Summing up
Azure skies and cool evening breezes greeted the 155 symposiasts who gathered at St Catherine’s College for our consideration of Poverty Food. Against this backdrop of near-perfect weather, symposiasts spent three days grappling with the concept and realities of ‘poverty food,’ mindful that our discussions took place in a well-fed environment of abundance. Through three keynotes, two roundtable conversations, twelve panels of papers, and artistic and group activities, we explored the fundamental relationship between poverty and food. We questioned the cultural stigmas applied to certain foods considered inferior and ways in which political, economic, and agricultural systems can create or ameliorate poverty and hunger. We considered how ‘poverty foods’ respond to crises of climate, war, and famine, and the cruel weaponization of food.
Symposiasts voted to explore Poverty Food in July 2023, not foreseeing how the world would change in the intervening years. Much of the world has been engulfed in vicious conflict. Other sectors have become much less generous to those in need. These realities led some in our Facebook community to predict elitist discussions grounded in Oxford privilege. Others expressed great discomfort, proclaiming ‘poverty food’ inherently inadequate, degrading, and unappealing. But symposiasts saw the theme’s complexity, urgency, and importance: fully half of the St Catz attendees, including many paper presenters, were newcomers and presented stories and research about resilience and the resourcefulness inherent in ‘poverty food,’ whether arising from temporary crises or embedded as a chronic way of life.
Addressing this concern about elitism in the opening session, Symposium Chair Cathy Kaufman proposed a nuanced approach to ‘poverty food,’ recognizing that what is considered ‘poverty food’ is malleable and a product both of physical and cultural context. Zachary Nowak’s keynote expanded that framing, asking What is ‘Poverty Food’? Cucina Povera, Torta al Testo, and the Uses of Scarcity. In The Poverty Pinch: Why Wants Breed Want in the Food System, Julian Baggini challenged symposiasts to consider whether modest and actionable ‘tweaks’ to the industrialized food system might improve the lives of those in need faster and more reliably than more revolutionary agendas. And Elizabeth Mpofu, a rural Zimbabwean farmer and former General Coordinator of La Via Campesina, outlined the challenges farmers, especially women, face in this, the FAO’s “Year of the Female Farmer.” In presenting The Key to Ending Poverty, Ensuring Food Sovereignty, and Building Sustainable Futures in the Global South, her words elicited gasps at her firsthand accounts of the gender inequities and violence suffered by female peasants.
Two roundtable discussions offered additional perspectives. Dignity and Empowerment: Food Policy and Advocacy in Action brought together Maryann Broxton, Director of US Policy and Advocacy for ATD Fourth World, Dee Woods, co-founder of the Granville Community Kitchen and member of London’s Food Ethics Council, and Joanna-May Sta. Ana, Operations Manager for Cooking Up. Under Jane Levi’s moderation, the eloquent panel shared the challenges of advocacy and effective change-making. Broxton politely challenged our construct of ‘poverty food,’ arguing that ‘poverty food’ is a stigmatizing label and urged reframing the discussion to focus on poverty broadly, with food access as a critical component.
The Cook’s Perspective on the Different Traditions of Cucina Povera roundtable, moderated by Zachary Nowak, honored the founding purpose of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery: recognizing that the practice of cookery is worthy of academic study. The panel brought
together longtime symposiasts who are also noted cookery writers to share insights into their cultural traditions: Elizabeth Luard on her many years cooking in Andalucia; Priya Mani on India, Nader Mehravari on Iran, and Marcia Zoladz on Brazil.
Twelve panels, spread over Saturday and Sunday, showcased thirty-one papers in four parallel sessions, with four additional papers available online. Programmer Janet Beizer’s thoughtful assemblages encouraged papers to ‘talk to each other’ in broad groupings:
- The Sweet Potato as Famine Food, from Ryukyu Kingdom
Tokunoshima to Modern Japan - The Riches of Poverty Food: Re-evaluating and Revaluing
- Culinary Empathies: Humanitarian Relief Aid and Recipes for Respect
- Culinary Tourism: Slumming, Exoticizing, and Strategies for
Reclaiming - Beyond Economics: The Deep Cultural Root of Social Policy
- Speak, Memory
- Future Shock Meets Traditional Wisdom
- Discipline and Nourish
- Reclaiming Poverty Food
- Turning the Tables: Transforming and Transvaluing
- Food Poverty in Literature
- (Force-) Feeding the Poor: Didacticism, Evangelism, and Colonialism
Symposiasts at St Catz faced the difficult task of selecting which sessions to attend (the papers grouped under these headings are listed in the programme), but the availability of drafts and authors’ pre-recorded presentations allow all symposiasts to experience all content at leisure.
Meals are a vital part of the symposium, offering chances for camaraderie and, literally, embodying the theme. Our guest chefs embraced the ecology, frugality, resourcefulness, and equity that underlay our discussions. Chef Tom Hunt’s Friday night dinner, From Sun to Soil: A Living System, focused on his no-waste kitchen ethos. His vegetable forward menu used foraged herbs and seasonal ingredients, creating a visually stunning salad and satisfying summer ribollita. He cleverly demonstrated his circular, climate-friendly philosophy by giving brewed coffee grounds a second life in flavoring slow-roasted beets and ice cream.
Our Young Chefs (Bürșra Sağlam, Nadiia Noskova, and Safiya Robinson, under the mentorship of Dee Woods), fused their Turkish, Ukrainian, and British-by-way-of-Afro-Brazilian heritages to devise Saturday lunch on the model of the aptly-named public restaurant: Good Food is Our Common Ground. The eggplant spread, jerk-seasoned proteins, pickled vegetables and slaws, and seasonal desserts were precisely the sort of wholesome and flavorful foods that public restaurants aspire to serve to all.
