There is a cloud covering the future of life on Earth. A critical element to the formation of this cloud is excessive food waste and consumption. According to Carolyn Steel, author of Hungry City: How Food Shapes Our Lives, we are faced with this plethora of food consumption and waste due to ever-growing urban populations. Cities are responsible for 75 per cent of the world’s food and energy sources and, if you consider that the world is estimated to be 80 per cent urban by 2050, there is a large problem at hand. Excess food consumption is a sustainability issue created by humans and the problem needs to be addressed.
Steel, along with other key theorists on urban sustainability, sees the revision of the way we look at food systems as critical to the construction of a fruitful future for the planet. In reflecting on the importance of food systems for culture and sustainability, Steel champions the term “Sitopia”, which has underlying utopian principles: it combines the ancient Greek word sitos, meaning food, and topos, referring to place. In a Sitopian society, food is a central, valued element to life.
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Progressive Sitopian visionaries are creating movements in major cities globally. In places like Melbourne, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Toronto, New York and Paris, these individuals are taking a creative approach to bringing food systems back to the centre of densely populated areas.
One way people are doing so is by creating food systems from pollination to consumption by implementing rooftop bee cultures. This urban apiculture movement is also supporting the protection of the honey bee from threats such as disease and human harm. It’s common for inner-city beekeepers to place hives on the roofs of cafes, restaurants and hotels, making the Travel distance from production to plate minimal. Bees are critical to the evolution of local produce, pollinating many of the fruit and vegetables we consume, so the rise of urban apiculture is a practical development in the actualisation of Sitopian ideals.
Food waste vs food place
The modern world is a fast-paced consumer society; we are educated to think that material objects equal happiness. The constant focus on consumption is gravely impacting the sustainability of Earth.
Food waste is considered by many environmentalists to be the biggest issue casting a big black question mark over the future. According to FoodWise, an initiative of not-for-profit DoSomething! aimed at reducing the environmental impact of food consumption, the average Australian household throws away 20 per cent of Grocery purchases, costing the average household about AU$1036 per year. The role grassroots initiatives such as the various urban beekeeping movements play in connecting community members with food systems is critical to reducing this unnecessary and culturally detrimental waste.
In the journal paper Urban Sustainability: Learning From Best Practice, academic Harriet Bulkeley notes that the underpinning values behind Sitopia are around:
- Connecting people with the source of food and engaging with farmers
- Creating global food systems that are ethical
- Achieving government support so farmers can rise above supermarkets
- Creating localised, interconnected food relationships
- Ongoing dialogues around food
To reach these ideals and improve sustainability, cities need exemplar projects and examples of best practice for which learnings can be applied within the urban space.
Like the rooftop honey movement, there’s a number of considered rooftop farms sprouting up in contemporary cities, starting food-system conversations and setting best practice.
Eagle Street Roof Farm is a 6000-sqft green-roof organic vegetable farm that sits on top of a warehouse in the über trendy area of Greenpoint in Brooklyn, New York. The farm has sweeping views of the Manhattan skyline. It also produces fruit and vegetables that are sold onsite and to restaurants in the area. A Farm-Based Education team hosts ongoing education and volunteer programs to teach city-dwellers about farming and, more specifically, where their food comes from.
Near Eagle Street Roof Farm sits Brooklyn Grange, which has the world’s largest rooftop soil gardens split over two spaces. There are similarly ambitious farm projects taking place in urban centres in other countries, such as City Farm in Tokyo and HK Farm in Hong Kong. By creating dialogue around food production, such initiatives are fostering broader Sitopian community movements.
Connecting with food is connecting community
City dwellers are losing their connectedness to food sources as farmland becomes increasingly far removed from urban existence. Accompanying this disconnect, community members no longer feel a sense of ownership or responsibility for the food they consume. Supermarkets are contributing to this urban disconnect with food sources: they are convenient and offer “fresh” produce all year round — and sometimes all night long. Consumers are led by supermarkets’ misrepresentation of nature; they expect fruits like avocado all year round and do not appreciate seasonality.
According to Carolyn Steel, taking the time to consider food more would assist individuals to connect with their environment. In Hungry City: How Food Shapes Our Lives, Steel eloquently writes, “If we connected the peas on our plate to someone, somewhere, farming; the chicken in our sandwich to a living animal; related the taste, texture, colour of the food we eat to the weather and seasons. Food is the envoy of the countryside — a living part of the landscape where it was grown. Apart from making clear ecological sense, eating locally and seasonally is more enjoyable.”
