Emily King reflects on Te Kōanga (Spring) 2021. During a lockdown and a pandemic, the time to dig takes on a new meaning. Using the example of Kai Waiheke and what’s happening in the Waiheke food system, she demonstrates how local food solutions need community at the heart and that it requires us to all dig a little deeper. This article first published in the Waiheke Weekender.

It’s time to stop the urban sprawl encroaching on our highly productive soils and sustainable food systems in our city-regions. Emily King discusses the statistics from Our Land 2021 and the recent Environment Court case that demonstrate the scale this expansion is having on our growers.

In a time of Covid-19, global lockdowns, restrictions on movements, business closure, and mass death by the pandemic, the food system is at the fore of people’s minds, alongside the health and economic systems around the world. We’ve seen the importance of population health and its role in a stable economy and we’ve seen a global response to a common threat. Covid-19 also illuminates our tenuous connection to our food system and how that system is linked to our health and economic systems.

This week I gave a key note at the Eat New Zealand Food hui, in Auckland. Below follows an outline of that address. I was fortunate to sit alongside four talented panelists who are great examples of what is happening on the ground in Aotearoa: Kelly Francis, the whenua warrior, digging gardens in backyards across the country; Jasmin Jackson, from Kai Rotorua getting good affordable kai into schools across Rotorua through Ka pai Kai; Sue Neureuter, guardian of the Noises islands working tirelessly for conservation in the Hauraki Gulf; and Gretta Carney, of Hapi foods.