We need to have a conversation about food

The Canterbury region is crucially lacking a food identity. This is having an effect on our relationship with food in many different aspects of our lives – social, cultural, environmental, economic, spiritual and political. This is an invitation to be part of a conversation that tells a different story.

Food, its place in our lives and our city, has been fairly and squarely in the spotlight in recent weeks. FESTA presented its programme of 50-plus events exploring the connections between food and the city during Labour Weekend, including its headline event FEASTA!, which brought thousands back into the city on a Saturday night. This was quickly followed by another four days of food-focused events hosted by Eat NZ and the Food Resilience Network.

As it has been in years past, FESTA was an amazingly spun web of community-focused individuals, organisations, and collaborations. This held a space for the brand of post-earthquake innovation that we are continually inspired by, whilst creating a weekend for the citizens of Christchurch to reconnect with the history of food and its many roles in our lives. It made our food conversation public for a while.

The challenge in front of us now is how we maintain the energy such events create and keep the conversation going. But what exactly is the conversation? And what are the elements of food produced within Canterbury that are unique to our region? What are the things from our past that could be a unique expression of Canterbury and its food?

This is where the co-creation of a regional food identity and story comes in – and in order for this to be engaging, it needs to be as unique as the land we live upon. This conversation needs to capture the imaginations of people, their relationship to food and to place. What we grow, where we grow it and how we grow should all be informed by the geography, climate and biodiversity of our land. In order to reduce our environmental impact and maximise our own physical, mental and spiritual wellbeing, we should be eating what our climate and land can provide.

The idea of heritage has popped up in many recent conversations. It turns out that when Europeans colonised Aotearoa, they brought with them over 1000 different varieties of fruit trees. We have lost a lot of this biodiversity through engaging with food through an economic lens. For example, the apples in our shops largely come from six different parent varieties.

However, in Canterbury there are people already working on shifting the balance – from the preservation and proliferation of the heritage fruit varieties to a seed exchange that works to save and store the seeds of heritage vegetable plants. Why not wrap in another of the related ideas, one more regionally specific: heritage grains and seeds? When you picture the geography of our region and see the vast expanses of the Canterbury Plains, you start to connect with a landscape that shares the ability to produce grains and seeds with only one other region in New Zealand. At a 100 per cent Canterbury-sourced dinner I hosted recently, we enjoyed both quinoa and amaranth produced near Methven. We are only scratching the surface with this.

Another really compelling idea I would like to share, which could easily embrace heritage and invite a much deeper connection with our food, is embracing mahinga kai (the practice of gathering food and other resources, and the places where these are gathered) as the guiding principle in our relationship to food, land, water and each other. That is recognising the need for stewardship, taking care of our finite resources, environment and people.

This is not a call for more cultural appropriation but about engaging with Nga¯ i Tahu and Nga¯ i Tu¯ a¯ huriri around what mahinga kai would contribute to a multicultural regional story, which responds to our unique land and people while also helping us face the challenges in front of us. This is a conversation that can invite cultural and spiritual richness into our lives, as well as abundance, sovereignty and resilience.

I believe through creating hotspots for concentrated conversations about food we can develop a regional food story connecting us to our food, land and water. And that this story can build community, invite learning, heal and inspire. Most importantly, these conversations can be part of a journey into a shared and nourishing future.

Michael Reynolds is the Community Builder for the Food Resilience Network, which is a charitable, not-forprofit organisation creating and supporting ways for the people of Christchurch to access healthy, locally produced food.