It’s from this perspective that Local Organics, a Melbourne-based food hub, has seen the positive effect of their business. From Thursday through to Saturday, owners Marcus and Angie open their backyard to the local community, supplying them with seasonal fruit and vegetable boxes they have carefully sourced directly from Victorian farmers.
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“I think knowing and engaging with how your food is produced and where it comes from, and being able to afford to regularly choose to buy and cook good food, are fundamental to the sustainability of individuals, societies/communities and the environment,” says Angie.
Understanding the wide reach of food’s impact on the environment, Local Organics strives to supply produce in a manner that is affordable, transparent and ethical, all of which are critical to Sitopian values. In discussing the personal benefits of contributing to the broader food system, Angie continues, “I feel more connected to the weather and more grateful for what is on offer. Also, I now feel connected with farmers, the land and the people who eat [our] food boxes.”
Understanding food not only connects people with their sustenance at an individual level, but it inspires genuine interest in the natural world and the community.
Small grassroots operations such as Local Organics provide accessible shopping alternatives to supermarkets and truly educate individuals about food systems and how to manage food consumption. They honour the role farmers play as key participants in “food places”.
Achieving Sitopia through social media
The need for social media engagement to foster the sustainability of the world has been addressed by the United Nations. During the Rio+20 conference in 2012, a Rio+Social conference was held. This discussion was developed from a global recognition of the importance of tackling issues around sustainability and linked specifically to use of social media and technology.
Thanks to social media, those with likeminded ideas can curate their online engagement without consideration of geographical boundaries, which truly promotes diverse and enriched cultural perspectives. Instagram is a great example of how sharing life through photography can connect and enhance culture. It also has the capacity to raise awareness of Sitopian values. A simple search of the hashtag “food” phenomenally retrieves over 117 million images on Instagram, showing a clear desire within society to share food experiences.
“Liquid modern” is a theoretical term that Polish theorist Zygmunt Bauman associates with life in the age of the internet. Liquid modern life is aligned with the idea that our cultural existence is ever moving. It is structured around freedom of individual choice and responsibility, and our cultural existence is defined by the personal decisions we make on a daily basis. Social media facilitates this fluid movement of culture through the expression of individuality — each of us does, says and shares what we like.
The many millions of online conversations around food are encompassed in this notion. Food photography bloggers are capturing a modern history of food consumption in a way that has previously not been possible. This capacity to capture and see the world through food will change individual cultural perceptions forever. According to Steel, when viewing the world through food, everything changes. What was once unconnected becomes linked. She sees food as an important force shaping the world.
Renowned photographer Susan Sontag seemingly understands Steel’s propensity for food to change the trajectory of the world from the perspective of photography. In her book Susan Sontag On Photography, she writes, “…the camera makes exotic things near, intimate; and familiar things small, abstract, strange, much farther away.”
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The capacity for food and photography to influence culture is clear. It seems that, together, with the help of social media they are allies for Sitopia. While photo-blogging of food does not directly change food systems within cities, it certainly does facilitate conversations around food and improve the perceived value.
Steel sees that a central action supporting the actualisation of Sitopia is for individuals to consider food more and create connections between the food on a plate and its origins. She sees that food is a truly unique part of culture globally in that it’s responsible for connecting everything together. This is where food photo-blogging and recipe sharing helps.
Instagram isn’t the only online space supporting cultural enrichment through food. Web-based photo sharing platforms such as Pinterest also create active online communities and do so effectively through categorising photos. This process of personal categorisation highlights the collaborative, inclusive experience of social media. Individuals can gather, communicate and reflect on topics relating to food, with amateurs and professionals participating in the same conversation.
Such opportunities seed interesting, diverse reflections on food systems and create dialogue between people of different cultures and communities. The proliferation of food photo-blogging has the capacity to allow more people to engage with food.
Such benefits of social media engagement support the Sitopian value of creating food systems that are equitable. Everyone needs to be responsible for their environment, and education through channels such as Instagram, Pinterest and Twitter help individuals understand this responsibility.
Food as a form of dialogue
The true influence behind the success of urban food system mavericks like Eagle Street Roof Farm, Local Organics and the rooftop beekeepers stems from the idea of food being a form of dialogue that brings people together. The United Nations recognises this and there’s a growing emphasis being given to grassroots initiatives that are helping more individuals see and start to understand food systems.
This global movement in support of Sitopian values is being influenced, and in part driven, by social media and technology is facilitating cultural shifts towards a better understanding of food systems. The capacity of technology to create engaging two-way conversations around the future of our world is powerful.
Unique and diverse relationships and dialogue are forming around the need and desire to create ethical food systems and connect people to them. In light of this, there is hope for sustainable communities and for the Sitopian vision to come into fruition.
