Alara Wholefoods and the Kings Cross Harvest Festival Feast 2014

by Agnes Troszt, Alara Wholefoods

Alara Wholefoods, located in Camley Street, King’s Cross, is more than just a cereal manufacturing company. They are passionate about breakfast, natural food, nourishing gluten free food and last but not least, they care about their local community as well as their environment. Founder, Alex Smith says: “I have always been passionate about sustainability and believe that the food supply is the most important element in our society to become sustainable.” Following his ethos, Alex and people at Alara achieved some remarkable firsts and kept being an exceptional company on the cereal scenery ever since.

Early days and achievements

Alara was established in 1975, after Alex Smith spent a year living in squats without money. When he decided to use money again he found £2 on the street, which he used to establish the foundations of what we know today as Alara Wholefoods. Since then, the company has achieved more than he has ever dreamt of. Alara became the World’s first cereal company to be third party organic certified by the Soil Association, also it was the first company, which was registered with the Coeliac Society and was pioneer using renewable energy sources & green practices, which led to become a zero-waste food manufacturer in 2008.

Ambitious mission

With such exceptional firsts in many fields, their mission statement, to be the most sustainable food manufacturer on Earth, came with no surprise. In order to achieve this noble mission, the company measures their activities within three areas, namely financial (cash on delivery service to their customers), environmental and social.

A hidden, urban garden

Keeping the environment in mind

Manufacturing their products without any additional waste is just one within their green activities palette. Their factory also runs on solar panel and they are waiting for the arrival of a new anaerobic digester, which will supply the factory with gas and compost. To balance and nurture their relationship with Nature and to set an example that you can grow food anywhere, they have created a beautiful, permaculture garden by removing over 50 tonnes of rubbish and planted fruit trees, berries and flowers. This hidden garden made use of otherwise unused piece of land, helps to reduce the effects of global warming and educate young people about where their food is coming from.

Socialize and localize

Socialize and localize

Beside being active participant of the community, their social mission also involves hosting parties twice a year, where they can meet with their business partners, nurture local relationships, show their way of working towards a sustainable future and of course, commit some mischievements throughout the evening. Throughout the last couple of years, these parties became a must and well-awaited events among Alara fans and local residents.

And what other place would be best for their bespoke annual parties, in order to achieve their social mission, if not their thriving, green garden?

Bespoke Alara Parties

Every February, when their first party takes place, they wassail in the garden hidden behind their factory, to secure harvest will be rich and the plants wake up from their winter sleep and wait for spring. To see how successful their wassailing had been at the end of cold winter months, their annual Harvest Festival Feast takes place in September.

Harvest Festival Feast 2014

This year it was the perfect occasion to close Organic September and celebrate organic, local food and produce with Urban Food Fortnight, Urban Orchard Project, Soil Association and Wholefoods Action.

Preparing apples from the orchard

The event has started with warm, spicy welcome drinks in the decorated gardens, where benches, tables and twinkling lights gave a magical atmosphere right at the start. Later on Strayhorn, a classic blues band, took over the stage and entertained the crowd, whilst chefs were busy grilling delicious meat burgers, Dee’s bespoke vegetarian patties and vegan sausages, which were accompanied by huge, organic wholemeal buns from the Flour Power City Bakery and many superfood-infused salads and greens. To make sure everyone had their pudding at the end of the event, they served sweet & juicy baked apples, straight from the garden, topped with their deliciously crunchy gluten free granola.

To keep the children occupied Wholefoods Action, a fresh initiative against genetically modified food, organized potato printing with many shapes and colours.

Soil Association was also present with the aim of educating people about the advantages of organic farming, produce and lifestyle not just on their health, but on the environment as well as on future generations.

Every year, the Urban Orchard Project helps Alara to organize the party by bringing volunteers, their signature spicy cider while welcoming donations for their cause, to create and plant as many fruit trees as possible across the country’s empty green spaces and it wasn’t different either this year. The incoming donations were shared with Camley Street Farm, a food growing start up, which provides green spaces for local residents, who wish to enjoy natural & home grown fruits & vegetables.

