Global food systems are becoming unsustainable in terms of environmental impact, health, and social quality. Up to 25 percent of the ecological impact of an 'advanced' city can be attributed to its food systems.

The text below is a personal reflection by John Thackara on what we learned. (Please note that this is Part One: Part Two follows soon).

Alex D-S at Tastythinking.

Debra Solomon at Culiblog.

Lots of pix are here at Flickr

and here

and here

and here are another 300 or so from CKS

More links are at Technorati.

And Diane Brady posted this story in Business Week

Diane Brady posted this story in Business Week.

And the guys making the film about Jimmy Wales posted this short film about their time in Delhi on YouTube.

Let us know if you stumble across any more.

For a more detailed listing of events please go to "Programme"

Brian Ashton:

Our programming and production team is now massively expanded. D&G (Debra Solomon and Garrick Jones) are joined by Joost Wijermars and Srishti Bajaj. Preparations are going so well we should call it a Smoothie rather than a Round Table.

Joost (Delhi mobile) number: +91 991 077 8481 (info@joostwijermars.nl)
Srishti +91 199 1027 0689 (srishti.bajaj@alumni.rca.ac.uk)

Concerning how you get to present your project, having gone all the way to India to do so, there are three opportunities:

a) first, informally, at the Project Leaders Round Table at Global Arts Village (Tuesday or Wednesday evening and maybe Thursday morning): The format for Tuesday-Thursday is a mixture of plenary 'camp fire' chats and expeditions into the city to get more input.

b) some projects, but not all, will be asked to present during the conference on Saturday. I have not micro-organised the sessions on Saturday labelled "projects" yet - but will do so my mid-week.

c) During the Social Innovation Salon on Saturday evening. We offer you all a space to put up an A0 format poster or similar and talk to people then.

The updated (but not-cast-in-stone) excursions are as follow below. Expect to make a final choice on Tuesday evening. (Bear with us if your first choice may be full; we want to limit groups to six or seven people).

Snack City Workshop with Sophea Lerner & Kaustubh Srikanth

From digital snackfood as an interface to the city, to the participatory radio kitchen...workshop participants are invited to explore Delhi streetfood in the context of changes taking place across the city. Street snack surfing research and hands on DIY hybrid radio will be collectively cooked up into a performance radio cart as part of MWF and live_feed online broadcast with foodradio_network.?We exchange recipes and we share ingredients, exploring models of open content and accessible technologies. Our recipes are in a state of constant variation as we experiment with the ingredients and utensils at hand. What is interesting about radio as a live network between remote locations is the location and not merely the fact that it is remote. Here and there have different flavors. Food, like sound, enters the body and indexes it in place and time. Listen globally, eat locally.

Water Mapping with Georg Christoph Bertch

Reflecting Waters is an intercultural / interdisciplinary project which Georg Bertsch started together with Yaarah Bar On at the Bezalel Academy Jersualem in 2006. "In Delhi we shall do a elementary city water map based on research and discussion and ask about the aesthetics of water" says Georg. We have 49 grid squares of the city and a day or two to do the research. Everybody will need about a day to travel the city, visit some square grids and ask people at shops and markets four to five questions about how they deal with water on an everyday basis. (It can easily be done while doing other visits and research in the city). Besides getting a real impression of the city you will have a lot of fun talking to people while having a tea or just strolling around. Arlene Birt is going to create the Water Map that will be one of the essential documents of the team works at the conference".

Street Food and Urban Markets Tours with Nitin Das

India has an incredibly rich and diverse culture of street food. The variety is remarkable, and stalls provide snacks and meals to millions on a daily basis. The foods of the north and the south, the Tibetan mountains, and the rich local traditions are all to be found in the street food vendors. Join us for an exploration and tasting of the Street Vendors lives, foods and processes.

Urban Agriculture with Sunil Abraham

Although some forms of urban and peri-urban agriculture are based on temporary use of vacant lands, urban agriculture as such is a permanent feature of many cities in developing as well as developed countries. In fact, urban agriculture increases the efficiency of national food systems by supplying perishable products such as vegetables, fresh milk and poultry products, complements rural agriculture by positively impacting urban food security as it decreases foodmiles – the distance between field and plate. Besides the economic benefits for the producers, urban agriculture stimulates the development of related micro-enterprises: the production of necessary agricultural inputs and the processing, packaging and marketing of outputs. Input production and delivery may include activities like the collection and composting of urban wastes, production of organic pesticides, fabrication of tools, delivery of water, buying and bringing of chemical fertilisers, etc.)

Wastewater/greywater in urban agriculture

The use of wastewater/grey or black water in urban agriculture can play an important role in the urban environmental management system. For most cities in developing countries, the disposal of urban wastes has become a serious problem. Urban agriculture can help to solve such problems by turning urban wastes into a productive resource. Farmers may use wastewater for irrigating their farms when they lack access to other sources of water or because of its high price. The use of fresh (untreated) wastewater has the additional advantage for poor urban farmers that it contains a lot of nutrients (although often not in the proportions required by their soils and crops). More and more experience is being gained in public-private initiatives involving private enterprises and/or civic organisations in the development and management of municipal wastewater treatment plants. (Curiously nobody has leaped forward to lead this one yet).

