Book grew from conversations on farming, faith

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This article was published 02/06/2021 (1616 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Helping people from the farm and the city understand each other better is the goal of a new book titled Germinating Conversations: Stories from a Sustained Rural-Urban Dialogue on Food, Faith, Farming.

The book, a compilation of nearly 10 years of conversations in Manitoba between those who grow food and those who consume it, will be launched online at 7 p.m. Thursday.

“The goal was to bring rural and urban people together to share perspectives,” editor Marta Bunnett Wiebe, who is also the peace and advocacy co-ordinator for MCC Manitoba, said.

Through the conversations, “Those who disagree about food and farming had opportunities to talk together, to bridge the divide,” she said.

There were many points of disagreement during the conversations over things such as organic versus traditional farming and the use of chemicals and pesticides by farmers, Bunnett Wiebe said.

“We wanted to create safe spaces for listening to one another, for hearing what others were saying before developing a response,” she said. “We wanted to avoid shouting matches over farming methods and practices.”

One thing that became clear during the conversations was that farmers don’t think urban people understand the challenges of farming or the daily issues they face, Bunnett Wiebe said. Urbanites don’t believe farmers are hearing their concerns about how food is grown. 

The conversations also included discussions about how faith influences the way people farm, including how some farmers feel called by God. One the consumer side, it also impacts the way people make food choices. 

One of the hosts for the launch event is Laura Rance of Glacier Farm Media and a columnist about farming and rural issues for the Free Press.

Rance, who was also a listener during some of the conversations, said the process that led to the creation of the book is very important at a time when people are “very polarized” about farming and food.

“There is little opportunity for finding common ground on these things, places where people can understand each other,” she said. “Germinating Conversations created a safe space to truly understand the depth and complexity of growing food and farming.” 

No one left the conversations “feeling someone else was a bad person,” Rance said, adding they could be a template for other rural and urban communities in Canada to “build towards common ground.”

In addition to MCC Manitoba, Germinating Conversations is sponsored by A Rocha, Canadian Mennonite University and Canadian Foodgrains Bank. It is available at Winnipeg’s CommonWord bookstore. 

To register for the launch, go to http://wfp.to/7Lz.

faith@freepress.mb.ca

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