Why Venice?
Venice is, by its nature, morphology and history the ideal place to speak about algae and innovation, as in past centuries this city has been the entry point for so many spices and great innovations. Today it can strive to be forerunner of a new urban food system also based on the spirulina as source of proteins and other important nutrients.

Why the Carnival?
From its origin, the carnival has strong relationships with the food, as recalled by the etymology of the word Carnevale: “Carne Levare” (to remove meat). Spiruline high content of vegetarian proteins as well as precious nutrients all dressed with intense green does not deny Carnival’s history, for it has been characterized since the beginning by extravagance and abundance and provides an extra touch of resilience.

Why the spirulina?

Indeed, Spirulina is a microalgae, a phytoplankton and on of the first life form able to live in the inhospital conditions on Earth, about 3 and half billions years ago.

It belongs to the group of cyanobacteria, precursor of the photosynthesis, the first producers of O2 which allowed life to colonize seas and continents. Today as previously, plankton is having a key role, too little acknowledged, on ecosystems functioning and in particular on the trophic chain.

As we rediscover the value of traditions for our food and the impact of our meals on health, wellness, quality of life, environmental resilience, social cohesion and local development, the fitoplankton spirulina can also play its part also in such a frame …

Indeed to use spirulina to feed people is not a recent invention, at most a rediscovery, as shown by african women collecting it in the area of  lake Chad and preparing small patties to eat with cereal but also the italian spacewoman Samantha Cristoforetti who gave preference to food prepared with high quality ingredients to bring with her on board of the International Space Station. She included the spirulina, rich of vegetal proteins with all essential amino acids, but also vitamins, minerals, etc…

And during the Fresch in festival, the same spirulina is invited as one of the ingredients of some of the sandwiches proposed to the visitors…Produced in a small farm with high quality standards, it gently refreshes our traditionnal recipes with a hint of innovation, whereas the phytotière, specially developed to allow a domestic production of spirulina opens new perspectives on our daily food.

Come and join us on 22, 23 and 25 february in Venice to know more: Facebook Event

Learn more about La Voie Bleue.

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The present globalization movement was encouraged because it allowed to prospect an efficient worldwide based food production system. However, such system, handled today by private operators, is causing increasing problems. On one hand because it is based on intensive methods of production that are harming the environment and endangering subsistence farming. On another hand, because the resulting model of diet, despite it apparently solves starvation, is accentuating nutritional imbalances and food related pathologies among the populations. These and other reasons have been invoked to induce cities to come back to local food sourcing (both urban and peri-urban agriculture), in order to match citizens’ basic food needs and also to re-appropriate urban food logistics management.

To handle such complex issues, however, cities must revise their usual competences, and need for that, to build up a vision in which the food issue shifts from its mere definition to a more systemic understanding. Indeed, food is not only a sum of calories and nutrients necessary to make our body working, but it is embedded in a whole system that influences our quality of life and includes all activities and infrastructures necessary to grow, harvest, process, package, transport, market, consume, and dispose food and all food-related items. This life-cycle thinking approach allows to build a model of food lifespan from origin to plate that makes possible to identify all food-related activities and infrastructures in and out the city and to design an organization chart that connects all actors and stakeholders involved in the food supply chain, giving them a role and a responsibility.

It is very important that urban planners and city managers understand that such a model is not self-standing. This is because “food systems” run within and are strongly influenced by cultural, social, economic and environmental contexts, all relationships that allows to make synergies between food planning policy and other mainstream urban policies about more usual issues such as mobility, education, health, etc.

Planning policy and other mainstream urban policies about more usual issues such as mobility, education, health, etc.
Indeed:

• food consumption is an integral part of all our lives including its history and culture;
• food is affecting our health and wellness, including nutrition, obesity and food safety;
• food environmental impacts are becoming an increasing concern;
  food also requires human resources that provide labor, research and education;
• food is a pillar of the economy, at local and global level.

Read the whole paper

The Declaration for a Food and Agriculture Transition in the Mediterranean was presented within a workshop held on 17th November in the COP22, with its first 50 signatory organisations from 13 different Mediterranean countries.

