What's the right thing for this place? Incredible edible and the finely dressed carrot that started a revolution

Paul Clarke
Professor of Education
St Mary's University College, Twickenham, London, UK

What's the right thing for this place?
Incredible edible and the finely dressed carrot that started a revolution

The day is coming when a single carrot, freshly observed, will set off a revolution.
Paul Cezanne

Abstract
What does community-based food growing have to do with the impending environmental crisis? Why might such an approach contribute to the transformation of communities, generating discussion and engagement in actions which can lead towards a more sustainable future?

The production and distribution of food has for many decades operated at an industrial scale in Western economies. We import food from all around the planet, and we have grown accustomed to having any kind of food available at any time of year. But as global temperatures rise, and populations increase, there is a corresponding concern that the existing models of food production can no longer sustain the demands, be they environmental (the form of production is itself creating ecological catastrophe) economic (the sheer cost and moving food around outweighs the value), or ethical (producing food in one country to feed another while their own citizens are malnourished). In response to these concerns, attention is being given to new ways of growing food which depend much less on ‘oil-miles’ - the additional carbon emission needed to move food over huge distances to provide for an all year round demand, to develop strategic infrastructure which enhances the potential for what I have called the foodprint (sorry!) to equate to the footprint! If we are to make the transition to a less oil-dependent form of economy, and we are to maintain food supplies for our people, it is imperative that we establish new forms of infrastructure which can produce and distribute within local networks. The starting point for this in my own work is through a community food growing programme called Incredible Edible.

This paper will tell a little of the story of the Incredible Edible initiative from an insiders perspective, I will explain the basic idea and how it has evolved over a relatively short period of time into a powerful example of a way of responding at a community level to the considerable challenge of matching foodprint and footprint. Like all of this work, it is embryonic and emergent, it is recorded primarily so that we might learn from what we have done and share it with other communities who are interested in similar types of initiatives.

What is Food security?
Food security is a term which refers to the availability of food and the individuals access to it. A household is considered food secure when its occupants do not live in hunger or fear of starvation. According to the World Resources Institute, global per capita food production has been increasing substantially for the past several decades. In 2006, it was reported that globally, the number of people who are overweight has surpassed the number who are undernourished - the world had more than one billion people who were overweight, and an estimated 800 million who were undernourished. At the same time, Western societies are reporting obesity epidemics.
According to a recent Oxfam press release (2009) 852 million people around the world are chronically hungry due to extreme poverty, and up to a further 2 billion people lack food security on an intermittent basis due to varying degrees of poverty, much of which is being associated to the impact of increasing levels of desertification of previously fertile farmland that is turning to dust due to climate change. As the price of oil becomes more and more volatile, farmers are turning to the production of biofuels to increase revenue as ethanol subsidies turn farmers away from growing food. The high price of fuel also places increasing costs for transportation and management of the food product, pushing process higher. As more people move to live in cities, and earn more money as a result, their dietary demands move towards greater levels of meat and this in turn increases the cost of basic grain, particularly in China and India, the availability of grain at a price that is affordable to people on low or poverty levels of existence has led to food riots in many countries across the world.
Community food security
Community food security is a condition in which all community residents obtain a safe, culturally acceptable, nutritionally adequate diet through a sustainable food system that maximizes community self-reliance and social justice.
Following are six basic principles of community food security, as defined by the Community Food Security Coalition, a North American Non-Profit Organisation:
Low Income Food Needs Like the anti-hunger movement, CFS is focused on meeting the food needs of low income communities, reducing hunger and improving individual health.
Broad Goals CFS addresses a broad range of problems affecting the food system, community development, and the environment such as increasing poverty and hunger, disappearing farmland and family farms, inner city supermarket redlining, rural community disintegration, rampant suburban sprawl, and air and water pollution from unsustainable food production and distribution patterns.
Community focus A CFS approach seeks to build up a community's food resources to meet its own needs. These resources may include supermarkets, farmers' markets, gardens, transportation, community-based food processing ventures, and urban farms to name a few.
Self-reliance/empowerment Community food security projects emphasize the need to build individuals' abilities to provide for their food needs. Community food security seeks to build upon community and individual assets, rather than focus on their deficiencies. CFS projects seek to engage community residents in all phases of project planning, implementation, and evaluation.
Local agriculture A stable local agricultural base is key to a community responsive food system. Farmers need increased access to markets that pay them a decent wage for their labor, and farmland needs planning protection from suburban development. By building stronger ties between farmers and consumers, consumers gain a greater knowledge and appreciation for their food source.
Systems-oriented CFS projects typically are "inter-disciplinary," crossing many boundaries and incorporating collaborations with multiple agencies.
In each of these related principles there is an urgent need for examples and leadership, however, my experience of recent conferences suggests that there is a great deal of discussion and relatively little grounded action. Informal networks exist which serve as very useful starting points for action, but these are still in the formative stage, we urgently need embedded, conceptually robust examples to extend the knowledge base and further challenge the policy makers efforts in the regard to this field of work.

