Food Sovereignty Challenge - Highlights & 6 days left
I was pleasantly surprised to see a lively discussion on the topic of Food Sovereignty spurred from this challenge:
Challenge: What are you doing to claim food sovereignty for yourself or your community, and why?
If you are interested in participating you have about 6 days left. See the link above for the full details of the Challenge which is rewarding one 10 steem prize and two 5 steem prizes to 3 winners.
This topic is near and dear to my heart and imo one of the most important issues of our time. I was so glad to see many folks that I respect come out and voice their opinions about food sovereignty and also providing examples and proof that it is possible to claim food sovereignty for ourselves.
I am also really appreciating the entries from those individuals that are just starting down the road to claiming independence via food - it is not an easy road but it is a worthwhile and very fulfilling endeavor. Thank you all for your efforts, your stories, thoughts and wisdom.
Here are some excerpts from the entries that we have received so far!
A Revolution in Dirt and Seeds: Answering @Sagescrub's Challenge on What We Can Do to Increase Our Food Sovereignty.
by @riverflows
I live in a rural area that was once a big wool production area and at the edge of a wheatbelt too. There's a lot of farming folk around here, but there's also a lot of people with small acreages or at least big blocks of land where they have the capability of growing food for their own table. It's been fantastic to share inspiration, seeds, plants and knowledge, and we've been having monthly food swaps. So succesful has this been that the town over from us has started their own group and also do swap meets, and many members are in both groups.
Is Food Sovereignty Possible in a Harsh Climate?
At the moment we have mains water and access to chicken feed. We are able to supply ourselves with eggs, most of our fruit and vegetables when in season and some meat. All our herbs come from the garden and excess is shared with neighbours. It's not much, but it is a way of reaching out to the community and making those connections. For such an introvert, I was actually quite surprised to realise that I now know more of the people on our street than some of our chattier neighbours.
Community is essential when things get hard so cultivating that is important for me. Most of my neighbours aren't particularly interested in growing their own food, but the fact that we are doing it has started a seed of thought within some of them.
A Challenge: What are you doing to claim food sovereignty for yourself or your community, and why? My Response...
by @porters
We have coal oil lamps and the oil to go in it plus we do have a small solar system set up on our camperized van which we could bring to the house if needed.
Sad to say, but we have prepared for the internet no longer being available, which it very well could be, with a good library of books and music plus a tight local community.We have a good supply of grains and seeds, pulses and rice in a storage room that keeps cool and dry.
We know how to cook things from scratch, can and preserve our foods and have a diet that we are happy with and are not reliant on the stores to maintain it.This past year we took our gardening one step further and began our indoor gardening project.
The (non)Violent Gardener: My Feeble Attempts at Food Sovreignty
Our efforts here to establish our own food forest and a tree-guild-based sharing garden are just the start. A big part of the sharing garden is going to be my marketing attempts to spread information about permaculture and home food production to everyone I am blessed enough to serve. When people come to pick berries and food, I'm going to greet them with a hug (I'm a hugger) and a small book or brocure of permaculture information.
Homesteaderscoop Challenge: What are you doing to claim food sovereignty for yourself or your community, and why? Stanmr's entry
by @stanmr
Food security is something I've been working on for years now. I guess we always think about taking care of our own first. Food sovereignty is a newer concept for me. I'm the kind of person that usually thinks, I can do this all on my own. It was part of why I became interested in gardening in the first place. I used to dream about feeding my large family from our little garden plot. We ended up with a few good meals in the summer. Or sometimes we were able to supplement some peppers and tomato's for part of a meal. Then a big haul of winter squash and other end of the season bounty. I was content with that for many years but was, and still am concerned with how much we put in the pantry every fall. How to stretch the growing season. Or how to convince my children to eat healthier.
My Response to - Challenge: What are you doing to claim food sovereignty for yourself or your community, and why?
One of my current sites used to be a homestead but was abandoned years ago - now I'm restoring it for wildlife habitat. But there are a lot of old and amazing fruit trees growing wild on the property. The above picture is one of these trees.
This site will be opened to the public in the future as part of what we are calling the Inspiring Kids Preserve. It will be a place for kids, families and the community in general to come and learn and reconnect with nature.
But I also want them to connect with the idea of growing their own food.
So to help with that we have teamed up with a local fruit tree group to run free workshops to teach people how to prune and take care of their own fruit trees by practicing on our wild fruit trees.
HomeSteadersCoop Challenge: Salt sovereignty for myself, my community, and my Queen...Why?
Which all the furor about various means of attaining food for all people's, and caring for your community in the centuries to come after Lili takes her revenge upon mankind... Nobody seems to be speaking about Salt...
I won't go into the particulars of it, (in fact, you should ask the folks @steemstem) but salt is an absolute necessity for all Earthly Life.. If even the children of Mama Evie need it, then you can damn well bet that Aunt Lili's children need it... It's just physics... If you had access to every possible resource, but no salt... You would die...
HARD...
Normally, Salt is harvested from the Sea... It's quite easy to get it from there, and nobody even makes a fuss about it anymore... But inland.. Folks who don't have access to salt-water, need take a different approach. How does one manufacture table salt with no Sea-Water?
Challenge: What are you doing to claim food sovereignty for yourself or your community, and why?
I got the first 'Grow Free' cart established in Gawler and that lead to 4 more being started These carts are part of a rapidly growing movement and are for folks to leave and take produce as needed. If you have surplus, you leave it. If you are in need, you take. It's a really simple Idea that works.
We are part of the local Saturday morning food share. This is where like minded folk catch up every week or when they can and we swap and give any excess from our gardens. Really, anything garden related is OK at these swaps.
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Awesome challenge and amazing responses. Thanks for putting this contest on. I look forward to reading even more articles as the contest continues.
Thank you @mattlovell :) I really enjoyed reading all of them so far!
This is a great collection of articles
Absolutly great collection of articles, just what i needed to keep the faith 👍 back to reading and upvoting these great people thanks again
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We are here to support and encourage eachother. Thank you @digitaldan :)
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TrufflePigLovin' the response to your challenge! It's a great way to collect some of that awesome knowledge Steemians have about food sovereignty.
I resteemed to be able to easily refer to it.
Thanks for the initiative1 Looki9ng forward to seeing more responses!
<3!!