Beautiful stories about sustainable cultivation
Resilience Food Stories recently launched its multimedia platform that shares the astonishment and admiration on the developments and possibilities of sustainable agriculture and horticulture. It shows that only sustainable agriculture and horticulture using natural principles can make food production healthier, safer, more productive, and more resilient around the world.
Storytelling
Resilience Food Stories is the brainchild of photographer Ruud Sies and creative producer Hanneke van Hintum. They specialize in long-term photography projects for storytelling purposes and were responsible for the jubilee book of Koppert Biological Systems in 2017. 'During our travels for the jubilee book, we were captivated time and again by the stories of growers and farmers. We had to keep reminding ourselves of our task – taking pictures for the jubilee book. We also thought to ourselves that these stories need to be told. At the moment we are subject to a torrent of negative stories about things going wrong in agriculture and horticulture. However, many fantastic things are currently happening which are the result of great optimism because the companies steadfastly grow in this way,' explains Hanneke. They were introduced to a whole new world. Ruud adds, 'We wondered why people aren't more aware of this. By Dutch standards, Koppert is an iconic company. Why don't we know about this?' This inspired Ruud and Hanneke to bring more attention to all those efforts. After all, those efforts are in everyone's best interests.
Initiators Ruud and Hanneke asked Koppert to enter into a partnership with them. 'Koppert has a functional relationship with its clients: to combat diseases and pests with biological crop protection. However, people care about a mission and ideals. This became clear to Ruud and Hanneke on their journey. They collected many valuable stories. It would have been a great shame to discard those stories and only finish the jubilee book,' clarifies corporate Marketing Director Peter Maes. ‘However, their goal was not to create a new book containing pictures and stories. Instead, they wanted to reach out to as many people as possible through digital means such as a website or a social media platform.’
The platform www.resiliencefoodstories.com consists of pictures, videos, and short interviews. Ruud and Hanneke will continue their journey to sustainable production stories and new stories will be added to the platform continuously. 'We want to inform the wider public of the story of sustainability, meaning working with nature to produce food. Our goal is to inspire amazement about what this involves. This means that we give a platform to farmers and growers who want to make the world a better place for the future.' If you want to be informed about the new stories you can subscribe to the newsletter on www.resiliencefoodstories.com
Webinar Plants for Life, Plants to survive
On 2 March Resilience Food Stories is one of the webinar topics in the webinar series ‘Plants for Life, Plants to survive’ to shine its light on various aspects of plant and human health, and discuss their viewpoints with an online audience of young professionals, scientists, entrepreneurs, activists, creatives, chefs and government reps; in short anyone with a passion for plants and people. If you wish to join this session, please register via this link.