During World Food Forum week, I watched the recording of the meeting “Cultivating Care, Creativity and Collective Impact,” hosted by the Conscious Food Alliance. This event was very insightful in terms of thinking through cultural shifts regarding food security and access. Something I noticed was that there were certain “absolutes” guiding the presentation and guiding their work, which were: Mindfulness, Connection to the land, Nature connection, Cultivating joy, Non-violent communication, and Compassion. These were labelled as “Consciousness Practices.” I wonder how they chose these specific guiding principles. I am particularly curious about non-violent communication. Obviously effective non violent communication is better than violent communication, but also I wonder about this in the context of food insecurity. Meaning, if people are starved and there is an intentional famine committed against a group of people, should non-violent communication be one of the guiding principles? For me personally, I wouldn’t blame anybody for stealing food if they need it to survive, despite that not really aligning with the principle. I just think it would be interesting to be in the room where they came up with the principles, to see what they were thinking. Additionally, I would like to know who was in the room, and what countries they represented. Another intriguing concept they shared was “Inner Capacities,” which is “the individual and collective qualities that shape how people perceive, relate, and respond to the world around them.” This is a beneficial way to look at local cultural approaches to food insecurity (like town to town or country to country instead of on a global platform like the WFF). Overall, I think it was a very interesting event and a cultural shift in attitudes towards food insecurity is crucial.
