{"id":12493,"date":"2015-04-21T19:54:14","date_gmt":"2015-04-21T18:54:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/greensideup.ie\/?p=12493"},"modified":"2015-11-29T15:53:51","modified_gmt":"2015-11-29T15:53:51","slug":"food-education-is-it-key-to-our-species-survival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/greensideup.ie\/food-education-is-it-key-to-our-species-survival\/","title":{"rendered":"Food Education. Is it key to our species survival?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Food

One of many rapeseed crops growing in County Carlow during the 2015 springtime<\/p><\/div>\n

As the sun shines down on Ireland, apart from running around after a busy family, my life has been about community garden projects, herb garden designs and bees. After a slow start to the year, it’s been a joy to get back out into the community and help two group of gardeners begin to learn how to grow their own food in hobby garden courses in community gardens, funded by our local Carlow\/Kilkenny adult training board (ETB).<\/p>\n

\"Food

Sieving homemade compost made from kitchen scraps in the Greenside Up garden. Spring 2015<\/p><\/div>\n

Every garden I work with starts with a session on the meaning of the word organic<\/a> as well as discussing the use of pesticides, herbicides and genetically modified organisms (GMO’s)<\/a> in our food systems. My experience is that the majority of rural gardeners haven’t heard about CSA’s (Community Supported Agriculture), GMO’s or understand the term ‘seed or food sovereignty<\/a>‘.<\/p>\n

The older gardeners often talk about how in tune their parents were with nature and how they were the original recyclers. They give examples such as cutting up old leather boots to make new door hinges, working in the fields picking stones in preparation for crop sowing and even spending hours stirring the blood of a pig to make the black pudding, an annual ritual that helped to provide food for neighbours and families in the not too distant past. However, at least two generations are now growing up in a fast, disposable food world that doesn’t compost, or know how to make a tomato based sauce or have held a cabbage seed and perhaps not even a cabbage.<\/p>\n

Most of the community gardeners I’ve worked with still aren’t regular users of social media, so unless concerns about the long-term sustainability of industrial scale food production and a fast food lifestyle are being broadcast on mainstream media or by planet friendly educators, the news just isn’t getting out there.<\/p>\n

\"Food

Overwintering vegetables harvesting from the Greenside Up garden in April<\/p><\/div>\n

Many adults I speak with in gardens believe that manufacturers of pesticides and herbicides have our best interests at heart. If products are legal and on sale they believe without question that the chemicals being recommended to destroy our weeds or ‘pests’ can’t harm us, our wildlife or our food.<\/p>\n

That said, when we begin a session it’s apparent that gardeners of all abilities are very keen to learn alternative methods that don’t involve the use of artificial chemicals, though many are disbelieving about the effectiveness. They don’t want to pollute the planet but they don’t know what the alternatives are or the long-term harm they might be doing to the environment by using artificial chemicals. Once again, education is proving key in helping to change habits and perceptions, encouraging people to see the land and food production in a more gentle light that is less about death and destruction and more about living in harmony with nature.<\/p>\n

Are the Youth Getting the Message?<\/h2>\n

This week a YouTube clip fell into my timeline that I found incredibly inspiring. A group of Irish secondary school kids in Dublin are learning about small-scale urban farming following a conversion of their school greenhouse into a ‘GROWlab’. The teenagers are learning how to grow food aquaponically, selling the produce to restaurants and farmers markets. Take a listen to this young man as he eloquently describes the difficulties the planet faces at it looks to the future. If, thanks to some forward thinking teachers, the teenagers are being taught in schools that changes have<\/em> to happen for our planet to survive, that we can’t continue on the land stripping way we have been, then there is hope.<\/p>\n

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The mission of Belvedere Urban Farm is to <\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

“save our world one seed at a time”.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n