Local food security – a response
Whilst there are efforts taking place at the macro-level to establish developmental approaches that consolidate and connect the systemic management of food, it is at the local level that many individual actions will be most felt by people. In the UK, the issue of food security has had relatively little media attention, but, over the summer of 2009, the secretary of state for environment, food and rural affairs, Hilary Benn published a report on the need to reevaluate current food systems across the UK (HM Govt 2009). The main focus of the government response was on farming practices and potential changes to the ways in which farmers would reduce their oil dependency on diesel, chemicals and fertilizers. However, there are other, potentially high yield responses to food security which offer a different response to food production, and of these the example of community response is perhaps most poignant and stimulating.

In the project in which I am closely involved, our story goes that Incredible Edible started with Pam and Mary sitting around a kitchen table talking about how to draw attention to a serious problem of disconnect between people and place. In the winter of 2007 we had already all heard and shared in the general concern that was being voiced in the press and in papers and magazines about food security , the problems that we might have with peak oil, the change in climate which we felt was already evident in the never ending rainfall in the valleys and the general sense that we were heading for troubled ecological and economic times, the ‘perfect storm of environmental and economic collapse’ of which the government chief scientific officer John Beddington (2009) recently reminded us.

Our town had, like many other communities, started to feel the effect of slow and sustained economic flight from the rural economy that continues to be a blight on rural development. The ever growing urban marketisation seemed to persistently suck the life-blood from any form of economy that deviated from current economic hegemony. The previous two decades has witnessed the closure of almost all the local manufacturing industry, much of which was associated with the cotton industry, the location of the town is not best suited to modern development and transportation networks. Local farming was in crisis with fewer and fewer hill-farms being commercially viable, the local market was struggling under the competitive pressure from the two newly built supermarkets and there was a feeling that the community was losing a lot more than simply an economic base. I see this as part of a continuing power struggle to stimulate and advance one form of economic development over and above all other forms of economic activity. Having a fluid, responsive workforce remains a prerequisite for a capitalist economy, as it did in the time of the land clearances of the 19th century. The detachment from land ensures that the people have no direct means of feeding themselves, and so become dependent upon money to buy food. This was both a deliberate policy of the recent past, and its repercussions and its cultural messages resonate to this day.
Economic development of an underdeveloped people by themselves is not compatible with the maintenance of their traditional customs and mores. A break with the latter is prerequisite to economic progress. What is needed is a revolution in the totality of social, cultural and religious institutions and habits, and thus in their psychological attitude, their philosophy and way of life. What is, therefore, required amounts in reality to social disorganization. Unhappiness and discontent in the sense of wanting more than is obtainable at any moment is to be generated. The suffering and dislocation that may be caused in the progress may be objectionable, but it appears to be the price that has to be paid for economic development: the condition of economic progress. J.L Sadie (1960) Economic Journal, in McIntosh (2001)p.94

Whilst it was clear that our town was in transition from its role as an industrial northern market town on the border of Yorkshire and Lancashire, it was and still is not really clear what this transition is taking us towards. Earlier policy that had taken people away from the land, and from some form of economic independence, had now rendered many people dependent on forms of employment that were in themselves no longer operable in a changing economic environment. This has created in part, an underclass of people in the area who have no experience of work for more than one generation in their family structure, and no land available to grow any of their own food to support themselves. For others, it has meant that commuting from the town to the city and this has increased the dependency on paid work, and distanced people who remain residents of the town from the day to day life of the place because their sense of place is now hometown and city.

