also hear more on the new Agricultural Bill in the UK post-Brexit and how this is relevant to countries and communities around the world. We can no longer eat our way into destruction, the time for change is NOW!

Don't forget to share, review and subscribe! Follow @georgie.styles on Instagram

Part 4. 

Next on our journey in finding what true resilience in our food and farming systems can look like, we head to Bikita in Zimbabwe. Despite facing increasingly frequent climatic shocks such as droughts and storms like Cyclone Ida, the indigenous communities of Bikita, are working to revive their lost seed, craft and traditional knowledge systems in the name of resilience. In this episode, Method Gundidza, Earth Practitioner and Programme Director at EarthLore, describes the inspiring, interconnected understanding of life upheld by these communities. 

Don't forget to share, review and subscribe! Follow @georgie.styles on Instagram

Part 3.

What can recovery and resilience in our food and farming systems look like in the wake of the Coronavirus pandemic? After investigating our dominant industrial food system, its roots in colonialism and its relevance to the pandemic in episodes 1 and 2, we now look beyond to what true resilience can look like. Leading the way in the indigenous community of Tharaka in Kenya, is Simon Mitambo and his team at SALT (Society for Alternative Learning and Transformation). Through the revival of lost traditions, seed, craft and spiritual practices, Simon tells us their inspiring story of resilience in the red, dusty foothills of Mount Kenya. 

Don't forget to share, review and subscribe! Follow @georgie.styles on Instagram

Part 2.

How is the Coronavirus relevant to our food and farming systems? What is the relationship between food and health? Find out in this episode as we speak to Author, Activist and Academic, Vandana Shiva and Lim Li Ching, from IPES Food and the Third World Network. 

Don't forget to share, review and subscribe! Follow @georgie.styles on Instagram

Part 1.

Welcome to the first ever episode of Frontline Food! We dive straight in to investigate our current food landscape and explore its historical roots in colonialism and industrialisation. Tune in to find out what this means today in terms of food, health and climate impacts, from Author, Activist and Academic, Vandana Shiva and Farmer and Campaigner, Jyoti Fernandes. 

Don't forget to share, review and subscribe! Follow @georgie.styles on Instagram

In this first series, Beyond Coronavirus, podcast host, Georgie Styles, investigates the relationship between food, farming, health and the recent coronavirus pandemic. From the untold stories of colonialism and industrialisation to indigenous wisdom and food sovereignty activism, join her in the search for what true resilience can look like beyond coronavirus.

Follow @frontlinefoodcast on Instagram and Facebook or sign up at www.frontlinefoodcast.co to be the first to know when the series drops! And don't forget to subscribe, share, rate and review on your podcast app - the more of you that do, the more chance we have of transforming to a truly resilient and just food system for all.