PAM WARHURST: HOW WE CAN EAT OUR LANDSCAPES

The will to live life differently can start in some of the most unusual places. This is
where I come from, Todmorden. It's a market town in the north of England, 15,000
people, between Leeds and Manchester, fairly normal market town. It used to look like
this, and now it's more like this, with fruit and veg and herbs sprouting up all over the
place. We call it propaganda gardening.

Corner row railway, station car park, front of a health center, people's front gardens,
and even in front of the police station. We've got edible canal towpaths, and we've got
sprouting cemeteries. The soil is extremely good.

We've even invented a new form of tourism. It's called vegetable tourism, and believe
it or not, people come from all over the world to poke around in our raised beds, even
when there's not much growing. But it starts a conversation. And, you know, we're not
doing it because we're bored. We're doing it because we want to start a revolution.

We tried to answer this simple question ; Can you find a unifying language that cuts
across age and income and culture that will help people themselves find a new way of
living, see spaces around them differently, think about the resources they use
differently, interact differently? Can we find that language? And then, can we replicate
those actions? And the answer would appear to be yes, and the language would
appear to be food.

So, three and a half years ago, a few of us sat around a kitchen table and we just
invented the whole thing. We came up with a really simple game plan that we put to a
public meeting. We did not consult. We did not write a report. Enough of all that. And
we said to that public meeting in Todmorden, look, let's imagine that our town is
focused around three plates: a community plate, the way we live our everyday lives; a
learning plate, what we teach our kids in school and what new skills we share amongst
ourselves; and business, what we do with the pound in our pocket and which
businesses we choose to support.

Now, let's imagine those plates agitated with community actions around food. If we
start one of those community plates spinning, that's really great, that really starts to
empower people, but if we can then spin that community plate with the learning plate,
and then spin it with the business plate, we've got a real show there, we've got some
action theater. We're starting to build resilience ourselves. We're starting to reinvent
community ourselves, and we've done it all without a flipping strategy document.

And here's the thing as well. We've not asked anybody's permission to do this, we're
just doing it. And we are certainly not waiting for that check to drop through the
letterbox before we start, and most importantly of all, we are not daunted by the
sophisticated arguments that say, "These small actions are meaningless in the face of
tomorrow's problems," because I have seen the power of small actions, and it is
awesome.

So, back to the public meeting. We put that proposition to the meeting, two seconds,
and then the room exploded. I have never, ever experienced anything like that in my
life. And it's been the same in every single room, in every town that we've ever told
our story. People are ready and respond to the story of food. They want positive
actions they can engage in, and in their bones, they know it's time to take personal
responsibility and invest in more kindness to each other and to the environment.

And since we had that meeting three and a half years ago, it's been a heck of a roller
coaster. We started with a seed swap, really simple stuff, and then we took an area of
land, a strip on the side of our main road, which was a dog toilet, basically, and we
turned it into a really lovely herb garden. We took the corner of the car park in the
station that you saw, and we made vegetable beds for everybody to share and pick
from themselves. We went to the doctors. We've just had a 6-million-pound health
center built in Todmorden, and for some reason that I cannot comprehend, it has been
surrounded by prickly plants. So we went to the doctors, said, "Would you mind us
taking them up?" They said, "Absolutely fine, provided you get planning permission
and you do it in Latin and you do it in triplicate," so we did, and now there are fruit
trees and bushes and herbs and vegetables around that doctor's surgery. And there's
been lots of other examples, like the corn that was in front of the police station, and
the old people's home that we've planted it with food that they can pick and grow.

But it isn't just about growing, because we all are part of this jigsaw. It's about taking
those artistic people in your community and doing some fabulous designs in those
raised beds to explain to people what's growing there, because there's so many people
that don't really recognize a vegetable unless it's in a bit of plastic with a bit of an
instruction packet on the top. So we have some people who designed these things, "If
it looks like this, please don't pick it, but if it looks like this, help yourself." This is about
sharing and investing in kindness.

And for those people that don't want to do either of those things, maybe they can
cook, so we pick them seasonally and then we go on the street, or in the pub, or in the
church, or wherever people are living their lives. This is about us going to the people
and saying, "We are all part of the local food jigsaw, we are all part of a solution."

