Food historian, author and producer of documentaries to give a lecture

BELFAST – Food historian Robyn Metcalfe, who recently produced a documentary about Maine’s fishing industry, will shed light on the world’s food supply at a free Belfast Garden Club lecture on Tuesday, 15 november.

The hour-long public programme, the final speech in the Gardening Club’s 2022 series, will be broadcast live at midday in the Abbott Room of the Belfast Free Library, 106 High Street. Those wishing to register from home can register at zoom link here or on the programs page of belfastgardenclub.org.

In her keynote, Metcalfe, director of the Nutrition Institute at the University of Texas at Austin, will explore the contours of the food system as it relates to how we eat now and in the future. She will examine how recent changes can reshape the food system and in particular how individuals can play a role in making the system more resilient.

When grocery store shelves emptied and some foods became scarce during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, consumers were forced to consider the supply chain, the complex journey of food from farm to Table.

“We must carefully craft policies and tariffs that enable a global food system that can adapt when entire food producing regions collapse,” Metcalfe wrote in a statement. MIT Press Reader items in 2020.

Author, researcher and film producer, Metcalfe was the executive producer of the 2020 documentary The Long Coastofficially described as a “portrait of seafarers and seafood farmers along the coast of Maine whose lives and livelihoods are inextricably linked to the ocean”.

Metcalfe’s books include Humans in our food (2021); Food routes: growing bananas in Iceland and other stories of food logistics (2019); and Meat, Trade and the City: The London Food Market, 1800-1855 (2012).

Metcalfe is the founder and former director of Food+City, a nonprofit organization in Austin, Texas that supported innovation in the food supply chain. She received her BA in American Studies from the University of Michigan and an MA and Ph.D. from Boston University in History, with a concentration in Modern European Food History.

Founded in 1928, the Belfast Garden Club promotes the knowledge and love of gardening, the protection of native flora and fauna and the importance of civic beautification. For more information about the club and its programs, visit belfastgardenclub.org