Elisabeth Luard’s Saturday night’s dinner, Andalucia in Sunshine and Shadow: The Simple Art of Making Do, proved that wise frugality leads to abundance. Swiss chard leaves enhanced a tortilla, with the stalks piquant in sherry vinaigrette; slivers of salt-cured tuna embellished roasted peppers, and succulent rabbit or meaty eggplant crowned a rib-sticking mélange of potatoes, rice, and chickpeas. Luard’s master class in cucina povera coaxed deliciousness from basics at hand, judiciously enhanced by preserves from the larder.
Our Sunday lunch, curated by Chef Yeshi Jampa and Julie Kleeman of Oxford’s much-lauded Taste Tibet restaurant, dazzled us with summer’s Portable Abundance from the Grasslands of Eastern Tibet. Evoking staple products from the yak (recreated here with beef), tsampa, and enjoying seasonal (in Tibet) treats of yogurt, mushrooms and vegetables, Chef Jampa proved that toothsome dishes are possible, regardless of the limited foodstuffs and materials imposed in the challenging nomadic environment.
Drinks receptions preceded our Friday and Saturday night dinners, and this year’s small bites held special meaning. Friday’s snacks of pears with cheese and torta al testo rendered concrete the opening session’s identification of foods freighted with shifting cultural meanings.
Saturday’s reception was heartfelt, as we honored the memory of long-time symposiast Aglaia Kremezi. Meals Coordinator Cameron Stauch and Nader Mehravari recounted Aglaia’s unmatched generosity in sharing her deep historical and practical knowledge of Greek food. We snacked on dolmades and her recipe for keftedes, thematically made in a ‘poor man’s version’ with courgettes in lieu of meat. Aglaia’s husband, Costas Moralitis, joined us as a first-time symposiast and shared Aglaia’s recipe for one of their favorite sweets, kollyva, a wheat berry and nut pilaf redolent with cinnamon and dried fruits that is traditionally prepared and shared to mark anniversaries of the death of a loved one.
Kollyva was one of the diverse tastes available hroughout the weekend on the Condiment Table, organized by Birgitte Kampmann with Stauch. Many symposiasts contributed foods from home, focusing on piquant sauces, spices, and oils that counter the reputation for blandness that biases gastronomic judgments around ‘poverty food.’
Symposiasts had a choice of after-dinner activities. Lounging in the garden or bar with colleagues (and catching World Cup matches on the large screen) was a relaxing option in the balmy air. Those with a creative bent enjoyed a sewing circle each night that inaugurated a multi-year project: organized by Priya Mani and Jane Levi, stitchers are embroidering a large scale banner with bits of materials contributed by symposiasts. The project reflects the homespun quality shown in this year’s cloth banners and logo by Mani. The cloth will return in future years for further work as a community endeavor and promises to be come a treasured symposium heirloom.
Those eager for more curriculum attended films. On Friday night, symposiasts could screen a documentary, How to Feed a Dictator, by Andrew Neel of SeeThink Films. The film had debuted a mere four weeks earlier at the Tribeca Film Festival and married historical footage of the dictatorships of Idi Amin, Augusto Pinochet, Saddam Hussein, Pol Pot, and Kim Jung-Il with contemporary interviews with regime survivors and the private chefs who prepared the sumptuous meals. Each chef recreated a dictator’s favorite dish on camera; some grappled with the evil done by the dictators, while others, chillingly, remained in their thrall. Saturday night’s remarkable footage amplified Valérie Lagier’s and Mary Margaret Chappell’s paper about the American Committee for Devastated France, an all-volunteer private organization run by American women during and immediately after World War I in France’s Aisne department. A series of newsreels painstaking documented recovery efforts amidst unspeakable destruction and were critical to the fundraising needed to assist recovery.
Sunday afternoon’s concluding plenaries were our first experiment with live streaming at St Catz. The afternoon opened with a provocative joint dive into Irish food history. Distinguished scholar Máirtín Mac Con Iomaire dispassionately recounted the motifs and chronicles of food (whether plentiful or scarce) in Irish literature until suddenly, he transformed into a bard, his mellifluous baritone filling the hall with the haunting ballad of Skibbereen. David Matchett updated Jonathan Swift’s 1729 satire, A Modest Proposal, to urge that eating small children, if properly handled, might solve hunger by culling the poor and feeding the well-to-do. He concluded with a twelve-minute video commercial from his ‘sponsor,’ in which Swift’s proposal came to life in a mock industrial canning facility, in which the owner proudly demonstrated the care that went into the premium product. The lights came up to a stunned hush blanketing the lecture theatre.
The mood was lightened by the promised fundraising auction of the two hand-stitched banners decorating the podium and created and very generously donated by Mani. The multi-talented Mac Con Iomaire acted as auctioneer, using his best (and convincing) Texas cattleman drawl to push the hammer prices higher.
Our final substantive session brought the BBC’s Dan Saladino, of Radio 4’s The Food Programme, to the stage for a conversation with Carolyn Steel. 2025 symposiasts will recall that Saladino covered Food and the Elements, and we were thrilled to welcome him back. Much of the conversation focused on BBC coverage of critical issues in food, although work remains to be done.
The weekend concluded with topic selection for 2029, with votes tallied from both our in-house and online audience via the wonders of Zoom. With feisty debates and controlled chaos, democracy triumphed when, on the third ballot, symposiasts resoundingly voted for Food and Danger.
