FieldTable

Commissioner  
A time and place to nurture new imaginaries for agroecological food cultures

FieldTable took place on Spier Farm, Lynedoch, South Africa. The thanks-giving ritual brought together students and educators, gardeners and farmers, artisan food producers, organisational leaders and activists, bakers and chefs, scientists and ecologists, journalists and researchers and to explore new agroecological futures for South Africa. 

Together, we ate organic and biodynamic food grown, harvested and prepared from no more than a few miles from the table. The ritual invited time to be-with and listen to the food and land, to share conversation, and to hear the experiences and aspirations of all those breaking bread together. Within the context of cultures for food sovereignty, FieldTable offered a safe space to attend to the inter-twining of social, ecological and food justice through the experiential, the educational and the contemplative.

What I value and treasure is the real deepened transformation, your healing of soul and soil. It emphasises that we are part of one system, but unless we transform our thought processes from deep within, from the soul, it will be superficial.

Daryl Jacobs, Deputy Director at Elsenburg Agricultural Training College

For me, you are re-igniting culture, coming back to what it means to be community along the lines of land and food. Under culture you get ritual and agriculture, you discover what it means to be going back to being human.

Mariota Enthoven, Spier Farm, South Africa

Resources | The Art of Food Rituals as a Practice in Sympoiethics within Julia Wright’s pioneering anthology ‘Subtle Agroecologies: Farming with the Hidden Half of Nature’.