Carolyn Steel (London, 1959) is a renowned architect, researcher and writer specializing in urban food, but she is also a happy activist who grows tomatoes and cucumbers on her roof. She now lives in Marylebone, on the top floor of an old Georgian mansion very much like the house where she learned the importance of food from her parents.

The pleasures of gastronomy, however, she discovered at the Hotel Miramar, an elegant establishment run by her grandparents in Bournemouth that had fantastic cuisine based on the best British produce with the occasional French touch. The dishes she tasted at the Miramar during her childhood holidays are seared into her memory and she can still recite the breakfast menu from cover to cover.

Capitán Swing Books has just published the Spanish translation of her first book, "Hungry City", an exciting essay on the odyssey of feeding large cities sustainably.

 

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The index of chapters in your book "Hungry City" follows the journey that food takes from its cultivation, transport, purchase, cooking, eating and waste. Which of these aspects has the greatest impact on the planet? Which stage should we tackle most urgently?

In our relationship with food, farmers are obviously vital: if there are no farmers, we cannot eat. But it's no use having tons of organic farmers if no one knows how to cook and the only thing everyone wants to eat is ultra-processed produce. So farming is a fundamental part of sustainable food systems, but the key lies with the people who cook: cooks need to really value food, know where food comes from and care about improving their food culture. And, to achieve this, it is necessary to change the perception of food held by public opinion. In this sense, celebrity chefs can be hugely influential, as they can change the conversation and help us value food more.

 

How do you value the new strategies of the European Union to address this problem? Do you think that the measures promoted by the documents "From Farm to Fork" or "Biodiversity 2030" are sufficient to guarantee not only food security but also food sovereignty?

I will answer you with a single very unpolitical word: No. The reason I'm telling you that it's not because these measures are being implemented from the wrong place: they're dressings that are applied thinking about a conception of the good life that comes from the 20th century. So it is interesting and significant that politicians have become aware of the negative effects of industrial food and the miles that food travels before reaching the plates, but food is just a huge canary in the mine. To truly transform food systems, we must imagine what the good life is in the 21st century. Driving a lot, flying a lot, and consuming a lot may have their advantages, but I honestly believe that we can live very well doing things that are not only far less harmful to the planet and far more egalitarian, but also better for us. If I had a political position, I wouldn't tell citizens things like "Don't eat so much meat, it's not good for the planet". My speech would rather be the following: "I'm making a beautiful garden 50 meters from your house. Would you like to come pick apples from the trees? And help cultivate them?". That is, instead of talking about all the things that cannot be done, I would leave behind the old Western industrialized capitalist view of the good life and talk about a totally different political view.

 

«Food is just a huge canary in the mine. To truly transform food systems, we must imagine what the good life is in the 21st century» Carolyn Steel

 

Can you describe this vision for us? What is your idea of a good life?

For me, the good life is one in which we all have much more power to act locally, we have many more natural spaces next to our homes, we enjoy better public transport systems and we form a humanized society where people work fewer hours in more significant activities. And, to be able to lead this life, two measures are key: a tax reform and an agrarian reform. It is good for governments to support organic and regenerative production methods, and local and seasonal foods. But if the people they govern want to eat something completely different, or if they don't earn enough to be able to pay for the food that is produced on the territory, food policies are not enough: any change in the food system must be accompanied by changes in the system as a whole.

 

«Any change in the food system must be accompanied by changes in the system as a whole» Carolyn Steel

 

In the book "Hungry City" you make it very clear that the global food system is, at present, "a social, economic and environmental catastrophe". What role should cities play in all this? Can the development of urban and peri-urban agriculture help mitigate the environmental impact of producing food thousands of kilometres from where consumers live?

I think cities are the ideal political entities to manage food systems, because scale is good, and scale is an important aspect that is not talked about much, but also because people identify with cities where they live, and food has a lot to do with identity. But the fact is that, in addition, cities are the biggest consumers of food! Historically, cities have always been very concerned about controlling their food systems and have tried to stop the degradation of peripheral agricultural areas to avoid political instability. Unfortunately, over the past two hundred years, cities have lost the ability to feed themselves. So, yes, I think the city is the ideal scale for managing food systems, but only if other circumstances are present.