The transition through economic need, to work outside of the community in which one lives, has generated a gradual and yet identifiable fracture in what Alistair McIntosh perfectly describes as the ‘ecosystem of place’ (Mcintosh 2001) a term which I have taken to my heart in my work to explore and explain how we respond to changing ecological challenges that we face. An ecosystem of place relates to the ways in which people connect to each other through a deep understanding and relationship with their local environment. It is through this that they contribute to its cultural dynamic that helps to give a community both a character and a sense of collective self-justification. In effect, a practical relationship within a community setting generates a form of identity which has lived long in the memory, if not in the reality of our community structures. Identification with a location, with its activity and its ways of doing things is in part about being in a tribe, a group who share more than simply the co-existence of a location. The identity with place generates interdependencies. Just like any other ecosystem, an ecosystem of place is responsive and integrated with other systems, these both which influence and manipulate it in its functioning. These may be social as well as cultural and economic systems, they certainly generate a powerful narrative to which people can easily relate.

What we tell ourselves is that when a community has a sense of place it is resilient and vibrant, it provides successfully for its inhabitants by generating sense of worth, well-being and what Illich calls ‘conviviality (1973). In such circumstances we might argue that an understanding of a local ecosystem of place has beneficial value in establishing an appreciation of the weave between forms of economy such as mutuality, reciprocity and exchange, and social and cultural actions through which people establish relationships and create lasting patterns of mutually supportive activity. However, in periods of economic hardship, and period of transition towards a form of economy which is now much more inter-dependent and dispersed, relying not simply upon local transactions, but upon economic connections on a global level, its ecosystem of place is much more fragmented, fragile and open to the same economic turmoil that afflicts any other part of the world. The transition, is therefore of local importance, if it is not to end up as drift, but it is influenced on a much broader scale than that which anyone can orchestrate.

However, this is not to say that people are simply hostage to ‘given’ or ‘received’ circumstances. People talk about change, they witness it happening around them, they share their feelings about it. Sometimes this is simply to complain, to express a rather detached feeling of regret or anxiety or frustration, sometimes it is simply to express a feeling that something was amiss. Sometimes it is an observation of the relationship between community and idealism and the fragile relationship that exists between individuals, their community and their feeling of personal and collective power to effect change which they cannot in the end, influence. This is far more than simple sentiment, it is a substantive sense of loss of identity and purpose which is as much spiritual as it is economic (Berry 1999, McIntosh 2001). In ecosystems of place, which are under threat, people have been, and continue to lose their sense of self, their sense of connection to a place, with which I think come other associated losses of community, self and local belief, and shared ambition. The identity of our town, like so many others, was becoming lost into the general anonymity of modern life, it was ‘just another place to go through to get somewhere else.’

Historically, Todmorden has been a pioneering town of cotton mills, cooperatives and interestingly, creative dissent and challenge . The memory of cotton and the connection of a trade across national boundaries that spanned the globe remains evident to this day in some of the impressive Victorian municipal buildings. The pioneering social and cooperative legacy remains strong in the many affiliations and self-help clubs that convene in the area, and the dissent is still present in the many creative professionals who take advantage of the studio space left as a result of the industrial decline. However, the resulting changes over the last twenty years in its population (from 22k in 1980 - 12k in 2008), and its subsequent impact on both local employment and infrastructure had started to show in the way people responded to the place. As a long-time member of the community I have noticed this gradual decline, particularly in some of the things which in the past have served as points of contact for people, places where they can connect, meet and share their ideas and observations. Many of the signs were typical of rural decay and poverty. The high street shops that have been empty for months, the pubs that have closed, depressed house prices, restricted employment opportunities and the general feeling that there was nothing anyone could do about it, it was just a symptom of a systemic problem over which people had no control. It felt like we were on the slide and the only end-result would be something worse than before.

