In Hope for the Future
To welcome in 2025 we wanted to be a little earnest and share books, films, podcasts and more, that help us think about sustainable futures
We are thinking of our Sourced family around the world! Thank you once again for being with us on our journey for another year.
Our Celebration mini-season is all complete, with four very different ‘essays’ on what it means to celebrate. If you have enjoyed any of our pieces please do share! The most important thing for us is that the (amazing!) work by our contributors is read.
On the topic of reading…
Sourced is all about being hopeful for the future, we are investigating systems so we can envisage and build sustainable futures. Because of this, because it is what we have always been interested in, we’ve read / listened / watched many things on sustainability.
Dystopian or post-apocalyptic futures are a linear way of looking forward and are often a very Western structure (which is reflective of a capitalist lens), but there are other ways to think about our future. We believe in joy, and the radical action of joy, and even if some of these works are difficult, or make for uncomfortable reading, they are stories being told because there is a belief that we can have a bright future, that there are still possibilities. We have the power to change, even in this current political landscape.
“Even a wounded world is feeding us. Even a wounded world holds us, giving us moments of wonder and joy. I choose joy over despair. Not because I have my head in the sand, but because joy is what the earth gives me daily and I must return the gift.” - Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass
Therefore, as we head into a new year we wanted to share a list of sustainability minded works. This list is like showing our working, a reading list of sorts that encapsulates ‘Sourced’.
BOOKS
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: a year of seasonal eating - Barbara Kingsolver, with Steven L. Hopp and Camille Kingsolver
Kingsolver’s fiction books are epic - The Poisonwood Bible delves into colonialism, religion and power dynamics through missionaries in the Belgian Congo; Demon Copperhead is about class and poverty in the Appalachian mountains. On the surface it would seem unusual for her to write a non-fiction book about food systems, but of course food systems are all about the thematics she dives into, plus landscape is so prevalent in her work.
This book follows the family in a year of learning to eat - as much as possible - from what they can grow in their own garden (or locally) and is naturally personal. You get to follow the family (Steve is her husband, and Camille her eldest child) through the year understanding the ups and downs and decisions that get made. This makes it not feel like a sermon and is about the journey. It allows you to question your own daily routines without thinking you must change your whole life. It is a book about centring food, within every day life. It is easy to read, but not as engaging as her fiction books, at times the structure (including the very long footnotes that take half a page, breaking flow) doesn’t feel super easy.
Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants - Robin Wall Kimmerer
Kimmerer is a botanist who blends her formal academic training with the teachings of her Potawatomi heritage. The stories she weaves in this book are part memoir, part analysis of the field of botany and what it has to learn from native knowledge. This is a book worth having a hard copy of so that you can make your own notes and observations but it is also worth listening to as an audio book narrated by Kimmerer. Her writing style is very meditative and soothing.
She also has a version of the book for young adults!
Eating to Extinction: the world’s rarest foods and why we need to save them - Dan Saladino
A truly phenomenal book that reads like a fiction book, Saladino is a master storyteller - because he shows, and not tells. The writing is very descriptive and the people, communities and landscapes are beautifully captured. The book is broken up into ten sections (e.g. Grains, Meats, Cheese, Alcohol, Sweets…) and three of four specific foods (Hadza honey, flat oysters, vanilla orange…) which work like short stories. By telling these stories we get to see how important diversity of foods is, for communities and for the future of the planet.
Hoofprints on the Land: how traditional herding and grazing can restore the soil and bring animal agriculture back in balance with the earth - Ilse Köhler-Rollefson
There is always a weariness of reading a white, western, anthropological lens on global south traditions and livelihoods. Köhler-Rollefson writes about the herding practices of the Raika camel herders in Rajasthan, India, drawing on three decades of living with them. Her style of writing and telling the story is considered and engaging and dispels the idea of binary which often happens in anthropological-style works.
This book is essentially about regenerative farming, and although it is about nomadic herding it is also a book about place - the interlinked rhythms of people, animals and the landscape. It also, maybe unintentionally, unpicks ideas of migrants and can give different ideas of moving - how can give a groundedness and that movement is not to be feared.
In Search of the Perfect Peach: why flavour holds the answer to fixing our food system - Franco Fubini
This book takes the approach that through flavour - understanding flavour, exploring flavour, finding things that are full of flavour - we will find a way to prioritising food in our lives and therefore, find foods that are produced sustainably; this is a very ‘chefy’ way to look at food and sustainability, which is unsurprising who Franco Fubini is. Fubini is the founder of Natoora, the UK founded high-end grocery store that focuses on ethical sourcing and supplies many of the UK's excellent restaurants. There are some lovely stories of Natoora’s suppliers and how they developed their businesses and approach to farming. The book starts by telling the story of a peach from the author’s childhood, and so flavour is anchored in the story but the book would be stronger if the concept of what flavour is and could be, and understanding that flavour is subjective and contextual, it therefore lacks a sense of place which means a issues such as class and accessibility are not explored - key things that are an issue with our food system. But this book is short and the structure is easy to follow; it is the book you should send your kids of to university with - along with Anna Jones’ A Modern Way to Cook, and Audre Lorde’s A Master’s Tool - the good introduction to re-thinking what food is and the idea of food systems.