No doubts subsist that Food and climate issues are inextricably bound up. In this context Mediterranean Food Systems are under the spotlights, not only because Mediterranean diet was inscribed in 2013 on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

If the intangible Cultural heritage celebrates and commemorates “a set of skills, knowledge, rituals, symbols and traditions concerning crops, harvesting, fishing, animal husbandry, conservation, processing, cooking, and particularly the sharing and consumption of food“, the document of MCAF highlights how decades of amnesy is detrimental for the current preparation of future actions to preserve environment, health, jobs, quality of life, culture, for mediterranean populations…

The declaration can be downloaded in:

english version

french version 

spanish version

To endorse the declaration, more information can be asked at the following address secretariat@fundacionacm.org

Climate Chance bridges the appointments of Paris  Cop 21 and Marrakech Cop 22. There is a clear necessity to incitate the civil society to become a protagonist of the discussions around climate issues and to create an alliance between all actors working on sustainable Food Systems. In one hand, food should be a pillar on the climate agenda for multiple reasons. On the other hand the climate emergence could allow the various existing initiatives on sustainable food to converge in a unified message.

If climate change is projected to cause lower yields from major crops, to increase price volatility for agricultural commodites and to reduce food quality, it is clear also that dominant food production systems are one cause of climate change (for instance, the amount of energy necessary to cultivate, process, pack and bring the food to European citizens’ tables accounts for 26% of the EU’s final energy consumption in 2013). Therefore food is at the core of climate issues as part of problematic issues and also as part of fundamental solutions to help humanity to survive such threat.

An holistic approach is necessary to tackle efficiently and sustainably such a complex issue in an action plan that integrates mitigation and adaptation measures to reduce the pace & magnitude of the changes in global climate being caused by human activities and the adverse impacts on human well-being resulting from the changes in climate that do occur.

In the absence of national or international efficient climate policy direction, cities are already at the frontline, directly called up to take practical measures to protect an increasing population from adverse climate impacts. In parallel, the idea that cities can be crucial to foster sustainable food systems is also gradually gaining ground. Through a deep cultural change, Cities Food Policies may turn food into a thread to connect all the main competences of the cities related to economic development, education, health, environment, solidarity, culture and leisure, governance, and give consistency to a synergic osmosis between cities and rural territories. In such context, Eating City platfom promotes pragmatic approach to build a model of food lifespan from origin to plate that makes possible to identify all food-related activities and infrastructures in and out the city to design an organization chart that connects all stakeholders and infrastructures, giving them a role and a responsibility to foster resilient/regenerative food systems.

This was the thematic of the workshop : “The role of collective catering in the paradigm shift in food systems” chaired by Maurizio Mariani at the Climate Chance meeting in September 26th, which gathered Robin Gourlay and Giuseppe Mastruzzo, both members of the Steering Committee, Philippe Hersant, founder of Restaurants sans frontières, Guilhem Soutou, working on the Sustainable food and diets Program of Fondation Nina et Daniel Carasso, Amandine Lebreton from Fondation Nicolas Hulot, Rocio Llamas Vacas from Mensa Civica discussed on the role of Public food Service in the needed change of paradigm. Edith Salminem presented the 4th declaration of Villarceaux in a report prepared after the campus.

From 16 benefits identified by the International Sustainability Unit, the number rises up to 34.  Whatever you prioritize,you’ll find some benefits worth to advocate for, ranging from food security (and food rights), economic development, environment(al goods and services), health, democracy (governance) and culture.

To read the publication : Food in an Urbanized World: The Role of City Region Food Systems in Resilience and Sustainable Development
To read the reinforced argumentation with 34 propositions

Collaborative knowledge and understanding must be used to improve and reinforce such food common sense argument. Only doing this tirelessly we can break through the “Glass Ceiling” and push food issues into the highest arena of discussions, whether during international climate negotiations, or discussions about international trade agreements such as the on-going Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. (TTIP).

And there is little doubt that this list, a toolkit for policy makers, will keep growing as long as people innovate. Building up a dynamic and complex vision in which rural and urban territories, not only cities supported by surrounding regional food system, get more vital and  symbiotic.