I describe these changes as a feeling of decline because that is how it was experienced. Living in a place for a long period of time generates an emotional attachment to that place, through familiarity of the air, the seasons and the climate, through memories and through relationships. An awareness of loss is manifested therefore in an emotional response, it felt a bit like the idealism and community that must have been vibrant in the town of the past to create what it once was, had long gone. There was a feeling of drift, anonymity and alienation in what was once a thriving and close knit community and this makes one uneasy, uncomfortable and unsure. This undercurrent of unease and dissonance is not unusual in a border town trying to survive in a world which seems ever more geared towards an urban form of modern life. Traditionally, border towns have been used to a steady through-traffic of people and with them comes a tidal wave of ideas and possibilities. The town is no exception in its diversity of cultures represented over a substantial part of the 19th and 20th centuries. In the past people had arrived and stayed, now they were not even stopping. What we were witnessing was the decline in the way that the place caught those people and embraced their contributions and provided them with a home in which they could consider the possibility of creating a living.

Growing connections - a model for action
When we reflected recently on the origins of Incredible Edible it was clear that there were a series of concurrent discussions in which we were involved that were taking place over ‘futures’. Some were local, some were regional, some were national and some were global. These discussions held within them a similar theme, that the old industrial-capitalist-reductionist way of doing things was no longer working for us, it was not meeting the changing needs that we were witnessing in our daily encounters with life. In the words of the poet TS Eliot, we were ‘... no longer at ease in the old dispensation.’ Indeed, our feelings were that we were beginning to witness the dis-ease of consumption at all costs, which was leading to our collective feeling of decline.

In response, Incredible Edible’s basic aim was to generate awareness of three core agendas for change: change in community behaviour, change in local business activity, and change in awareness and knowledge of sustainable living achieved through new learning. Our intention was to design (Braungart and McDonough 2009) a different way forward which carried with it a simple and powerful message which people could connect to, and which would be open enough for widespread participation and engagement without exception.

We envisaged this in the form of three interdependent agendas of community, business and education. The critical connector was the local production of food. Food serves as the catalyst for discussion and action to establish new ways to see and use land within the community, new ways of educating people from cradle to cradle (Walter Stahel) from the school through to colleges and into the local environment, and engaging local business in sourcing and creating new ways to connect to the community by growing new markets to ensure greater levels of local food production, sourcing, and distribution.



Figure one: linking food and learning, community and business















Figure two: creating new connections and new challenges to focus on sustainable food production




The connections between food and land, food and markets, and a need to educate people to re-think their relationship with food use and food production and to pass this knowledge to others was our way of response to the wider, macro-economic challenges that we were recognising. Whilst we heard from elsewhere that more interdependent communities would have a better chance at responding resiliently in times of economic challenge (Hopkins 2008), we did not know if this was the case in our environment. So the simple focus on the growing and sharing of food to spread the ideas and aspirations of a bigger change game in the form of a re-established food focused community seemed like a good first step to take.

This early formulation of our approach was pragmatic as much as idealistic, it was necessary to take a route that would lead to jobs as well as begin to raise awareness across the community of the implications of food insecurity, and influence formal and informal education providers of a need to look again at their role and function in generating capacity for deeper understanding, knowledge and skills to generate food security. We had seen the slow deterioration and decline of food production around the region, and a corresponding increase in the import of foods from around the world. Food has always featured in our local landscape, we had grown up with local farms providing for us, and we had a strong tradition in the town of public allotments and private gardens, added to which the local countryside was an abundant resource for people to pick berries and nuts in the coppices and hedgerows. As such, food has always been there to serve as a connector, people understood the essential role it plays in their lives and historically people knew which kind of food grew well in the region and where it could be sourced. We were aware though, that food has increasingly become something distant, the rise of imported food and out-of-season food had generated an expectation for easy availability, low cost, and no questions asked. This situation does two things, it detaches us from one important part of identity of place through food, and it generates an unrealistic expectation that this form of commerce is sustainable. The idea of security of food does not need to be in our design for our survival because we have come to believe, as a result of experience, that someone else will always supply it.


Growing connections: A model of action
One practical step which bridged the gap between talking about food security and actually engaging in something which created change that focused on food security started on the railway station platform. Mary and Pam planted herbs in the railway platform flower beds. People could get off the train at the end of the day and gather a handful of herbs to take home and use in their cooking that evening. Then Nick visited France and was struck with municipal planting in rural France which included vegetables in the council flowerbeds. Why not here? Over a period of a few weeks many of the odd parcels of land dotted around the town were identified and planted, with orchards of fruit trees and bushes, and a variety of vegetables and herbs.