Future Plans

Although their last party has just ended, Alara is already planning their next wassailing in February 2015, where everyone who would like to join them is welcome in this tradition and to let their hair down on a casual Friday evening.

Also, you can visit their garden throughout the year, the Alara Garden is registered in many open day events, such as Open Garden Square Days.

If you would like to find out more about Alara, Alex and how all this successful organic cereal business has started, The Guardian was filming throughout their Wassail Party this year and released a short, 3-minute video.

For more information, visit their website www.alara.co.uk or find them on Facebook.com/AlaraCereals. Alternatively you can tweet them and get the latest updates on what are they up to at @AlaraCereals.

Feast for Free

by Charlotte Haworth

As the nights begin to exhibit a touch of biting chill and the skies to start dimming greyly, it becomes clear that autumn is approaching fast. The turning of the seasons is traditionally a time of celebrations: of the abundance of nature as we revel in the gifts of the harvest of our crops, and of the fruit and nut trees and hedgerow berries, not to mention myriad edible fungi (1), which are so prolific at this time.

With the growth of the global food system into the vast proliferation of networks which it is today, these traditional celebrations have become less important. Why would the cheery red glint of the apples ripening on the trees have any significance, when an apple being flown thousands of miles across the globe to be picked by you in the fluorescent orchard of your local supermarket has become a routine occurrence? And with more people living in cities, usually with less access to land, than ever before (2), a celebration of harvest time can also seem a little irrelevant.

Modern Abundance

Having lived in both cities, where it can be easy to ignore the seasons, and in rural locations where nature’s rhythm pulses more noticeably, I understand this incongruence. However, I have also noticed that not only are the abundances of harvest-time and of seasonal wild food very much still available to those who live in cities, but that there is an interesting aspect of our industrialised food systems which has produced another kind of abundance as well: one which is becoming increasingly well-publicised in British media (see for example 3 and 4) but which for many remains a relatively unknown phenomena. This is the huge amount of surplus food which is routinely thrown away along the entire supply chain, from farmers to supermarkets and right through to us as consumers.

Surplus food, just a small selection of the ingredients used to prepare the weekend's feast

No one is quite sure how much as figures on these things do not get published. The Institute of Mechanical Engineers published a report last year estimating that globally, 30 – 50% of all commercial agricultural food (1.2 – 2 billion tonnes of food) (5) is wasted before it even reaches the shops, while in the UK, Love Food Hate Waste estimates that 7 million tonnes of food is thrown away every year by households alone (6).

Statistics such as these can induce quite strong emotions, and it is important that we direct these emotions towards creative solutions if we are to help to change the situation to one which is more energy efficient and beneficial. And why not see this amount of food waste in a positive light? It certainly seems as though those throwing away the food could behave differently, but in order for them to do this, the way in which we relate to food must also change (for more on this see for examples 1, 7). While this is happening, we can utilise surplus food not to fill up bins, but as a glorious opportunity.

A new kind of harvest

There are many groups who are intercepting this perfectly good food from being thrown away, and who are keen to highlight the issues around why businesses deem it necessary to bin edible foods. It is with this in mind that the Brighton-based Food Waste Collective organised the Surplus Harvest Feast, a huge extravaganza of surplus food, cooked up and served for free to the public with great ceremony and celebration during last weekend’s community arts festival, the Lantern Fayre.

Fayre Food

The Great Serving Up

The idea of the event was to raise awareness of the large amount of surplus food which exists in Brighton and Hove alone. As the Feast’s co-ordinator, Debbie Hardy, pointed out, with just a handful of volunteers collecting surplus fruit, vegetables, and dry grains and beans we managed to redirect just under half a tonne of ingredients into around 1200 servings of hot, tasty meals (8).

The day was bright and sunny and the word had clearly got around. As volunteers scurried around inside the tent making last-minute cooking preparations, locating aprons and ladling meals into serving-pots, interested festival-goers began crowding in so thickly that the stewards had to intervene to hold them back. The Great Serving Up was scheduled for 2pm, and at 1.45pm the queue was already stretching out far beyond the food tent’s confines; snaking away across the Level park, and taking up half of the space of the festival. Clearly, the attraction of a free meal was one which was too good to miss.

