About the discussion
Wednesday, April 7 • 7 to 9 p.m.
Guests: Satoshi Ikeda, Reid Allaway
Moderator: Marc Nisbet
Venue: Coop La Maison Verte
Is having control over what we eat just a utopia?
How dependent are we on industrial food? Is the food you are eating safe, nutritious and wholesome? Mass-produced food, including some of the larger organic brands, may be more inexpensive and convenient than the locally grown alternatives, but what is their true cost? Are we considering all of the factors that contribute to their production, distribution, and effects on our health?
How can we gain control over what we eat? This conversation will delve into the challenges facing local organic farmers, in particular the experiences of the Tourne-Sol cooperative farm, as a means of exploring some of the alternatives that are available to the dominant industrial food system. How do the different alternatives affect the environment, the health of the farmers who produce the food and those of us who eat it?
Guests:
Reid Allaway is a full-time organic vegetable farmer and strong proponent of sustainable food systems. He is one of five founding members of la ferme coopérative Tourne-Sol in les Cèdres Québec. Tourne-Sol Co-operative farm is a worker's co-operative vegetable farm located an hour from downtown Montreal.
Satoshi Ikeda is a Canada Research Chair in political sociology of global futures and a professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Concordia University. His current research interests include the end of debt-leveraged structure of accumulation and social economy as the sustainable alternatives to neo-liberal globalization.
Moderator: Marc Nisbet coordinates the University of the Streets Café, of the School of Extended Learning’s Institute for Community Development, at Concordia University.