And then, because we know we've got vegetable tourists and we love them to bits and
they're absolutely fantastic, we thought, what could we do to give them an even better
experience? So we invented, without asking, of course, the Incredible Edible Green
Route. And this is a route of exhibition gardens, and edible towpaths, and bee-friendly
sites, and the story of pollinators, and it's a route that we designed that takes people
through the whole of our town, past our cafes and our small shops, through our
market, not just to and fro from the supermarket, and we're hoping that, in changing
people's footfall around our town, we're also changing their behavior.

And then there's the second plate, the learning plate. Well, we're in partnership with a
high school. We've created a company. We are designing and building an aquaponics
unit in some land that was spare at the back of the high school, like you do, and now
we're going to be growing fish and vegetables in an orchard with bees, and the kids are
helping us build that, and the kids are on the board, and because the community was
really keen on working with the high school, the high school is now teaching
agriculture, and because it's teaching agriculture, we started to think, how could we
then get those kids that never had a qualification before in their lives but are really
excited about growing, how can we give them some more experience?

So we got some land that was donated by a local garden center. It was really quite
muddy, but in a truly incredible way, totally voluntary-led, we have turned that into a
market garden training center, and that is polytunnels and raised beds and all the
things you need to get the soil under your fingers and think maybe there's a job in this
for me in the future. And because we were doing that, some local academics said, "You
know, we could help design a commercial horticulture course for you. There's not one
that we know of." So they're doing that, and we're going to launch it later this year,
and it's all an experiment, and it's all voluntary.

And then there's the third plate, because if you walk through an edible landscape, and
if you're learning new skills, and if you start to get interested in what's growing
seasonally, you might just want to spend more of your own money in support of local
producers, not just veg, but meat and cheese and beer and whatever else it might be.

But then, we're just a community group, you know. We're just all volunteers. What
could we actually do? So we did some really simple things. We fundraised, we got
some blackboards, we put "Incredible Edible" on the top, we gave it every market
trader that was selling locally, and they scribbled on what they were selling in any one
week. Really popular. People congregated around it. Sales were up.

And then, we had a chat with the farmers, and we said, "We're really serious about
this," but they didn't actually believe us, so we thought, okay, what should we do? I
know. If we can create a campaign around one product and show them there is local
loyalty to that product, maybe they'll change their mind and see we're serious.

So we launched a campaign, because it just amuses me, called Every Egg Matters. And
what we did was we put people on our egg map. It's a stylized map of Togmorden.
Anybody that's selling their excess eggs at the garden gate, perfectly legally, to their
neighbors, we've stuck on there. We started with four, and we've now got 64 on, and
the result of that was that people were then going into shops asking for a local
Todmorden egg, and the result of that was, some farmers upped the amount of flocks
they got of free range birds, and then they went on to meat birds, and although these
are really, really small steps, that increasing local economic confidence is starting to
play out in a number of ways, and we now have farmers doing cheese and they've
upped their flocks and rare breed pigs, they're doing pasties and pies and things that
they would have never done before. We've got increasing market stalls selling local
food, and in a survey that local students did for us, 49 percent of all food traders in
that town said that their bottom line had increased because of what we were actually
doing. And we're just volunteers and it's only an experiment.

Now, none of this is rocket science. It certainly is not clever, and it's not original. But it
is joined up, and it is inclusive. This is not a movement for those people that are going
to sort themselves out anyway. This is a movement for everyone. We have a motto: If
you eat, you're in. Across age, across income, across culture.

It's been really quite a roller coaster experience, but going back to that first question
that we asked, is it replicable? Yeah. It most certainly is replicable.

More than 30 towns in England now are spinning the Incredible Edible plate.
Whichever way they want to do it, of their own volition, they're trying to make their
own lives differently, and worldwide, we've got communities across America and
Japan, it's incredible, isn't it? I mean, America and Japan and New Zealand. People
after the earthquake in New Zealand visited us in order to incorporate some of this
public spiritedness around local growing into the heart of Christchurch.

