Food Matters

A fascinating panel discussion from GIY’s Harvest festival where four experts in food production and sustainability discuss the global issues that have been affecting us in recent years. They reflect on how the COVID-19 Pandemic, the War in Ukraine and Climate Change have impacted our food systems and they explore what we can do to become more resilient and diverse in our local food systems.  Our...

The food given to the sick, or those in institutional care, says a lot about the value we place on it in society. Hospital food has long exemplified a degraded view of food, but Joyce Timmins' efforts at Rotunda Hospital have won her awards and sparked a new conversation. Horticultural therapist Rachel Gerrard coordinates the garden at the National Rehabilitation Hospital, where growing is in...

Chefs play a major role in determining food trends. Advocacy specialist Paul Newnham works to mobilise chefs globally to take action towards addressing SDG2, Zero Hunger. In what might seem contradictory, this movement includes high-end restaurants, where the trends these top chefs create have the potential to change food culture more widely. At Michelin starred Aimsir, Tom Downes describes how he...

The major global tech companies have created their own food culture over the last decade, characterised as excessive and wasteful at times, but trail-blazing elsewhere. Airbnb's former Executive Chef Maurice McGeehan explains more, before detailing the food needs of very different professionals - Irish rugby players. Tim Holmes then takes us behind the scenes of the veg garden tended by the t...

Northern Europe is generally a good place to look for how the world should function sustainably. In Holland, Geert van der Veer's organisation Herenboeren enables groups of 200 people to co-invest in a farm and take control of the food supply in their area. In a housing estate in Kildare, Pat Pender and his neighbours have transformed wasted land to do the same at an even more local level.

School closures during lockdown revealed the dependency so many children have on school meals. Serial food entrepreneur, writer and researcher Michelle Darmody explains how it also revealed the quality of these meals and the lack of emphasis on food literacy in our education system. On the opposite side of the world in Zambia, teacher Charles Banda is working to address similar problems by creatin...

The global food system is at its worst in American households. Roger Doiron campaigned for the White House to create a kitchen garden to help educate Americans about their food, which has survived the tumultuous transitions of power over the last decade. One former Obama campaigner turned Irish resident, Erin Fornoff explains how growing food can be done anywhere, including the roof of her housebo...

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