Thought for Food Symposium
The Thought for Food Symposium took place at Potentino in June 2019 in collaboration with the Frontline Club in London.
We won't have a society if we destroy the environment. Margaret Mead
Many individuals are doing what they can. But real success can only come if there is a change in our societies and in our economics and in our politics. David Attenborough
Food is the basis of community and civilisation. Many of the world’s current problems can be ascribed to food systems and agricultural policy: revelations about child slavery in this week's Washington Post are eye-opening.
We will be looking at the issues hidden in every mouthful we eat.
The general public, politicians, and even businesses are becoming more conscious of the damage done to the planet and its myriad causes: exploitation of non-renewable resources, industrial farming, climate change, pollution, and the population itself. Nature is evidently intrinsic to modern human life. For some, the countdown to doomsday has already started. Now, the new ‘frontline’ is all around us – it is our environment.
Internationally renowned journalism pioneer, the Frontline Club, and food and culture hub, Castello di Potentino, are teaming up to highlight these issues and address them through a series of talks: live streaming from medieval castle and farm estate in remote Tuscany to London, and other international locations, transmitting the rural directly into a variety of urban situations, while keeping an increasingly isolationist UK in touch with discussion in the EU. The first symposium will take place 7-11 June 2019.
The collaboration weds Potentino’s food and wine mission to Frontline’s journalistic expertise with the aim of creating a dynamic, constructive debate around what we eat, agriculture, the natural world, and how we receive information about it through the media.
The Programme
Friday 7 June
5pm
Wine Tasting and Introduction to Potentino
6pm
Across the Big Blue Sea
Good Intentions and Hard Lessons in an Italian Refugee Home.
Author Katja Meier in conversation with Karen Robinson, Editor at The Sunday Times
via YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuTpvPwLilE
7pm
A Recent History of Migrants in Italy
Discussion with Wolfgang Achtner, Journalist, documentary filmmaker, photographer, and professor
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kS13Nkvzio
Saturday 8 June
10am
Can humanitarian assistance help mend broken food systems?
Discussion with Frances Kennedy, Communications Officer WFP, on the role of the UN World Food Programme in the face of growing hunger crises.
11am
Slave and Child Labour
Discussion with Terry Collingsworth, Labour and human rights attorney, whose article on Child Slavery in the Chocolate industry has just been published in the Washington Post.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0DRj3ivSFs
12am
The AgroMafia
Discussion with Michele Fino, Associate Professor of European Legal Roots, University of Gastronomic Sciences
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhnmXnKJd34
Lunch
2pm
Documentary screening: The Dark Side of Chocolate
Presentation with Miki Mistrati, award-winning documentarian
3pm
On Institutional initiatives dealing with migration
Discussion with Ben Mason and Francesca Lionetti
Ben Mason, Researcher and project leader at Better Place, leading work on digital innovation around refugees and migration
Francesca Lionetti, Project Manager, Intercultural Cities, Council of Europe
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Zm-qgNRJIU
5pm
Salmon Nation and Ecotrust
A discussion with Ian Gill, Writer, filmmaker, and social entrepreneur
(Live Streaming from Canada)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxWt-UanOPI
6pm
Iran to Italy
Discussion with Kamin Mohammadi, Writer, journalist and broadcaster specialising in Iran
Author of Narrative fare: how food tells the stories of our lives, culture and identity
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irPR0ritaKk
7pm
The Great Debate: What are we really eating?
A discussion of global food policies and how they affect us chaired by John Hooper, Italy Correspondent of The Economist
Also streamed to the Frontline Club
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnB2Gxe3NHc
Sunday 9 June
10am
Documentary screening: Shady Chocolate
Presentation with Miki Mistrati, award-winning documentarian
11am
The Politics of Water
A discussion with Zach White, Consultant - Water Portfolio at Oxford Policy Management
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9awK9-qZ0A
12am
Hunger, the Food System and Climate Change – Insights from Pakistan and India
Discussion with Harry Johnstone, Writer, researcher Libya
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JD3-FrBcHYk
Lunch
2pm
Sustainable innovation
Discussion with Nelson and Margaret Reiyia, Social innovators and conservationists
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuNleWuWz4s
https://www.dropbox.com/s/hd09yowx0co7bul/The%20Nashulai%20Story-for%20printing.pdf?dl=0
3pm
Sustainable Social Innovation on a Large-Scale
Discussion with Ric Young, Social innovator, founder of The Social Project Studio
BOLDNESS Project
4pm
Curing the Limbo – making refugees into equal citizens
Discussion with Amalia Zepou, Athens vice mayor for civil society and innovation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hcl512hEKI
5pm
The New Organic Alto Adige, Mals project
Live Streamed Discussion with Philip Ackerman-Leist Dean, School of the New American Farmstead
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QTTa3mYgsk
6pm
The Dark Side of Cheese
Cheese making demonstration and discussion with Lorenzo Messana & Francesca Ruffaldi, of Caseifico Murceti, Cheese and milk product producers
7pm
Contemporary Restaurant Culture
Discussion with Luca Farinotti
(streaming from Parma)
Author and restaurant manager