 

«Cities are the ideal political entities to manage food systems» Carolyn Steel

 

What would these circumstances be? What other elements should cities looking to improve their food systems consider?

What a city can do is very limited by what national governments allow it to do; that is, it depends on the real power that the city has. For example, in Britain, it used to be that councils used to have a certain amount of farmland that was available for new farmers to rent, but now that's almost gone and it's a shame, because councils should be able to facilitate access to land. But things like setting a fairer playing field for locally produced organic food must be regulated by governments. If we want this type of food to be able to compete in price with industrial food, governments must make tax reforms or implement measures so that people can pay more for higher-quality products. And then you have to consider climate change, deforestation, soil erosion and the rest of the problems currently affecting food systems. Cities can control land uses and food served in schools, prisons, hospitals and other public facilities. Cities can design an urban landscape that includes more community gardens and host more farmers' markets. Cities can organize food festivals and invite chefs to teach how to value certain foods more. But there are many elements that need to be addressed at the national and international level: councils cannot do everything.

 

«Municipalities should be able to facilitate access to land» Carolyn Steel

 

How would you rate the current state of the food system in the city of Barcelona?

Barcelona seems to me an interesting case. As I understand it, a significant portion of the food consumed in the city comes from its metropolitan area, above most European cities. And that's because you still have a very good food culture: a lot of people in Barcelona still know when it's artichoke season, for example, and get excited at the prospect of eating them when they're in season, something that in the UK we lose with the Industrial Revolution. But it also depends on your land use planning and the degree to which the city cares about producing food on its periphery. I still remember the day Oriol Estela, coordinator of Barcelona's Metropolitan Strategic Plan, took me to visit the Baix Llobregat Agrarian Park: I loved it! So, in Barcelona, you already have many things that in London we would cut off an arm to get them. You have a population that values local food, knows local food and knows how to cook it from scratch. Recently, the city council has made a considerable investment in its municipal markets. The next step would be to further protect the local agricultural area, promote local production and get citizens to value it.

 

What role should small towns play in the transition to more sustainable food systems? Should they adopt a more urban lifestyle or, conversely, should governments bet on a rural renaissance?

As the political animals that we are, we need to have access to both nature and society, and historically this has been very difficult because you either lived in the countryside, and then you had more nature than you might want, but you didn't have news; or you lived in the city, and then you knew all the gossip, but you had no nature. However, things have changed now. During the confinements caused by the pandemic, we have discovered that, with a good internet connection, we can live in the middle of nowhere and continue to maintain a job in the city; this discovery is mind-blowing, because it could help repopulate many small towns and even spur the revival of abandoned villages. In fact, right now in the UK, there is a stampede of people moving to the countryside: for the first time in history, there are more Londoners who want to leave London than people who want to live there. And in China, President Xi Jinping has announced that rural revitalization is now one of his key policies. Ironically, after literally saying until about ten years ago that anyone who lived in a town was an idiot, they are now realizing the need to balance town and country. And that's why it's pushing a lot of really interesting initiatives to get people back there: the Chinese government is paying people who migrated to the city to settle in the countryside and start businesses there.

 

«Like the political animals we are, we need to have access to both nature and society» Carolyn Steel

 

How do you imagine the ideal relationship between rural towns and the cities they feed? How do we overcome the famous urban-rural dichotomy?

What we need is to rebalance our relationship with nature and our relationship with people, and we can do this through food. Basically, we must learn to create landscapes where all beings, human or not, can grow, and we must think about the design of these landscapes at different scales. I'm working on this right now, but for example, it would be great if every house could have a balcony, a garden or some space where you can enjoy nature and, ideally, grow some fruit or vegetables. In my opinion, growing food is the most profound way we humans have to get in touch with nature: as you eat nature you have grown yourself, the relationship could not be more direct. And, on a larger scale, there is a long line of utopian thinkers who have addressed the relationship between city and countryside. The founder of the Garden City movement, Ebenezer Howard, is the most explicit of all and proposed the creation of small, dense population centres surrounded by countryside, a vision involving progressive land reform.