Langar

Langars are Sikh community kitchens located at the place of worship in which devotees donate food and labour. The word langar comes from the Persian word for alms house, but not only poor people eat at the Langar. Considered to be a part of a Sikh’s way of showing devotion to the guru, the custom and institution of Langar was originated with the intention of abolishing caste distinction. Every Sikh place of worship, or gurdwara has a langar. Every Sikh is expected to take part in the running of the kitchen by either paying for the expenses, bringing provisions or by personally taking part in the cooking process, washing the dishes, fetching water and fuel or taking part in the cooking and distribution of the food At important Sikh temples on holy days a Langar may serve up to 20,000 people.

Scalability in Food Distribution: supermarkets, farmers’ markets, short & long food chains with Nitin Soanes

In this excursion, the idea will be to experience the two extremes of scale in terms of food distribution. At the Hanuman Mandir (temple) near Delhi’s Connaught Place a cow poops out paddies that a woman will form and allow to dry upon the roofs of the accompanying buildings, later to be sold as household fuel. At the Wholesale grain Distribution Centre, 17 sorts of rice is redistributed for use over entire regions of India and the rest of the world. This excursion will be an adventure to find Delhi’s largest and the smallest food chains.

Food recycling, composting, food reappropriation

India’s complex society has developed over the centuries many interesting and common sense ways of recycling, composting and reappropriating food and food waste. This is not necessarily linked to poverty, but is encouraged by the spiritual attitudes of many. This excursions will explore the social systems that have developed to ensure minimal food waste, and reappropriation of resources.

The academic experience with Garrick Jones

Plug in to some of the worlds leading laboratories and academic departments in food research, urban agriculture and food security (to name a few) and meet Indian academics. The Energy and Resources department at the Institute Habitat Centre is one example of a team leading research in Biosciences. Delhi is an important centre for research. State your preferences and anybody you may want to meet. We’ll see what we can arrange.

Local Farms visits with Rit Mishra

India's farmers mostly practice organic methods, passed down for millenia. Organic fertilizer and natural pest control are the only tools available to most farmers, who have always lacked the financial resources to explore chemical solutions. This excursion will visit local farms and meet with local farmers. Rit will be working with the latest methods and tools for design research.

Ride-on-dinner with Mick Douglas

Mick Douglas is an Australian artist, senior lecturer at RMIT University and founder of tramtactic.net who makes hybrid-artform public domain projects that are collaborative, cross-cultural and transportative. Recent experimental projects include 'Ride-on-Dinner' - a participatory performance project involving host artists serving up a 3-course slow-food meal to a swarm of cyclists over the duration of evening cycle rides. For the Doors of Perception / MediaWala festival he hopes to collaborate with others to develop a food and human energy event that explores relationships between transport, energy, food, local knowledge and practices of social conviviality.

MediaWalon Ka Rathotsav (The MediaWala Cart Festival) is a performative installation of diverse forms of media on a set of self propelled carts adorned with sound, light, food, energy, comms, and information. Artists and designers from around the world will be involved in constructing, installing and performing upon these carts.

The carts:
Streetfood Radiothela by foodradio_network (India)
Quicksand presents in technicolor... by Quicksand (India)
Apsara VJ Thela by Mo Ling Chui (Canada/ China)
Cycling Diners by Mick Douglas and team (Australia/ India)
Dancing Around Trees featuring Keity Anjoure (France) and Ville Hyvönen (Finland)
From Karthikeya to Kurt by Karthikeya Acharya and Vinay Silva (India)
Toploaded Whirlpool of Lassi by Hari Nair and Team (India)
Theka on Wheels by Seagrams (India)
McVideogames by La Molleindustria (Italy)
Emotions in Man by Kati Aberg (Finland)
Le Ciel Est Bleu (France)
Squishing it into the Slimy Depths of the Tethys Seaby Abhishek Hazra (India)
Hawker Caterers Inc by Ghitorni street food hawkers (India).

Thursday, 1st March 2007
7 pm to 10:30 pm
Global Arts Village
Utsav Mandir Foundation
Tropical Drive. Mehrauli-Gurgaon Road, Gittorni
New Delhi 110 030

Stashing food with friends: out of reach out of mouth
It's hard to stop eating. And, rising obesity rates suggest it's getting even harder.

Ian quotes one UK minister as saying that “flowers flown from Africa can use less energy overall than those produced in Europe because they’re not grown in heated greenhouses”. A total-energy-used metric has also been used to show that "tomatoes grown outdoors in Spain, then flown to the UK are responsible for fewer carbon emissions than UK tomatoes grown in heated greenhouses".

Which may be true. But is it relevant? Just because because a product flown from another country is "responsible for fewer carbon emissions than its UK equivalent", does not mean it its import is sustainable. The crunch issue is how much we have to reduce resource flows and emissions overall - not whether one flow is less damaging than another.

Discussion of that Final Number is where argument gets really heated. Some say we have to reduce by 60%. Others talk publicly about "Factor Four" (and in private say it's factor 20). And who gets to decide what the Number is? Scientists? Politicians? Designers?

Also responding to Ian's post, Edward Griffith-Jones refers us to a paper he's just written on The negative development impacts of a food miles approach to agriculture.

From digital snackfood as an interface to the city, to the participatory radio kitchen...workshop participants are invited to explore Delhi streetfood in the context of changes taking place across the city. Street snack surfing research and hands on DIY hybrid radio will be collectively cooked up into a performance radio cart as part of MWF and live_feed online broadcast with foodradio_network. We exchange recipes and we share ingredients, exploring models of open content and accessible technologies. Our recipes are in a state of constant variation as we experiment with the ingredients and utensils at hand. What is interesting about radio as a live network between remote locations is the location and not merely the fact that it is remote. Here and there have different flavors. Food, like sound, enters the body and indexes it in place and time. Listen globally, eat locally.