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 AchtnerJournalist, 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 GillWriter, filmmaker, and social entrepreneur

(Live Streaming from Canada)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxWt-UanOPI

 
 
6pm
Iran to Italy
Discussion with Kamin MohammadiWriter, 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 HooperItaly 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 WhiteConsultant - 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 ReiyiaSocial 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 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPzQAK9_99c