Frontline Foodcast (Georgie Styles)

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.

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. 

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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.

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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.

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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!

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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.

In the Landworkers' Alliance second COP podcast we explore how Seed Sovereignty plays a vital role in the climate justice movement in conversation with Katie Hastings, a Landworkers Alliance member and also working on the Gaia Foundations Seed Sovereignty Programme, and Cidi Otieno from the Kenyan Peasants' League

Earlier this month the UK government’s Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs unveiled plans to deregulate gene editing techniques in the UK, claiming that deregulation & free market approaches to genetic engineering will help to protect our environment and tackle climate change.  We don’t agree, along with the majority of the public who responded to the consultation on GMOs earlier this year.  The majority of respondents recognised the risks that GMOs present to our health, our ecology and the rights and livelihoods of agroecological farmers both here in the UK and internationally.  And yet the government ploughs on.  And with Unilever as one of the official sponsors of COP … it won’t be a surprise if GMOs get strongly pushed on the COP agenda as a solution to the climate crisis.  This is not a true solution.  In this podcast we’ll focus on Seed Sovereignty and why this is a vital component of the food sovereignty and climate justice movement, helping to build ecological, social and cultural resilience in the face of the climate crisis.  

Find out more and join in at the UK Seed Sovereignty Gathering on 23rd October and at our Seed Sovereignty workshop during the COP26 Peoples' Summit gathering in Glasgow

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.

Our third podcast looks at different roles that animals play in an agroecological farming system in conversation with Landworkers' Alliance member Nikki Yoxxal, who is also a farmer at Grampian Graziers, and Fernando Garcia Dory who helps to organise Shepherd Schools in Spain and works for the World Alliance of Mobile Indigenous People.  Together they share how animals are part of the agroecological systems that they are practicing, and help to show how this differs dramatically from intensive and industrial forms of animal agriculture.  They will discuss the social and cultural importance of working with animals and the need for more careful evaluation of protein production systems.  

We hope you enjoy the podcast and welcome you to join us in our session at the Peoples' Summit in Glasgow which explores the diversity of opinions within our movement on animal agriculture and seeks to find common ground to effectively resist the systems that push us into industrial and intensive factory farming.

The Landworkers Alliance, along with Georgie Styles and Frontline Foodcast bring to you these COP26 podcasts. 

This episode comes to you direct from COP26 and raises the voices of youth from around the world. Friday 5th November 2021, saw tens of thousands of people take to the streets of Glasgow to march for the futures of our next generation. People of all ages gathered, sang, shouted, stomped, drummed, protested and barged their way through the centre of the city to demand climate justice and brought hope for the future. This episode is a curated soundscape from that march, including song, protest chants and speeches from Kampala in Uganda and the Philippines. 

This series of podcasts 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 Georgie Styles and Frontline Foodcast bring to you these COP26 podcasts. 

During COP, our Global leaders discussed how they can start to build a decarbonised economy, centering targets for Net Zero and Carbon Markets. But what exactly do these terms mean? How do they impact us? And what is the science and politics behind them? As a part of the COP26 People's Summit, the Landworkers' Alliance hosted a series of events on climate and land justice.  This episode offers reflections on one of these events 'Soil and Carbon - the science and the politics', with contributions from an international panel of farmers, scientists, policy experts and movement builders. This episode was broadcast live from COP26 on Monday 8th November 2021 via As If Radio.

This series of podcasts look at how food sovereignty and agroecology offer key solutions to the climate crisis and contribute significantly to the wider climate justice movement.

The word 'peasant' is usually thought to be synonymous with 'poor', 'unsophisticated' and 'ignorant'. But a movement of over 200 million peasant farmers and land workers around the world, united under La Via Campesina, are rising up to reclaim this word and harness the collective knowledge and power that they hold to build solidarity in their struggles and fight for a more harmonious, just and interconnected world. As a part of the COP26 People's Summit, the Landworkers' Alliance hosted a series of events on climate and land justice.  This episode, is part 1 of a 5 part mini-series from the Global Peasant Led Struggles event that took place on 7th November 2021 and explores the impacts of the climate crisis in Puerto Rico and the UK, finding hope in Agroecology. Speakers are Marissa Réyés from Organización Boricua and Dee Woods from LWA. 

This series of COP26 podcasts brought to you by The Landworkers Alliance and Frontline Foodcast, looks at how food sovereignty and agroecology offer key solutions to the climate crisis and contribute significantly to the wider climate justice movement.

Part 2 of the Global Peasant Led Struggles mini-series, explores the impacts of the climate crisis in Germany with Paola Gioia and raises the importance of grassroots involvement in global summits and conferences to fight against corporate capture.

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.

Follow this link for the Nyéléni website mentioned in this podcast episode: https://nyeleni-eca.net/

Part 3 of the Global Peasant Led Struggles mini-series, explores the impacts of the climate crisis in Canada with Jessie MacInnis from NFU Canada and how we can use the UN Declaration of Peasant Rights to build a food system that is based in justice and resilience. 

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.

Part 4 of the Global Peasant Led Struggles mini-series, looks at the impacts of the climate crisis in Spain and across the world with the World Alliance of Mobile Indigenous Pastoralists. We hear from Fernando García-Dory, highlighting the difficulties now facing global peasant pastoralists and exploring the place of animals in agriculture.  

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 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.