Farmer Hot Takes: The Collaborative Urban Resilience Banquet

In this edition of Farmer Hot Takes, learn about the Collaborative Urban Resilience Banquet, founded by interdisciplinary media maker Candace Thompson. Thompson forages edible plants from her neighborhood of Bushwick, tests them for toxicity and then serves them to people at free community banquets. She doesn’t think you are going to be harvesting all your meals from an NYC sidewalk, but she does envision a cleaner future where every sidewalk is “a free community food forest.”

Can you tell me about the Collaborative Urban Resilience Banquet (The C.U.R.B.)? How did it get started and what are some of the major issues you’re exploring?

The C.U.R.B. is an art and activism project that tries to reconnect urbanites with our fragile (and often displaced) food web in the face of climate crisis. I have been learning about/with/from the many non-human beings that manage to survive and thrive in my neighborhood (Bushwick, Brooklyn), which is a half mile from a Superfund site. Most of these plants (and animals and fungi and microbes) have come from all over the globe (just like us!) and have amazing stories that span millenia. They have survived displacement, migrations, and massive planetary shifts, and have somehow carved out a niche for themselves here in 2020 on our gritty streets with very little help from humanity. Some of them have been around for millions of years, whereas humans just got here, and, by the looks of it, are about to wipe ourselves out. I figure if we could stop and learn from them as resilience role models we might learn a thing or two about being better global citizens. Maybe then we'd have a chance at survival too.

What this project actually looks like is part citizen science, part community engagement, and part digital storytelling. I forage edible plants from around my neighborhood (and beyond), test them at Cornell for toxicity, and process them using age-old food prep techniques. If/when they come back clean “enough” to eat (as compared to E.U. standards for heavy metal content in commercially available foods) then I serve them to folks at a series of free community banquets. And I document this whole process and tell the stories of these plants via my instagram handle @the_c_u_r_b.

How could members of the Greene Hill Food Co-op get involved with the project?

You can follow the project on social media, or email me at thecurbbanquet@gmail.com and I'll add you to my (forthcoming) email list. I'll be doing two to three banquets in 2020 in NYC, plus I will be organizing foraging outings from time to time. If someone would like to either attend a banquet or come out in the field with me, they're always welcome!

What role or responsibility can food co-ops play in addressing issues of food justice, food security and equity, especially within the context of the climate crisis?

Food co-ops can play SUCH a massive role. My big goal here is trying to build local, sustainable food webs that are economically beneficial to the communities they serve. I want to be clear: I'm not suggesting we should all be foraging weeds off the city streets for every meal, but I do believe there could be a future where NYC is “clean enough to eat off of,” where every sidewalk is a free community food forest. That's a long term goal, and it would never provide all the food the city needs, but urban agriculture, food co-ops, regional CSAs, (subsidized) farmers markets, better farm bill legislation, equitable buying practices for imported goods … all of these are the puzzle pieces for a just food economy. The system we have right now won't hold and is only beneficial to companies like Bayer and BASF. We need to regain agency about where our food comes from, who we trust to feed us, and at what cost. Co-ops do just that! Plus they build community. And we need community more than ever.

What are some of the major discoveries, realizations or research you've engaged in since launching the project? What's been the most surprising?

So the thing that gets most people's ears perked, is when I tell them that I've also been testing the “domesticated” cousins of some of my foraged goods. I go to my local grocery store and, say, grab a box of cashews or a head of conventionally grown spinach, and then compare those levels to the gingko nuts and the wild spinach from the street. There have been at least four instances where the items from the grocery store had more lead in them than something I pulled off the sidewalk. Now, it's complex. Right now I can only test for heavy metals and there are a whole lot of more complex chemicals that could be on the street (and are definitely in our food chain) that I can't afford to test for: PCBs, PFAs, PAHs, glyphosates, etc. 

So I am not here to say that eating weeds from the street is “cleaner” or “safer” than stuff from the store. I am merely asking us to think about how disassociated we are from the entire food supply chain. It's not only dangerous for our own health, but also the planet's. And it is also incredibly inequitable to the folks across the planet who work for little wages in grueling conditions to bring us our 'affordable' bananas and coffee and corn, etc. It is such an opaque system and I hope to get people thinking and talking about it, and if starting with their own health opens the door for broader conversations about our planetary food web, then great.

What's your take on food access, security and justice in NYC now that you've embarked on this project? What are some local NYC or regional resources that you think Co-op members should know about?

This project has really opened my eyes about how problematic our global food system is, but it's also been so inspiring to learn about all the folks actively working to heal our messy past and plan for our precarious future. Over the past year I have met with urban soil scientists, radical mycologists, aquaponics experts, seaweed farmers, pesticide activists, carbon farmers, herbalists, wildcrafters, foragers, fermentation geeks, community composters, food justice activists and others. I'm really eager to render those folks visible to a wider public and to offer us all ways to get involved with their work. They need our help — it's going to take all of us throwing in to change this system. In 2020 I hope to start interviewing and featuring some of these groups on my Instagram, so stay tuned!

Candace Thompson is a [human] performer and interdisciplinary media maker fascinated with the feedback loops generated by place, culture, identity, climate, economics, and daily interpersonal interaction. She makes video, audio, web projects, and ritualistic installations —both IRL and online — that examine and challenge the truths we purportedly hold to be self-evident. Perhaps they aren’t so self-evident after all. She is a current thesis candidate in the Integrated Media Art Program at Hunter College. Her work has been shown at various film festivals across the United States. Past residencies include Art Farm, Marquette, NE, Lademoen Kunstnerverkdsteder, Trondheim, Norway. To learn more visit: http://kandeetee.net/