And none of this takes more money and none of this demands a bureaucracy, but it
does demand that you think things differently and you are prepared to bend budgets
and work programs in order to create that supportive framework that communities
can bounce off. And there's some great ideas already in our patch. Our local authority
has decided to make everywhere Incredible Edible, and in support of that have decided
to do two things.

First, they're going to create an asset register of spare land that they've got, put it in a
food bank so that communities can use that wherever they live, and they're going to
underpin that with a license. And then they've said to every single one of their
workforce, if you can, help those communities grow, and help them to maintain their
spaces.

Suddenly, we're seeing actions on the ground from local government. We're seeing
this mainstreamed. We are responding creatively at last to what Rio demanded of us,
and there's lots more you could do. I mean, just to list a few. One, please stop putting
prickly plants around public buildings. It's a waste of space. Secondly, please create,
please, please create edible landscapes so that our children start to walk past their
food day in, day out, on our high streets, in our parks, wherever that might be. Inspire
local planners to put the food sites at the heart of the town and the city plan, not
relegate them to the edges of the settlements that nobody can see. Encourage all our
schools to take this seriously. This isn't a second class exercise. If we want to inspire
the farmers of tomorrow, then please let us say to every school, create a sense of
purpose around the importance to the environment, local food and soils. Put that at
the heart of your school culture, and you will create a different generation.

There are so many things you can do, but ultimately this is about something really
simple. Through an organic process, through an increasing recognition of the power of
small actions, we are starting, at last, to believe in ourselves again, and to believe in
our capacity, each and every one of us, to build a different and a kinder future, and in
my book, that's incredible. Thank you. Thank you very much.

(VERSION ESPAOL)

La voluntad de vivir la vida diferente puede comenzar en algunos de los lugares ms

inusuales. Aqu es donde yo vengo, Todmorden. Es una ciudad comercial en el norte de
Inglaterra, 15.000 personas, entre Leeds y Manchester, ciudad de mercado bastante
normal. Sola parecerse a esto, y ahora es ms como esto, con frutas y verduras y
hierbas que brotan por todo el lugar. Lo llamamos propaganda de jardinera.

Ferrocarril de esquina, aparcamiento de la estacin, frente a un centro de salud,

jardines delanteros de la gente, e incluso en frente de la estacin de polica. Tenemos
caminos comederos para los caminos, y tenemos cementerios brotando. El suelo es
muy bueno.

Incluso hemos inventado una nueva forma de turismo. Se llama turismo vegetal, y
cranlo o no, la gente viene de todo el mundo a empujar en nuestras camas
levantadas, incluso cuando no hay mucho crecimiento. Pero empieza una
conversacin. Y, ya sabes, no lo estamos haciendo porque estamos aburridos. Lo
hacemos porque queremos iniciar una revolucin.

Tratamos de responder a esta simple pregunta; Puede encontrar un lenguaje

unificador que atraviesa la edad y los ingresos y la cultura que ayudar a las personas a
encontrar una nueva forma de vida, ver los espacios a su alrededor de manera
diferente, pensar en los recursos que utilizan de manera diferente, interactuar de
manera diferente? Podemos encontrar ese lenguaje? Y entonces, podemos replicar
esas acciones? Y la respuesta parecera ser s, y el lenguaje parecera ser comida.

As que, hace tres aos y medio, algunos de nosotros nos sentbamos alrededor de
una mesa de la cocina y acabamos de inventar todo. Hemos creado un plan de juego
realmente simple que ponemos a una reunin pblica. No consultamos. No escribimos
un reporte. Basta de todo eso. Y le dijimos a esa reunin pblica en Todmorden, mira,
imaginemos que nuestra ciudad se centra en torno a tres platos: un plato de la
comunidad, la forma en que vivimos nuestra vida cotidiana; Un plato de aprendizaje, lo
que enseamos a nuestros hijos en la escuela y qu nuevas habilidades compartimos
entre nosotros; Y negocios, qu hacemos con la libra en nuestro bolsillo y qu negocios
elegimos apoyar.

