What's Happening in our Hapori?
Lochy Hapori
Food Resilience
Our concept this term is Turangawaewae - Our Land of Plenty. We have been learning about our food and where it comes from. We had an amazing food scientist called Julia Blackford come talk to us yesterday about Food Resilience. We didn’t know what Food Resilience was, so we learned a lot and had lots of questions! Here is a report on what we learned:
First, in Aotearoa (New Zealand) the early Māori came to Queenstown in little hunting parties. They hunted for moa, eels, kakapō, kiwi, weka and ducks. They only came for a short amount of time, but they ended up staying for the summer months. The Māori used quite a clever technique to catch eels, they used flax to create a trap that was quite sophisticated when it was made. So Māori were quite self-sufficient.
After the moa-hunting days, Māori and early settlers (European settlers) realised that grain such as wheat and barley grows really well here in Queenstown. Over time, they got better at growing grain and were known for growing the best grain in the world for 10 years! Now that they were focusing on running grain farms more than sheep farms, mutton became less popular. Almost all of our food back then came from the farms. Stone fruit was also really popular as well because they were used for storing for winter, turning grapes into wine and just for a food source. Flour mills were made to make flour out of all of the grains on the farms to make an even better food system. But then things started to change.
Today, instead of mostly growing our own food, 99% of our food comes from outside our region! Also about 150 years ago we produced 98% of our food here but now it's way less. It could strengthen our food resilience to start growing your own food and buying less food from our supermarkets.
So that is how our food resilience has changed over time, from hunting moa, to growing our own food on farms and now going to the supermarket.
By Will, Beau and Tyler
Year 6, Lochy