It’s been an incredible few days for the whole of the Gaia team and curator Cheryl Newman as we have seen three years of hard work and commitment come to fruition on the walls of the Bargehouse on the Southbank, London. We Feed the World is a photographic exhibition featuring over 300 images of the smallholder farmers and fisherfolk who really feed the world.
Open to the public until Sunday 21st October we urge you to head on down and take a look. And if we can’t convince you, take a sneak peek of some of the stories in the press and we hope to see you there. All information and a full ten day events programme available at www.wefeedtheworld.org
The Independent meets the Australian farmer who created the pasture cropping movement
Colin Seis’s farm in New South Wales was all but destroyed 25 years ago, in a devastating bushfire that spread across 2,000 acres of his land. It took with it most of his flock of sheep, his home and almost his life. The disaster left Colin with no money to buy the fertilisers which his family farm had depended upon and he was forced to rethink his approach to farming.
Read the full article in the Independent, 13 October 2018
Nat Geo: This is Why We Need Small Farms
During the 1980s, supermarkets stopped purchasing peaches from Mas Masumoto’s 80-acre organic fruit farm in Fresno, California. His heirloom peaches were deemed “too small,” they said.
He considered ripping out the trees to replant them with more commercially accepted varieties. In “Epitaph for a Peach,” an essay published in the Los Angeles Times, he asked why “no one wants a peach variety with a wonderful taste.”
He got an answer. Many of them, in fact—an outpouring that encouraged Masumoto to keep his trees and explore other venues for his peaches. His fruit went on to become a hit at local farmers markets and restaurants. And his perseverance has stirred his 31-year-old daughter to work alongside her parents and grandparents to continue the family tradition.
Read the Full Article in National Geographic, 12 October 2018
The British Journal of Photography meets the team behind We Feed the World
Shooting small-scale farms around the world, 50 photographers make the case for sustainable agriculture, in a show opening in London this week
“It all came together very organically,” says Cheryl Newman, appropriately enough for a project about small-scale, low-impact farming. Initially signed up to work on We Feed The World for 12 months, she’s ended up spending three years on the project, commissioning 50 world-class photographers to shoot agriculture around the globe, including renowned image-makers such as Stefan Ruiz, Susan Meiselas, and Graciela Iturbide.
The aim of the project is simple – to shift the public perception of small-scale farming, which is often considered synonymous with subsistence farming but which in fact produces around 70% of the world’s food, according to a report by the United Nations.
“You often hear people say ‘We need an industrial food system to feed the growing global population’,” says Francesca Price, the author, journalist, and broadcaster who came up with the idea for the project. “It’s not true – it’s just an argument pedalled by large corporations who have an interest, but it’s come to the point that people believe it.
“I started to wonder, how can we get across the key statistics to a mass audience and get the mainstream media to pay attention? How do we forge a new narrative about our food systems?
Read the full article on the British Journal of Photography, 10 October 2018
The Guardian follows five We feed the World photographers
Photographers travel to Zimbabwe, Colombia, UK, Peru and Indonesia to capture the challenges facing small-scale farmers, and their pioneering solutions for a farming system that does not cost the planet.
Featured in The Guardian, 9 October 2018.
More We Feed the World news can be found here.