Ahora, imaginemos esas placas agitadas con acciones comunitarias alrededor de la

comida. Si empezamos a girar una de esas placas de la comunidad, eso es realmente
genial, eso realmente empieza a empoderar a la gente, pero si podemos girar esa placa
de la comunidad con la placa de aprendizaje, y luego girarla con la placa de negocios,
tenemos una verdadera Mostrar all, tenemos un teatro de accin. Estamos
empezando a construir la resiliencia nosotros mismos. Estamos empezando a
reinventar la comunidad nosotros mismos, y lo hemos hecho todo sin un documento
de estrategia de voltear.

Y aqu est la cosa tambin. No hemos pedido permiso a nadie para hacer esto, solo lo
estamos haciendo. Y ciertamente no estamos esperando que el cheque caiga a travs
del buzn antes de empezar, y lo ms importante de todo, no estamos intimidados por
los sofisticados argumentos que dicen: "Estas pequeas acciones carecen de sentido
frente a los problemas del maana", porque He visto el poder de pequeas acciones, y
es impresionante.

As que volvamos a la reunin pblica. Pusimos esa proposicin a la reunin, dos

segundos, y luego la sala explot. Nunca he experimentado algo as en mi vida. Y ha
sido lo mismo en cada habitacin, en cada ciudad que hemos contado nuestra historia.
La gente est lista y responde a la historia de los alimentos. Ellos quieren acciones
positivas en las que puedan participar, y en sus huesos, saben que es hora de asumir la
responsabilidad personal e invertir en ms amabilidad entre s y con el medio
ambiente.

Y ya que tuvimos esa reunin hace tres aos y medio, ha sido una mierda de una
montaa rusa. Comenzamos con un intercambio de semillas, cosas muy simples, y
luego tomamos un rea de tierra, una franja en el lado de nuestra carretera principal,
que era un inodoro para perros, bsicamente, y lo convirti en un jardn de hierbas
muy bonito. Cogimos la esquina del aparcamiento en la estacin que viste, y hicimos
camas vegetales para que todos compartieran y escogieran de ellos mismos. Fuimos a
los mdicos. Acabamos de tener un centro de salud de 6 millones de libras construido
en Todmorden, y por alguna razn que no puedo comprender, ha estado rodeado de
plantas espinosas. As que fuimos a los mdicos, dijo: "Te importara tomarlos?" Ellos
dijeron: "Absolutamente bien, siempre que tengas permiso de planificacin y lo hagas
en latn y lo haces en triplicado", as que lo hicimos, y ahora hay rboles frutales y
arbustos y hierbas y verduras alrededor de la ciruga del mdico. Y ha habido muchos
otros ejemplos, como el maz que estaba delante de la estacin de polica, y la casa de
la gente mayor que la hemos plantado con alimentos que pueden recoger y crecer.
Pero no se trata slo de crecer, porque todos somos parte de este rompecabezas. Se
trata de llevar a esas personas artsticas en su comunidad y hacer algunos diseos
fabulosos en esas camas levantadas para explicar a la gente lo que est creciendo all,
porque hay tanta gente que realmente no reconoce un vegetal a menos que est en un
poco de plstico con un poco de Un paquete de instrucciones en la parte superior. As
que tenemos algunas personas que disearon estas cosas, "Si se ve as, por favor, no lo
elija, pero si se ve as, aydate a ti mismo". Se trata de compartir e invertir en la
bondad.

Y para aquellas personas que no quieren hacer ninguna de esas cosas, tal vez puedan
cocinar, as que las recolectamos estacionalmente y luego vamos a la calle, en el pub,
en la iglesia o donde quiera que vivan las personas. vive. Esto es sobre nosotros vamos
a la gente y diciendo: "Todos somos parte del rompecabezas de la comida local, todos
somos parte de una solucin".