 

«We must learn to create landscapes where all beings, human or not, can grow, and we must think about the design of these landscapes at different scales» Carolyn Steel

 

What equipment and resources should small towns have to ensure that old residents stay and newcomers do not leave?

Before I try to answer your question, I'd like to clarify one very important detail: city people doing city jobs but living in a rehabilitated farmhouse is not my ideal of rural repopulation - that's just rich people enjoying the best of two worlds The really interesting thing is that this return to the countryside is combined with a real rural reform, that is, with the implementation of a completely different food system that is based on high-quality local food and where people who end up of moving from the city to the countryside have some kind of emotional implication. From my point of view, this neo-rural movement is only interesting if it stimulates local agri-food production, and in fact I worry that it will have the opposite effect; that is, a stockbroker who has moved to live in a nice rural area starts complaining because he doesn't like the smell coming from the pig farm next door and gets it shut down. So I think it is essential that governments make it very clear that the countryside is a place to produce food and preserve nature. Having said that, you asked me what is needed in rural areas... Well, obviously infrastructure, water, energy, internet and good public transport connections are needed. But the municipalities also need power and, in fact, I am very interested in the devolution of powers to regional governments. And, of course, what the countryside needs most is agrarian reform. People will not be able to enjoy nature until governments address the fact that most of the land is owned by large landowners.

 

«I think it is essential that governments make it very clear that the countryside is a place to produce food and preserve nature» Carolyn Steel

 

Can a food system based on sales in supermarkets be described as "sustainable"?

It is clear that supermarkets can be sustainable! But only if they behave in a totally different way to the current one. And there is nothing to stop them from doing so... The thing is that, right now, the only thing that motivates large supermarkets is profit, and to be sustainable, supermarkets should adopt a completely different economic model that is not focused on reducing food prices as much as possible, but is dedicated to taking care of health and being socially responsible.

 

What role should consumers play in facilitating the transition to more sustainable food systems?

My favourite economist, EF Schumacher, said that the person who consumes and the person who produces are the same person. So the question is not so much where we want to shop but how we want to live: the question we have to ask ourselves is what kind of shops support our vision of a good life. I personally prefer to buy my food from someone I know and can build a relationship with, and I don't like doing it in supermarkets where now there aren't even people at the till to say hello to. The market used to be the core of society, and food was the element that united people. But now, for some strange reason, we buy our food in places where we have no human interaction. And that, to me, is madness.

 

The implications of farming with nature, rather than against nature, are profound and have serious implications for what we should eat, but also what we shouldn't eat. What foods do you think we should leave off our plates?

There are two types of foods we should avoid and both are really important: industrially produced meat and ultra-processed foods. About meat, I would like to say that I think vegans are absolutely right when they argue that we should stop eating processed meat. But they usually don't distinguish between industrial meat and regeneratively produced meat, which can be an incredibly valuable part of our food system, especially in places like the Highlands of Scotland, where there are basically hundreds and hundreds of square kilometres of magnificent grassland where it would be very difficult to grow a vegetable garden. So, when looking at a landscape, we should ask ourselves the same question that the botanist Albert Howard once asked himself: "What would nature grow here?". I think we should have food production systems that mimic nature as best as possible. On this subject, I always like to quote Simon Fairlie, an English farmer who wrote a book called "Meat: A Benign Extravagance" where he says that the meat we should eat is what we can produce from an agricultural program based on plant cultivation. And I think he's right, because that's exactly what nature does: nature mainly grows plants, and animals come and coexist with plants while enriching the ecosystem. And going back to your question, the second group of foods to avoid is the ultra-processed. The latest research on the microbiome has allowed us to understand that soil health and human health are directly related, so the idea that you can dump chemicals on the ground, subdue nature, eat highly processed foods and be healthy is not true. To be healthy and take care of the health of the planet, we must eat less meat, yes, but we must also eat a much richer and more varied diet.

