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Theme: 9. Foodscapes: Cultivation, Livelihoods, Gastronomy
Gaik Cheng Khoo
University of Nottingham - Malaysia Campus, Malaysia
Hayu Dyah Patria
Mantasa, Indonesia
Gaik Cheng Khoo
University of Nottingham - Malaysia Campus, Malaysia
Daren Leung
Lingnan University, Hong Kong
Hayu Dyah Patria
Mantasa, Indonesia
The motivating factor of this panel is the concern about the effects of industrialised agriculture in capitalist systems as it reduces biodiversity, causes harm to the environment and people, and in some instances, creates food waste and is not sustainable in the long term. How can we source and grow food more naturally? And how can we recycle food waste back into urban farming? This panel showcases three possibilities: returning to edible wild plants as a food source (Hayu Dyah), producing organic durian (Khoo), and strategizing about giving food waste the possibility of second life as fertilizer (Leung). More closely we ask three questions: 1. How do organic farmers produce durians differently from plantations? 2. Can we turn food waste into fertilizer and what is stopping us from doing so? And 3. How might reviving knowledge about edible wild plants contribute to food and nutrition sovereignty? Such questions have local relevance in Indonesia: The organic practices of durian micro farmers as an alternative to the devastating impact of deforestation to make way for large-scale plantations in Peninsula Malaysia should give pause to Indonesians worried about the further reduction of its tropical forests at a time of climate change. And as Jakarta and large cities expand their populations and urban sprawl, urban farming, recovering and transforming food waste into fertilizer can help address the rising cost of imported fertilizer as well as reduce the waste in landfills.
Taking a more-than-human approach, all three papers deal with questions of sustainability and care, as they raise probable solutions to anthropocenic issues of food waste and social and environmental injustice. Malaysian organic durian farmers’ humble veneration of soil health and decrying the label ‘pest’ to describe animals and insects that want to share in the farm’s bounty, and in Indonesia, indigenous communities’ knowledge of edible plants are based on a deep connection to the soil and land, or Leung’s focus on metabolic interaction and energy exchange between society and nature all suggest that the live-ability of the city, the country, the planet, calls for extending food chains beyond the human.
Presenter: Gaik Cheng Khoo – University of Nottingham - Malaysia Campus
Presenter: Daren Leung – Lingnan University
Presenter: Hayu Dyah Patria – Mantasa