Y entonces, porque sabemos que tenemos turistas vegetales y los amamos a pedacitos
y son absolutamente fantsticos, pensamos, qu podramos hacer para darles una
experiencia an mejor? As que inventamos, sin preguntarnos, por supuesto, la
increble ruta verde comestible. Y esta es una ruta de jardines de exhibicin, rutas de
senderos comestibles, y sitios amigables con las abejas, y la historia de los
polinizadores, y es una ruta que diseamos que lleva a la gente por toda nuestra
ciudad, pasando por nuestros cafs y nuestras pequeas tiendas, A travs de nuestro
mercado, no slo de un lado a otro del supermercado, y esperamos que, al cambiar el
paso de la gente por nuestra ciudad, tambin estamos cambiando su comportamiento.

Y luego est el segundo plato, el plato de aprendizaje. Bueno, estamos en sociedad con
una escuela secundaria. Hemos creado una empresa. Estamos diseando y
construyendo una unidad de acuaponica en una tierra que era de repuesto en la parte
de atrs de la escuela secundaria, como usted lo hace, y ahora vamos a ser el cultivo
de pescado y hortalizas en un huerto con abejas, y los nios nos estn ayudando
Construir y que los nios estn en el tablero y porque la comunidad estaba muy
interesada en trabajar con la escuela secundaria, la escuela secundaria ahora est
enseando agricultura, y porque es la enseanza de la agricultura, empezamos a
pensar, cmo podramos obtener esos Nios que nunca tuvieron una calificacin
antes en sus vidas, pero que realmente estn entusiasmados con el crecimiento,
cmo podemos darles algo ms de experiencia?

As que conseguimos un terreno que fue donado por un centro de jardinera local. En
realidad, era bastante fangoso, pero de una manera realmente increble, totalmente
voluntario-dirigido, hemos convertido eso en un centro de formacin de jardn de
mercado, y que es polytunnels y camas levantadas y todo lo que necesita para obtener
el suelo bajo sus dedos y Creo que hay un trabajo en esto para m en el futuro. Y
porque estbamos haciendo eso, algunos acadmicos locales dijeron: "Sabes,
podramos ayudarte a disear un curso de horticultura comercial para ti, no hay uno
que sepamos". As que lo estn haciendo, y lo lanzaremos ms adelante este ao, y
todo es un experimento, y todo es voluntario.

Y luego est el tercer plato, porque si usted camina a travs de un paisaje comestible, y
si est aprendiendo nuevas habilidades, y si empieza a interesarse por lo que est
creciendo estacionalmente, tal vez desee gastar ms de su propio dinero en apoyo De
los productores locales, no slo de verduras, sino de carne y queso y cerveza y
cualquier otra cosa que pudiera ser.

Pero entonces, somos slo un grupo comunitario, ya sabes. Somos slo voluntarios.
Qu podramos hacer realmente? As que hicimos algunas cosas muy simples. Hemos
recaudado fondos, tenemos algunas pizarras, ponemos "Increble Comestibles" en la
parte superior, le dimos a cada comerciante del mercado que se venda localmente, y
garabateado en lo que estaban vendiendo en una semana cualquiera. Muy popular. La
gente se congreg alrededor de ella. Las ventas subieron.

Y luego, tuvimos una charla con los agricultores, y le dijimos: "Realmente estamos
serios acerca de esto", pero en realidad no nos creyeron, as que pensamos, bien, qu
debemos hacer? Lo s. Si podemos crear una campaa alrededor de un producto y
mostrarles que hay lealtad local a ese producto, tal vez cambien de opinin y veamos
que estamos serios.

As que lanzamos una campaa, porque me divierte, llamada Every Egg Matters. Y lo
que hicimos fue poner gente en nuestro mapa de huevos. Es un mapa estilizado de
Togmorden. Cualquiera que est vendiendo sus excesos de huevos en la puerta del
jardn, perfectamente legalmente, a sus vecinos, nos hemos quedado all.
Comenzamos con cuatro, y ahora tenemos 64, y el resultado de eso fue que la gente
estaba entrando en las tiendas pidiendo un huevo Todmorden local, y el resultado de
eso fue, algunos agricultores aumentaron la cantidad de bandadas que obtuvieron De
aves de piscifactora, y luego pasaron a las aves de carne, y aunque estos son
realmente pasos muy pequeos, que el aumento de la confianza econmica local est
empezando a jugar en una serie de formas, y ahora tenemos a los agricultores que
hacen queso y que " Han aumentado sus rebaos y cerdos de raza rara, estn haciendo
pasties y pasteles y cosas que nunca habran hecho antes. Tenemos cada vez ms
puestos de mercado que venden comida local, y en una encuesta que los estudiantes
locales hicieron por nosotros, el 49 por ciento de todos los comerciantes de alimentos
en esa ciudad dijeron que su lnea de fondo haba aumentado debido a lo que
estbamos haciendo. Y slo somos voluntarios y es slo un experimento.