Letters to a young farmer: on food, farming, and our future - Stone Barns Centre for food & agriculture
An anthology of 38 essays . It is a small book - for so many voices - so each of the pieces are short and succinct. It includes people like Barbara Kinsolver, Alice Water, Dan Barber, Michael Pollan, Mary Berry… so it has a huge array of ideas and lenses. The two must reads (imho) are by Raj Patel and Mas Masumoto. Perfect to have around and pick up and read one essay with your morning coffee.
No Meat Required: the cultural history & culinary future of plant-based eating - Alicia Kennedy
It is unsurprising that we love this book, having read Alicia’s work from much before Sourced existed! Along with Raj Patel’s book, her work would be considered a ‘must read’ for being part of the Sourced world. This book is a culmination of years of work and research, and you can tell. A lazy way of explaining this book would be to talk about it as a history of vegetarianism and veganism, but it really is about the entirety of the food system and how (primarily US) culture, class, and histories are interwoven with our food (and drink!).
One Pot, Pan, Plant: a greener way to cook for you, your family and the planet - Anna Jones
This is an engaging and thoughtful cookbook that puts thinking about food systems into practice. Making the theory tangible can be hard so this is useful, interesting and delicious. Jones lives in the UK so it is more relevant to that space, but easily adaptable. Read our newsletter takeover by Anna Jones.
Unlike the cover / title this book is short and succinct, albeit dense. It is a direct rebuttal to the George Monbiot et al who advocate for a ‘techno-solutionsim of ecomodernist’ approach to the future of food. Its key mandate is that we can’t see technology or digital solutions as the answer, and is centred on farming - what can farming look like? Ultimately it is a book about place making, which puts people and communities at the centre, the question is how do we get to that, for everyone?
Stuffed & Starved: from farm to fork, the hidden battle for the world food system - Raj Patel
Published in 2008 this book is still so relevant. It gives context to the way we live now, but the issues we are facing we are still facing. It asks the questions we need to be asking - before we can even begin to think about what the answers can be, we need to know the right questions! It is the key to what Sourced is about, if there was a ‘must read’ for Sourced, it is this.
The Mushroom at the End of the World: on the possibility of life in capitalist ruins - Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing
Through following the sourcing and commodity chain of this rare mushroom Lowenhaupt Tsing examines the idea of a destruction through capitalism (and the inevitability of capitalism ruining us) and the possibility of survival through collectiveness. The collaborative nature of fungi, and the systems they create, is the inspiration of this thinking. In some ways this book is accessible, in that it is a clear narrative, but it is academic and dense and can be slow reading but worth gently working your way through.
In this (mushroom) vein, we would highly recommend Entangled Life: How fungi make our worlds, change our minds and shape our futures by Merlin Sheldrake, and Sourced friend Doug Bierend’s In Search of Mycotopia: Citizen Science, Fungi Fanatics, and the Untapped Potential of Mushrooms
Unearthed: on race and roots and how the soil taught me I belong - Claire Ratinon
Claire grew up in the city, had a demanding job that took her to New York city for work, and is of Mauritius heritage. The idea of land is a complex one for people of colour with histories in colonised lands, this book explores all these complex webs through Ratinon’s journey into being a gardener, and in the very white space of the British countryside. This includes growing food from Mauritius, and understanding the nature of Britain. This book is considered ‘nature-writing’ and it is very descriptive, but it is also memoir and challenges ideas of systems and how food is grown and understood.
Waves of Knowing: a seascape epistemology - Karen Amimoto Ingersoll
An academic book (although fairly accessible writing) about surfing in Hawai’i, sort of. Is this really a book about food systems and sustainability? Not in a direct or linear way, but it is about indigenous knowledge and the sea. When talking about sustainable food futures we often don’t focus on bodies of water, and if we do it isn’t about the ‘-scape’ of them. This is a book about place-making, and understanding the connectivity with histories, oral storytelling, art, surfing, fishing, navigation… It is a decolonisation of our knowledge of the sea, which is so important in understanding how we can have sustainable futures.
TO WATCH
An Al Jazeera + documentary series that explores food justice, often with humour. In particular his episode that Gaza food history and culinary ‘memory map’
TO LISTEN
Farmerama
This is a podcast focused on regenerative farming, usually takes the form of interviews and has a huge range of topics and guests.
A Taste of the Past: Gastronomic Journey of Peru
History is a great way to give context to our contemporary world and therefore a way to look at the future. This episode highlights the diversity of dishes, which comes from the diversity of agriculture in the country.
Sourced co-founder Anna Sulan’s 10-part narrative podcast, but Whetstone Media, delves into nostalgia, colonialism and sourcing through the lens of the history of pepper. How can we address our futures if we don’t address our relationship with our past? And the final episode has a treat - co-founder Chloe-Rose is featured!
ON OUR ‘TO READ’ PILE FOR 2025
Life and Death of the American Worker: The Immigrants Taking on America's Largest Meatpacking Company - Alice Driver
Alice has won awards for her writing that interrogates labour and food systems. She is writing about her home state of Arkansas, the place of the largest meat processing company in the US - “Winner of the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award, an explosive exposé of the toxic labor practices at the largest meatpacking company in America and the immigrant workers who had the courage to fight back.”
An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace - Tamar Adler
I (Chloe) found this book at a charity shop a few months back after meaning to buy it for years. This book first came out in 2011 but is meant to be a nice overview of how to have a sustainable approach to your home cooking. Not just in terms of what you consume but also in how you consume it and how to conserve your own energy. Really looking forward to diving into this one to see how someone else imagines their own kitchen.