 

What role does knowing how to cook play in the food system? Do you think teaching children how to cook healthy, tasty and sustainable food should be a compulsory subject in schools?

Of course! As I said before, cooks are the most important people in the food system, so knowing how to cook is essential. When you know how to cook food, it changes your whole relationship with food. In fact, I honestly believe that knowing how to cook is the greatest freedom there is. I would even dare to say that there is no freedom without knowing how to cook. What you eat is what you are: we are literally made of the atoms and microbes we have ingested throughout our lives. So, knowing how to cook gives us enormous power over our health and well-being. If you know how to cook, you can always eat well: you can walk into any store, even those horrible stores that sell nothing but soda and bags of potato chips, and you'll find something healthy that you can make yourself. With some eggs and a few vegetables, you can cook yourself a delicious and nutritious dish for very little money. And as far as children and schools are concerned, my vision would be for classrooms to be literally kitchens, because there is nothing important that cannot be taught in a kitchen: geography, chemistry, physics, literature, economics, sociology, history, biology, language, etc. If we made the teaching of culinary skills compulsory in the school system and made it the centre of education, things would really change.

 

«I honestly believe that knowing how to cook is the greatest freedom there is. I would even dare to say that there is no freedom without knowing how to cook» Carolyn Steel

 

How can we value food more and stop wasting so much food?

The two things are directly related, because if you value something, you don't waste it. So when we become more aware of food and start caring about where it comes from, we won't waste it. In this sense, it is important to realize that we only value what we love: we value what really matters to us. And since the foods we eat are living things that we harvest or kill in order to live, if we don't value food, we're not valuing life: it's that simple! So I believe that if we change our mindset and understand that food is not only the most important element in our lives, but also a great bringer of joy and the greatest symbol of love, then we will appreciate its value and we will stop wasting it.

 

I would like to end our conversation by asking you about the last chapter of "Hungry City", entitled "Sitopia". A very curious word that also gives the title to the new book you just published in English and to the community urban farm that is not yet in production... What is a sitopia and how does it differ from utopia?

I had been working on the book for six years when I thought I had to find a word to describe the force with which food shapes our world. So I was researching the utopian movement to get to know their idea of the good life, and I realized that their forerunners talked endlessly about food but never made it the centre of the conversation: they were always arguing about the ideal size of the city, its relationship with the countryside and the importance of community spaces, but they took food for granted. Also, I realized that "utopia" could mean "good place" or "no place" and I was very depressed when I understood the implication of this etymology: the fact that it is impossible to live in this perfect world. That's when I got in touch with some friends of mine who are Greek academics and asked them what word a Greek would use to name a 'place to eat'. They answered that the main Greek word for food is "sitos", which means bread, and "topos", which means place. And so the word "Sitopia" emerged, a word I use to designate the reality in which we already live, because, even if we don't realize it, we already live in a world shaped by food. The problem is that we live in a bad sitopia, because we don't value food as we should. But if we value food more, we will live in a wonderful sitopia. A sitopia that, all told, will look a lot like utopia. And about the Sitopia Farm, I have to be very honest and tell you that it is not my project: it is a project founded by Chloë Dunnett, who wants to create a new community urban farm in Greenwich. But she asked me if she could name her farm 'Sitopia' because she had heard me speak and could relate to what I was saying, and of course, I said yes and now I'm on the board of advisors

 

«If we value food more, we will live in a wonderful sitopia. A sitopia that, all told, will look a lot like utopia» Carolyn Steel

 

If you look at the world right now, do you see any hotspots of sitopia?

Of course! I could point to parts of Barcelona that for me are already the ideal sitopia, because people value food, know how to cook it, share it, appreciate local products and value the work of the people who produce it. In fact, Barcelona is a city very close to my sitopia and that's why I love visiting it.

 

— Lola Mayenco —