Food Citizenship Podcast | foodsystem sustainability + agroecology

"The Future is rural" was a 2-day event organized by Foodture, Friends of the Earth and the IEN which took part on the 4-5th of October in the Museum of Countrylife in Mayo. This is a recording of the panel discussion following the screening of "In our hands-seeding change" featuring Saoirse McHugh, Fergal Anderson, David O'Donnell and special guest Breda Larkin.

In this episode we met with Paul Price and John Gibbons from An Taisce's Climate Change Committee and talked with them about the issues in Irish agriculture and the implications for climate change and food security.

We're living in times of change and building resilience has become a key to support healthy living on this planet. In this episode we explore how farms are building resilience through diversity; economically, environmentally and socially and how citizens can benefit from it by either supporting farmers by buying their products or by becoming part of the community.

Agroecology is a social movement with the aim to promote a sustainable transition of our food system towards one that can help us feed the world, supports farmer livelihoods, protects the environment and builds strong communities.

Agroecology describes how we can farm in harmony with nature. It’s about ecology, it’s about the interconnections between the natural world and the managed world. It’s about science and farmers traditional knowledge. Globally this approach has grown into a social movement whose goals it is to establish a new philosophy for farming that’s about working within the limits of our planet while producing food and keeping rural communities alive and thriving. In part 1 of this episode we speak with Dr. Dolores Byrne, the project ecologist on the EU Results based Agri-environment Pilot project. This project is a working example of agroecology and shows how agri-environmental schemes should work for both nature and the farmer.

We dived into the beautiful world of fermentation, one of the oldest food preservation methods known to man. Fermentation is currently celebrating a revival and we wanted to explore why we should eat fermented food and how we can get started to learn this technique.

We asked Darina Allen, the grand dame of Irish food to share with us her vision of the future of food and agriculture in Ireland.

In September foodture was part of the Global Green Village at EP. In the Speak Eatsy tent Oliver Moore hosted a panel discussion around the hot topic of the place for meat production in the food system, featuring Sinead from foodture.

We asked our fair food farmers what's in season at this time of the year that you can use to cook your locally sourced, seasonal Christmas holiday feast.

The future growers internship is run by the OGI and helps new entrants into farming to get all the necessary experience and skills to set up their growing business to supply local communities with healthy food.

Pádraic Fogarty's highly acclaimed book "Whittled away - Ireland's vanishing nature" gives a shocking overview of the decline of biodiversity in Ireland. In this episode we met him to discuss the reasons and also to shed light on what can be done.

This week we spoke to Sean O'Farrell from Cloncannon Biofarm. He shared with us the story of his journey from conventional to organic farming and told us more about the educational programs for primary, transition year and senior cycle students that he runs on his farm in Tipperary.

In this episode, we spoke to Liam from Moyleabbey organic farm in Co. Kildare about his journey into growing, farmers markets and how we can work together with farmers to be more sustainable.

We spoke to Irish Seed Savers about their mission and the importance to preserve seeds in a changing climate.

Ep. 2 The fascinating world of soil by foodture

What does it mean to be a Food Citizen? and How does language influence our behaviour? are a few questions we're asking Anna Cura who works for the food Ethics council in the UK.