Within three months there were people all across the town participating in the effort to grow food, develop new networks to reclaim land and sharing ideas and knowledge some of which are outlined below.

Figure three: A whirlwind tour of six months of incredible activity 60 people attend first meeting Seed and plant swaps start Proper-gander gardens 750k school food hub bid to the lottery Incredible parents-all schools have them
Churches commit land and support Harvest Festival
Cafe discussions and films Doctors take a vote for veg Older peoples growing memories Every egg matters campaign Agriculture show- new growing section Community Pay-Back get on board
Incredible Buzz - bee keeping group

Simple messages
People did simple things, planting seeds and fruit bushes and fruit trees in public places, using school playgrounds to create community allotments. The high school, recognising that it had probably the most publicly available land in the town, recruited the help of the community payback scheme and working with Incredible Edible to build a large polytunnel. This now provides seasonal vegetables to the school canteen, and excess is sold in the town market. The school worked with the initiative to put a successful bid to the lottery fund which has enabled the project to plan to build on the school site a sustainable fish farm. This will offer courses and advice as well as produce for all the town restaurants and cafe’s. New courses in land management and rural ecology are planned for this academic year. Evening cookery classes take place monthly at the cafe. We have undertaken an audit of all the local egg producers, encouraging many people to take up hen keeping and created an egg map for the town of local producers. There is a bee-keeping group, aiming to have at least ten new bee-keepers in the next season underway with very little capital outlay through links with local carpenters workshop who can provide hives at discount prices. We regularly have gatherings in the cafe to show films and hold discussions on issues related to the wider picture of global warming, permaculture and other themed events.

This ‘seeding of minds’ coincides with our work through the website to share and expand the network of ideas to others. At present the website has about 15k hits per week, we launch ‘Incredible Spreadables’ the ideas from across the planet to respond to a need for an ecological economy. There is an autumn national conference to be held in the town hall and ministers, regional policy and planners, food company representatives and many members of the local community have registered to attend.

Messages: The power of action
So what are we learning from all of this activity? My first observation is that in themselves these activities are rather innocuous things, they don’t seem to demonstrate much more than people can still grow things, and can do that wherever they manage to put the plants. But we have come to recognise that these single small acts were symbolically important, as they represent a reconnection with the power to do something in a community setting, outside of the existing boundaries between individual landspace and public landspace. People were looking at the available public land and reclaiming it to make it more productive. In doing this they exercise choice, public action, civil responsibility and because it involves others, they are actively creating communities of action (Clarke in press).

Food as a starting point to a bigger conversation
We have learnt the obvious, that food is a great connector. The simple act of growing food has a resonance with people from every corner of the community, it is so easily accessible. It was not necessary to orchestrate ‘community outreach’ meetings or similar ventures because people simply turned up and joined in. As people participated they brought with them ideas and suggestions. We have been very open to these new perspectives and suggestions. It is clear that not every idea will work, but how do we know which one’s until we try? For example, it was suggested that the initiative should be opened up to include young offenders involved in community payback. Their enthusiasm and pride in the project has seen them building polytunnels, planting areas, and they are now a vital part of the digging and laying infrastructure across town as the care homes, the old people’s centre, the schools, the health centre, the various cafe’s and eateries, the local police station, the social housing programme, the services such as bus shelters and railway platforms and car parks are utilised as resource. In turn, these individual locations generate pockets of interest and enthusiasm, and contribute to the cumulative impact across the town of the initiative as we can point visitors and media to witness the work first hand.

Furthermore, we have noticed that people make wider connections, they do not need people ‘banging on about climate change’ as Pam observed. They do not see Incredible Edible as a single issue project. The recent meeting in the cafe showed a film about peak oil and over 70 people attended, and two hours after the film finished the room was still full and alive with discussion in response to the film, its repercussions are still being thought out as we meet and reflect further. This connection beyond the basic idea of the initiative serves to strengthen the enthusiasms of participants. It is reinforced further by recognition from national organisations, and through the multiple film crews and news reporters from around the world who have opened a conversation within and beyond the town extending across the planet. We use the website to generate links and to seed the deeper message about sustainable living.

