The Almond: Difference between revisions

In the middle of December 2020, [[The Soft Protest Digest:About|The Soft Protest Digest]] was invited to the [https://janvaneyck.nl/projects/food-art-film-festival Food Art Film Festival] 2020, run by the Food Lab of the Jan van Eyck Academie; to create a project on food and hostile environments. Wealthy countries from the Western world, like the USA, generally don’t come to mind when thinking about extreme agriculture on hostile lands; but an ecological crisis called [[About eroded soils: our contemporary deserts|the Dust Bowl]] actually coincided with [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Depression the Great Depression] in the 30’s. For the invitation, the collective explored the past Dust Bowl and the actual almond production in California as an exemple of water becoming a scarce resource because of climate change and land management:

* Before the event date, an edible pastry in the shape of an almond was sent in a box, filled with nut species calling on less water input.

* On the 17th of December, a movie was screened online, while eating the almond dessert: <i>[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Plow_That_Broke_the_Plains The plow that broke the plains]</i>, Pare Lorentz, 1936.

* A text making a bound in time between the Dust Bowl crisis and almond production was read: farmers who lost their eroded soils in the 30’s often migrated to California, where almond monocultures are now competing for local water resources.