Food in the age of unsettlement

Featured in

  • Published 20100302
  • ISBN: 9781921520860
  • Extent: 264 pp
  • Paperback (234 x 153mm)

I HAVE THREE personas: designer-educator, sustainment theorist and forest farmer. The farmer came first. My grandfather was a market gardener who taught me to grow vegetables before I went to school. More than half a century later, I’m still doing it. The garden at our farm on the ranges of southern Queensland supplies the kitchen all year round and produces commercial quantities of sweet potatoes, chillies and wild hibiscus.

The wild hibiscus is a thread connecting much of what I have to say here. It comes from Africa, where it is known as karkade. It is a deep-rooted plant able to survive with little rain. In countries such as Sudan, it’s a staple: the deep magenta calyx, the bit that looks deceptively like a flower, is dried to make a soft drink and tea high in vitamin C; the leaves are used as a salad base; the seeds are ground for flour; the stems are dried and used as kindling. It is sustainability realised.

Already a subscriber? Sign in here

If you are an educator or student wishing to access content for study purposes please contact us at griffithreview@griffith.edu.au

Share article

About the author

Tony Fry

Tony Fry is adjunct professor and convener of the Design Futures Program at the Queensland College of Art, and a director of the sustainability-consultancy...

More from this edition

Beyond the recipe

Essay‘EATING IS NOT merely a biological activity, but a vibrantly cultural activity,' the food anthropologist Sidney Mintz reminds us. Our eating and shopping choices...

Fishing like there’s no tomorrow

EssayIN THE CITIES and the suburbs of the affluent world, the fish are waiting. Across the cold counters of supermarkets and specialist costermongers, fillets...

Between two worlds

ReportageIT IS CHILLY in Florence when we get off the fast train up from Rome. The calories from the rushed breakfast, the café latte...

Stay up to date with the latest, news, articles and special offers from Griffith Review.