With the global economy shaky and peak oil looming, Robina also worried about another trend in New Zealand's food economy: "Our increasing dependence on food from other parts of the country and other parts of the world."
The Localising Food Project grew from more exciting visions as well. Through her career as a permaculture instructor, teaching people to design their own edible landscapes, Robina had both given and gathered ideas. "Around the country, I kept observing all these remarkable initiatives of local food," she says. Most such projects were happening in isolation, however. Like a bee cross-pollinating among communities, Robina decided to travel New Zealand to celebrate - and propagate - local food production initiatives.
A five-person team - videographers, permaculture teachers and organisers - travelled up and down both islands for six months, from late 2012 into 2013.
In each place, they gave public talks, taught garden workshops, and facilitated day-long local food action planning sessions. Everywhere they went, the team also put their ears to the ground and filmed the most inspiring and innovative local food initiatives they could find. To make the cut, initiatives had to be organic, and had to have a strong community development focus.
The Localising Food team filmed 220 initiatives, from Northland to the deep South.
At Oturu School near Kaitaia, they found school gardens integrated throughout the curriculum. In technology class, students press olive oil and make manuka honey from the school's own beehives. Income from selling the students' products in turn supports the school.
To the south, on Nelson's Stoke Reserve, the team filmed the story of public fruit trees encircling community sports fields, offering abundant and free year-round fruits for the picking. This is an initiative of the forward-thinking Nelson City Council.
By documenting such stories on video, the Localising Food crew hope to be networkers: "People in one area learn about what people in another area are doing, to give them ideas, skills and technologies so they could adopt and adapt those methods to their area, and link up for mutual support," Robina says.
A national team of video editors, web developers and researchers is now working on a shoestring budget to produce a set of documentaries on core themes: school gardens; community gardens; seed saving; fruit and nut trees in public spaces; and direct farmer-to-consumer food distribution schemes.
The first videos will be released this winter. A crowdfunding campaign is currently underway on PledgeMe to fund production of the school gardens video. The rewards for pledging, of course, include seeds and fruit trees.
The team have also created a media-rich interactive website featuring plentiful videos of pioneering kiwi projects, and a discussion forum where people worldwide can network about local food production ideas.
The dream of sparking more local food initiatives started bearing fruit right away. In a well-attended public talk in Wanaka, Robina spoke about Waiheke Island's Great Plum Drive, an annual summer working bee that turns the massive harvests from everyone's gardens into preserves to last the year; anyone from the community can contribute plums, jars or labour and go home with bottled fruit. The Wanaka crowd liked the idea so much that attendees started their own Great Apple Drive.
Along their travels, the Localising Food team received traditional seeds of kumara, potatoes, kaanga ma corn and kamo kamo from Maori communities. They entrusted seeds to unemployed Maori in Whakatane, who got inspired to become guardians of the seed lines.
As Robina notes, it's about more than just food. In a world where many suburbanites don't even know their neighbours, she says: "The regeneration of local food culture is actually about strengthening the communities we live in, around something which is common to all of us."
We all have to eat, so we might as well help each other do it well.
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