The Centre for Stewardship (organisers of the Big Tent Festival) announce their Annual Stewardship Lecture which this year is by Satish Kumar on the subject of ‘Reconnecting with Food'. 

Satish has been the editor of Resurgence magazine for the last thirty years and is Programme Director at Schumacher College, Devon, a centre of ecological and spiritual values. In this time of climate change, economic uncertainty and growing disparities between the rich and poor, Satish asks:

"Are we prepared to put our hands in the soil?  Have we time to bake bread and share our meals together?  If we have no time to cook and eat properly then we have no time to live.  By focusing on food in we connect the personal with the political and the intimate with the ultimate."

The event takes place on Thursday 30 October 2008 at House of Falkland, Falkland, Fife 6.30-9.30pm. The evening will include a Fife Diet supper cooked by award-winning local chef Christopher Trotter, and swerved with organic wine. There will be a talk by Satish and an opportunity for questions and discussion. This event also presents an opportunity to see inside the House of Falkland, which was bought in 1890 by John Patrick Crichton-Stuart, 3rd Marquess of Bute (1847 - 1900) and redesigned by Robert Weir Schultz in the Arts & Crafts style, featuring an idiosyncratic medley of inlaid wood, exuberant plasterwork, heraldic glass and opulently painted ceilings.

Resurgence magazine has been a pioneer of the ecology movement for the last quarter century. Satish is known for his Gandhian philosophy as well as his teaching, activism and writing. His autobiography, No Destination, was first published in 1978. A revised and updated edition is published by Green Books. His book You Are, Therefore I Am - A Declaration of Dependence was published by Green Books in September 2002. Satish's third book The Buddha and the Terrorist was published in November 2004.

This is a unique opportunity to meet and hear one of the foremost thinkers of our time, for whom food is the critical barometer of our planets ill-health:

"The primary objective of those who deal in the business of food is to make money and feeding people has become secondary. No wonder that we face multiple crises such as rising costs of food, an obesity epidemic, malnutrition and world hunger. An urgent challenge facing us all is to look at the first principal of food systems which is to sustain life. The primary responsibility of governments and business leaders is to develop policies and practices which can meet the food needs of all people around the world, while at the same time, protecting the integrity and sustainability of the earth itself."

For more information on this event  see Sixth Annual Stewardship Lecture - Food or  contact Mike Small, Programme Director, Centre for Stewardship T. 01337 858 838 M. 0791 288 1314 or via: mike@centreforstewardship.org.uk