Undermanagement
How do you run an initiative like Incredible Edible? We are often asked this question, and it has a number of responses. The first being that there are some powerful characters behind the initiative

The ownership of land
The use of public land is highly controversial and contested, land has historical ownership which often combines with power being exercised by one group over another to secure and maintain rights of access and use. It was somewhat predictable that the local authority would have problems with citizens planting on council land. However, after a number of meetings where the council raised concerns over safety and purpose of the work of the initiative, and where we reassured and illustrated both the actual and potential benefits for health, community well-being, and the press and publicity opportunity of a series of positive reviews and awards from both regional and national organisations (Market Towns Initiative winners and Sustainable Development Commission Breakthroughs for the 21st century winners) the council have made a significant change to the legislative process which enables people to identify and ‘land bank’ areas for public growing of food. This change in the way that the local authority responds to the initiative is evident of a broader issue, that the relationship between local authority and community can be redesigned to enable rather then restrict the activities of the communities in their care.


Defiant community, re-defining community?
In his recent book, Tobias Jones (2007) reflects on the visits he made to a group of ‘alternative’ communities, modern but self-contained places which function as places of - according to taste, idealism or escapism. He makes an important observation, that his interest was not to engage in stand-off voyeurism, nor to gently deride, but to genuinely see how people were attempting to redefine their realities.

In the case of Incredible Edible I think we are witnessing something similar, but not in the guise of an alternative community, just a community in a process of change which is trying to understand and re-connect to a new ecosystem of place.

First of all, it is entirely grounded in the harsh realities of a local, depressed market town economy but it is attempting to redefine this through consciousness raising about possibility of personal and collective action. This means that economy is a significant factor in the future success of the programme. We need to generate jobs, worthwhile forms of employment which will encourage people to stay and live in the town. The initiative raises the question however, what type of economy might we want to create here, what’s the right thing for this place?, and how does it sustain itself whilst supporting the development of similar initiatives elsewhere?

Second, I think that the programme is not (in the rather dull nomenclature of the day) an ‘intentional community’, because there is no set of core values upon which this programme exists. It is a ‘town’ programme of activity, with some business, some community and some educational elements. It tackles head-on, the threads of numerous needs, from the family who want a bit of physical space to grow a few vegetables and ‘get away from each other once in a while’, to the market traders who support the idea simply because it brings more people into town and perhaps boosts their sales. It was Aune (2009) who notes how Habermas observed that social movements were no longer forming around the traditional class struggles. Instead, he recognised that the new struggles were with identity and lifestyle. Habermas defined two different levels of society, the system and the lifeworld. The system being the institution of the state, and the lifeworld being the day-to-day ways of the people within the state. The operable ‘space in society’ to act and live is what Habermas describes as the ‘public sphere.’ This public sphere defines space, but not place, and place is what the Incredible Edible initiative claims in the form of land, it provides a way for people to generate new forms of identity, of self, and of community, geared towards a more sustainable lifestyle, but this represents a struggle which as yet is only in its formative stage.

My third observation when talking with people involved in the programme is that they are aware of its public significance as a way of redefining the town, but they are often more interested in how it offers them a way to connect with other people in the same place. This connection between self and others, public and private, or self and an ideal defined through the many and perhaps conflicting visions of what the Incredible Edible programme actually is, is very interesting. As Jones (2007) reminds us, ‘Emile Durkheim sugested that idealism only ever emerged through the communal because it was only at the school of collective life that the individual has learned to idealise. It is in assimilating the ideal elaborated by society that he has become capable of conceiving the ideal.’

Across the entire neighbourhood of the town the connection of people to place is evident and provides a daily reminder to people passing through that their lived environment, the landscape of their daily lives influences the way people interact. If they are disconnected from it, they feel less need to engage with others, if however, they are actively working in it, even in a small way, they engage with it and others, very differently. This is therefore a cultural issue, at least as Matthew Arnold (1994) means ‘turning a stream of fresh and free thought upon our stock notions and habits.’

The initiative is therefore illustrating a number of different forms of community (Clarke in press) that are happening in response to the focus on food. We have communities of action - people doing things together, we have communities of place - people connecting to the physical landscape to identify and plant produce, we have communities of interest - people connecting on themes that they find to be useful to them, so we have a bee-keeping group, an egg production group, a vegetable group and so on, and we have communities of connection - where the original issue of food is being linked to the wider debates on sustainable living, sustainable economy and sustainable forms of business within local, regional, national and international frameworks.

