Nathalie Kelley’s Climate Column

Hello, my Balearic buddies, I hope this instalment of my monthly column finds you well.

By now the temperature in Ibiza has been well and truly turned up and you are more than likely trying to make a lunch reservation somewhere shady and breezy to escape this heat.

But did it ever occur to you that what you are eating might be contributing to the rising temperatures? The food in Ibiza, more than most places, comes with high carbon footprint because the huge tourist influx on the island means it must import around 96 per cent of its food.

Historically, tourism was also responsible for the erosion of local agriculture as land was sold to make room for hotels and villas, leading to the precarious current situation the island now finds itself in - which is just one natural or geo-political disaster away from a food shortage crisis. But the good news is we can all impact this situation for the better!

The pandemic was a huge wake up call for communities around the world who had long traded their food sovereignty for the convenience and efficiency of a globalized food system - only to realize that these complicated supply chains are not as reliable as they made us believe. And like in many places around the world, the pandemic gave a big boost to the emerging local good scene on the island. 

Ibiza resident Gaby Gambina created the platform Ibiza Produce to encourage the revival of farming on the island and to provide access to, and support for, local farmers and producers. On their website you can check out who is producing what, you can access the organic farm map, and you can find non-traditional locally made products from beer and gin to jams, honey and natural cosmetics, too.

So where can you sample some of Ibiza’s most delicious and locally sourced fare? Picadeli, La Paloma, Juntos House, Casa Lhasa, Hämbre, Nudo and Ibiza Food Studio all support local farmers, as do many of the roadside grocery stalls. 

Some  other innovative agriculture projects that  have taken off are the amazing strawberry farms run by Maxi (Strawberry Queen) and Samuel (Fresas de Ibiza), Equitraccion, the horse powered ploughs by Roberto, Can Cristofol a gorgeous vegetable farm by Youri and Dean, Tierra Iris a conscious community farm project and retreat by Mathia Milani and many more. You can hear more about these initiatives in the new Amar la Tierra, a new podcast from Jo Youle and Gaby Gambina which you will find on Spotify in both English and Spanish. All of these projects need your support and also investment if we are going to make our local food systems a viable alternative to Big Ag. 

I will end this month’s column with a question: Do we still want to be eating strawberries flown in from halfway across the world? Or beef from a farm in Brazil that has deforested the Amazon rainforest? And I guarantee you that every single person who eats beef in Europe at some point has eaten a cow from one of these farms.

Here are some things that reviving local food systems will do: 

• Create food autonomy and resilience that won’t be affected by global market prices or disruptions to the supply chain. 
• Restore ecosystems;  replenish aquifers, heal the soil and bring back biodiversity.
• Heal our relationship to the land and the food we eat.
• Restore value to farmers and farming. 
• Make our food more nutritious and make us healthier and stronger.

Here’s what these systems won’t do: 

• Continue to make billions of dollars in profit for the agro-business oligarchs who control the world’s food.

Do we want a world ruled by profit where thousands of years of agricultural knowledge is wiped out to be replaced by robots and zombie crops? Or one where strong and resilient local food systems keep us healthy, our soil fertile and cared for, and carbon emissions from shipping and transport at a minimum? 

We get to decide. 

Nathalie Kelley was photographed by Sami Drasin