"Faith and Food: making the connections"

Workshops:

1. Warren Bardsley: Oiling the wheels of justice: the importance of olives to the Palestinian economy

In this workshop Warren Bardsley will be talking about olives as the most vital commodity of the Palestinian economy; how the olive industry has been politicized by the state of Israel, not only separating farmers from their olive groves, but uprooting trees to make way for the route of the separation barrier; at harvest time, by Israeli settlers violently disrupting the gathering of olives. He will talk about the work of Zaytoun: a fair trade organization (recently awarded the FTF mark) which works with Palestinian farmers in the bottling and marketing of the oil and how we can support Zaytoun in its efforts to break into UK markets.

Warren Bardsley is a retired Methodist Minister living in Lichfield and was involved on the campaign group which secured Fairtrade City status for Lichfield in March last year. He has recently returned from Palestine/Israel where he served for 3 months as an ecumenical accompanier with the World Council of Churches.

2. Liz Dowler and Catherine Graham: 'Filling the hungry with good things and sending the rich away empty': food poverty and food justice

In a world of plenty more and more live on only the basics or go hungry. Food and nutrition are used to justify materialist definitions of poverty, based on the costs of minimal needs for physical survival. Using material from the rich world and the global south, we will try to answer:

• How can we make better sense of the realities and causes of poverty in the food system?
• How can welfare provision or minimum wages meet people's social needs as well as the real costs of food?
• How can we envision different ways of producing and consuming food to reflect God's values of wellbeing and justice?

3. Christopher Jones and Glyn Evans: Farming

Recent research has suggested that the public think that food production is the primary purpose of the farming industry at a time when government grants to the farmers centre around environmental schemes. Climate change, global changes in eating habits and population issues all affect the production and distribution of food. The head of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation recently suggested that food production must double by 2050 in order to address current deficits in production and to prevent another billion people from starving. In this workshop we will be asking:

• What are the issues facing farmers as they seek to produce food?
• Can a Christian understanding of agriculture and the land shape and form production policies and decisions about trade?

Christopher Jones is the coordinator of the Agricultural Christian Fellowship. He is also a founder member of the Agriculture Theology Project, a joint venture between ACF, the Church Mission Society and the John Ray Initiative. He is President of the Farm Crisis Network and also chairs the UK Food Group.

Glyn Evans has been a part time Rural Officer in the Diocese of Oxford for almost 20 years and is currently also the central counties Regional Director for the Farm Crisis Network.

4. Joy Mead: Bread and poetry

An hour is not long enough to make bread so in this workshop we will be looking at the relationship between bread and bread making (almost as symbolic of all food and cooking) and poetry, or language generally. We'll explore seedtime and harvest, making and baking, breaking and sharing and each put together some words, the beginnings of poems, which emerge from the exploration. We'll be looking for words that fully express the kind of imagination we bring to food not for religious language to hide in.

Joy Mead is a poet, writer and member of the Iona Community

5. Elizabeth Perry: Playing fast and loose: incorporating the spirit of Isaiah 58 v6 into church life: incorporating a global justice perspective into 'ordinary' church services and our wider church life

In this practical session we will share ideas and resources on how we can incorporate a global justice perspective into 'ordinary' church services and our wider church life.

Elizabeth Perry works for Christian Aid in Somerset, used to be the World Development Representative for Bath and Wells diocese and compiles 'Development Matters', a resource for preachers linking the Sunday lectionary readings with contemporary global issues; she lives in Somerset with her rural-vicar husband, two children and bouncy bearded collie.

8. Gill Westcott: Food, climate change and justice

In this workshop we will address these questions:

• How does climate change affect food production now, and what can be foreseen in future?
• How can food justice be promoted where there are limits to the growth of food supplies?
• Is there a climate-safe food strategy?
• What choices do we have, as individuals and communities, that bear on the problem?

Gill Westcott studied economics; she has done research on nutrition and agriculture in South Africa and India, been a mum and smallholder's wife for many years, running a market veg stall, and led training for teachers and pupil educator teams on climate change and sustainability.