A revolution of the hand, heart and the mind
Nurturing plants is both a connector of hand, heart and mind. It brings people together to share experiences, and to exchange plants and seedlings. It brings them together to talk. To share stories. The connection of hand with heart which begins to break through to the mind is a long standing way of seeing reality used by green activists (Schumacher 1973, McIntosh 2008). People begin to see examples of ways in which simple acts like putting herb plants on the railway platform for the travelling people to come home at the end of the day and have herbs fresh to put on their meals gets people thinking as well as adding to their culinary repertoire. Their minds become more open to the innovative, quirky, a creative way of looking at our environment and this in turn generates enthusiasm, it inspires, it opens up possibility. It generates a belief, even if not always borne out by reality, that it really is possible to influence and improve a place, and to have an influence upon a community.

The Incredible Edible programme brings together three critical ingredients which seem to matter a lot if we are ever to make any sense of how to move on from our industrial past into a more humane, ecological form of economy. It brings together the hand, the heart and the mind.

Hand: people are putting their hands into soil and planting seeds. This is simple and profound. Simple because it transcends boundaries. Anyone can plant a seed. Anyone can nurture a seed to a seedling to a plant, in fact nature does it for us. And we end up with food. Profound because it represents a significant step forward from where they previously were in their way of engaging with their environment, they have made the first step.
Heart: We watch, we see and we wonder. I am not alone in thinking that many people are aching to have something to reconnect them with other people, with their community, with something that feels like they have a real role and responsibility and can commit towards (see for example McIntosh 2008, Kumar 2002, Whitefield 2009, Orr 2009). Modern living has eroded so much of the sense of being, and replaced it with structures which are designed by others to make us accountable, discontent and therefore ready to consume the next solution that we have lost the ability to see through this smoke and mirror existence. If we can find things which help us to reconnect with ourselves, and with other people and the environment in which we live then we are breaking into the empty void that so many people experience as their daily reality .

In the food project we have found that it opens our heart. We begin to talk about what is happening. We see that planting things makes connections between people, how did you grow that? Let’s swap these seedlings, why don’t we have a gathering to eat some of the harvest together and celebrate? Coming together to celebrate the food we grow together is a deep, universally embedded human experience which we have found serves as a connector across continents and race. I have found a bit of land and want to plant a fruit bush or two, can you help? Do you think we could plant an orchard on that bank near the railway? I have some plants extra, why don’t you put them in that spot you found? It places us into a situation where we are able to connect, it is very natural to do that.

Mind: A forgotten connection, a community of interest, a community that begins to find a place, a community that begins to see some patterns of togetherness that generate a sense of value. A community that thinks a little more of what is happening to its own locality, and in so doing, recognizes that this is also something that is more widespread, that is the mind, or as I like to say it creates a mindscape of the landscape.

Connections: People from other places begin to get in touch when they hear of our activities. They are interested in the same possibilities and connect with some of the same challenges. People are curious, they are interested, they ask interesting questions and make us reflect with more care on exactly what is happening. They come to us with doubts, questions and suggestions. They ask permission: can we do this? How can we do this? What happens if we don’t ask for permission but we just do it?
What we do not offer back are solutions. People need permission to make their own mistakes as we have done in their own places. They need the space to succeed and experiment. They need the reassurance that it is possible to undertake significant community action without having to take the established and existing routeways, these will adapt to help and inform, they do not have to be the only way forward. They need to find their own place, to see their own ways of seeing their places.

My experience suggests that simple practical actions like planting seeds and plants in public places can change people’s minds about their relationship with their environment, and in so doing, changes the way that they go about living in that community. I think that this has enormous educative value, with a central purpose behind those changes of generating greater sensitivity and congruence between what we do as human beings and the connection this has with a sustainable way of living. I think that this is fundamentally important if we are to continue to thrive on planet earth, and if planet earth is to continue to thrive with us upon it.