Ahora, nada de esto es ciencia espacial. Ciertamente no es inteligente, y no es original.

Pero est unido, y es inclusivo. Esto no es un movimiento para esas personas que van a
clasificarse hacia fuera de todos modos. Este es un movimiento para todos. Tenemos
un lema: Si usted come, usted est adentro. A travs de la edad, a travs de la renta, a
travs de la cultura.

Ha sido realmente una experiencia de montaa rusa, pero volviendo a la primera

pregunta que pedimos, es replicable? S. Sin duda, es replicable.

Ms de 30 ciudades en Inglaterra ahora estn girando la increble placa comestible. De

cualquier manera que quieran hacerlo, por su propia voluntad, estn tratando de
hacer sus propias vidas de manera diferente, y en todo el mundo, tenemos
comunidades en todo Estados Unidos y Japn, es increble, no? Quiero decir, Amrica
y Japn y Nueva Zelanda. La gente despus del terremoto en Nueva Zelandia nos visit
para incorporar parte de este espritu pblico en torno al crecimiento local en el
corazn de Christchurch.

Y nada de esto requiere ms dinero y nada de esto requiere una burocracia, pero s
exige que usted piense las cosas de manera diferente y est preparado para doblar
presupuestos y programas de trabajo para crear ese marco de apoyo que las
comunidades puedan rebotar. Y hay algunas grandes ideas ya en nuestro parche.
Nuestra autoridad local ha decidido hacer en todas partes increble comestible, y en
apoyo de que han decidido hacer dos cosas.

Primero, van a crear un registro de activos de la tierra de repuesto que tienen, ponerlo
en un banco de alimentos para que las comunidades puedan usarlo dondequiera que
vivan, y van a sostener eso con una licencia. Y luego han dicho a cada uno de sus
trabajadores, si es posible, ayudar a esas comunidades a crecer, y ayudarles a
mantener sus espacios.

De repente, estamos viendo acciones en el terreno del gobierno local. Estamos viendo
esto incorporado. Estamos respondiendo creativamente al fin a lo que Rio nos exigi, y
hay mucho ms que usted podra hacer. Quiero decir, slo para enumerar algunos.
Uno, por favor deje de poner plantas espinosas alrededor de edificios pblicos. Es una
prdida de espacio. En segundo lugar, por favor, crear, por favor, por favor, crear
paisajes comestibles para que nuestros nios comienzan a caminar pasado su da de la
comida, da, en nuestras calles altas, en nuestros parques, dondequiera que pueda ser.
Inspirar a los planificadores locales para poner los sitios de alimentos en el corazn de
la ciudad y el plan de la ciudad, no relegar a los bordes de los asentamientos que nadie
puede ver. Anime a todas nuestras escuelas a tomar esto en serio. Este no es un
ejercicio de segunda clase. Si queremos inspirar a los agricultores del maana,
entonces permtanos decir a cada escuela, crear un sentido de propsito en torno a la
importancia para el medio ambiente, los alimentos locales y los suelos. Ponga eso en el
corazn de su cultura escolar, y va a crear una generacin diferente.

Hay tantas cosas que puedes hacer, pero en ltima instancia se trata de algo
realmente simple. A travs de un proceso orgnico, a travs de un creciente
reconocimiento del poder de las pequeas acciones, comenzamos, finalmente, a creer
en nosotros mismos nuevamente, ya creer en nuestra capacidad, cada uno de
nosotros, de construir una vida diferente y ms amable Futuro, y en mi libro, eso es
increble. Gracias. Muchas gracias.