Sharing Stories

One of my favourite aspects of the Feast is the idea of so many people all eating the same food at the same time. The importance of sharing and appreciating food is something which may get somewhat forgotten in our culture; one reason perhaps why people do not mind throwing it away, because they do not place as much significance on it as they could. In her book Agri-Culture: Reconnecting People, Land and Nature, Jules Pretty suggests that it is this appreciation and gratitude which is needed in order to revive our sense of community and re-think our global food networks towards ones of abundance for everyone (7).

A very simple way to do this is to share a meal with someone; it does not matter who. When we share food we are all connecting to the same primal energy; a fact which we may not consciously notice but which almost invariably affects us both physically and mentally. When we extrapolate this to sharing a meal with hundreds of others, the effects can be quite profound. I certainly felt more of a deep appreciation for the food from the Feast which I ate yesterday knowing how many other happy bellies were being sustained by the exact same fare as mine. The sensation is quite magical.

The effect which the Feast had on each individual who partook of the food served at the Lantern Fayre can probably never be fully known, but it is clear that the reverberations of this action are spreading in many directions. I spoke to a few people briefly about their take on the Feast, with many positive reactions. A large proportion were very keen to get involved with the Food Waste Collective and help with future actions, while some had their own ideas for new creative ways to highlight food surplus and at the same time fulfil the deep human need we have to connect with each other and to the natural world which sustains us. And, perhaps even more importantly, everyone who I spoke to was enjoying the food itself!

People interacting with the information on offer and "some had their own ideas for new creative ways to highlight food surplus."

More Feasting!

It is not only the Food Waste Collective who create such dynamic and interactive events as these. All over the world, groups and individuals are helping to readress the balance of food poverty vs. food waste, not by lamenting the statistics or by condemning producers or consumers, but using much more positive and creative methods. One example is the UK-based organisation This is Rubbish, who create arts installations and plays around the theme of food waste. At the moment they are touring around with their new Scratch Feast play; next showing this weekend in London. For more information, see (9).

If you are keen to read more stories about events such as the Surplus Harvest Feast, you can check out the Abundance Garden blog (10), which features a range of ideas, actions, creations and networks to help us to make positive and holistic changes.

The Surplus Harvest Feast and the Scratch Feast are just two examples of how we can bring to light just how much abundance there is here in the UK, and how, with just a little imagination, we can share this abundance out beautifully and resourcefully. There are many, many other ways in which we can address this. The only limit is our imagination. Ideas, anyone?

References

1. Haworth, Charlotte, 2014. ‘The Importance of Eating Food’. Permaculture News, 26/09/14. http://permaculturenews.org/2014/09/26/importance-eating-food/ - retrieved 06/10/14
2. People and the Planet, 2014. ‘The world comes to town.’ http://www.peopleandtheplanet.com/index.html@lid=26729&section=40&topic=44.html – retrieved 05/10/4
3. Reece, A, 2014. “Supermarkets to publish food waste data”. Resource, 29/01/14. http://resource.co/business/article/supermarkets-publish-food-waste-data – retrieved 23/09/14
4. Sayid, R, 2014. “Seven supermarket chains including Tesco and Asda vow to reveal how much they bin each year”. Daily Mail, 30/01/14. http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/supermarket-waste-seven-chains-including-3092194 – retrieved 23/09/14
5. Institute of Mechanical Engineers, 2013. “Global Food: Waste Not, Want Not.” IMECHE: London. Available as a PDF here: http://www.imeche.org/docs/default-source/reports/Global_Food_Report.pdf
6. Love Food Hate Waste, 2014. ‘UK Food Waste Statistics’. http://england.lovefoodhatewaste.com/node/2472 - retrieved 05/10/4
7. Pretty, Jules, 2002. Agri-Culture: Reconnecting People, Land and Nature. Earthscan: Oxford
8. Interview with Debbie Hardy, 06/10/14.
9. This is Rubbish, 2014. ‘Scratch Feasts this October’. http://www.thisisrubbish.org.uk/theatrical-scratch-feasts-this-october/ - retrieved 06/10/14
10. Abundance Garden, 2014. http://abundancedancegarden.wordpress.com/ - retrieved 07/10/14