The mindscape of the landscape
As a result of our work in we are learning that ‘place’ matters. How we see it matters. How it influences us matters. How we influence it matters. How we design and model it matters. How it demands our attention matters. Place matters because our response to it generates messages, positive or negative which influence the mind of the people who live within that landscape of place. Place is where we are, where we live, where we dream, where we plan and scheme, where we do things, where we connect. It is where we practice our community, it is everyone, it holds everyone and it provides for everyone. If we witness place in crisis we act as if it is in crisis, if we witness it in development and improvement, we act to facilitate that improvement. I think that there are some very interesting possibilities in exploring the behavioural response of people to the landscape in which they exist, perhaps this offers us a way to explore differently the regeneration of communities, certainly there are programmes elsewhere which indicate that there is some mileage in pursuing these ideas further (see for example East New York City Farms ).




Conclusion
I have argued elsewhere (Clarke 2000, 2008, 2009) that the challenges we are facing in a wide range array of human activity from education, to well-being, to community and to economy, can all be traced back to one single, defining crisis, in the form of the ecological crisis. At the root of the disconnect between the services we have created to provide nurture and support of our communities, there is a disconnect of self from place – a disturbance in the ecosystem of place which is having an immense impact on how people live. We are collectively responsible for committing our societal energies into a developmental view of our future which holds that progress will come through the creation of ever more material wealth, divorced from our environment, distanced from place, and yet the evidence is available to refute and counter the pursuit of this without connecting to other equally important ‘wealth’ forms (Wilkinson and Pickett 2009). However, our persistent focus to the external change required will do nothing to attend to an equally problematic inner abyss (see Berry 2009). We need to activate our senses and overcome the crisis of consciousness, behaviour, culture and systems that span from the internal world views we hold through to the collective exterior realities that we share. For some commentators such as Otto Scharmer (2008), this is a leadership challenge, to others such as Alistair McIntosh (2008) it is a community and a spiritual challenge. However we define it, it is a pressing need which people are both recognizing and responding to. The Incredible Edible initiative is but one example of this great work that is starting to happen across the planet.

We seem to have come to a point in time, which coincidentally connects with an optimal moment in the industrialisation of our land, where it is believed that a certain type of management and power over that land and lifestyle can result in the draw down of all useful resources without penalty. In addition, this view has permeated all aspects of our collective psyche and persists now across most of the habits of mind related to human behaviour. We have come to a place where it seems that progress is measured only through clarity of direction, hierarchy of management, and the exercise of power over others. In so doing, we have accustomed ourselves to a view that non-conformity, a breakout from the established way of doing things, is somehow deviant and must be eradicated as it represents a form of failure to comply that challenges our shared sense of what is right.

Put another way our world reserves of food are at an all time low, world population is growing and our existing agricultural systems are failing to produce enough food but these systems are completely unsustainable. This is a very serious situation. The guaranteed market and the guaranteed price for farming products provided by the Common Agricultural Policy over the last 40 years have pushed food production away from all but 2.5% of the population. We have utterly lost our ability to grow food, making all of us extremely vulnerable. Do we really sit back and accept that there is enough research going into how to produce enough food without oil and natural gas - a situation we shall soon find ourselves in? Do we really accept that we can always rely on importing food from other countries? I do not think so! I would like to think that Incredible Edible has demonstrated that a wider cultural shift is possible, one that begins to realign the ecosystem of place towards something more connected, challenging the sterility of the public landscape and transforming public values placed on the land. There is a good chance that the industrialisation of food growing will have to give way to more human effort, spread more evenly across society, involving most of us. We will be better placed to harness the power of natural systems to sustain human life as we move towards a new era when we value multi-functional landscapes to meet more of our needs.

If I scatter a small handful of seeds into a readied plot of land, I can guarantee that what will happen will not be in keeping with that which I expected, and it puts me in a spin. Do I ignore the obvious, that my established and cherished world view is somehow incorrect and needs realignment to the new order of things, or do I eliminate the deviant plants to restore my own illusion of order and control? What would be most productive, what would be the easier route to take? To play follow the leader, or to lead together? We tend to default to follow the leader. But the existing way of doing things is clearly no longer working.

We face huge environmental challenges in the next few years and yet our response is business as usual. What would be the consequences of taking the natural path with all its glorious and unimagined implications? My feeling is that we are entering a time when we need to both scatter with deviant abandon, and we need to be able to cherish, nurture and enjoy the new directions such actions can open for us and illuminate the way to a sustainable future.

Paul Clarke
www.sustainableretreat.blogspot.com



References
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