This is not a Hollywood story: it’s a Belgian story, for a start. It’s not even certain to end well; that’s a bit up in the air right now. But it’s a story about how things – important things – could be different. How they could, perhaps, be better. It’s a story about Liège, a city whose 19th-century heyday as a coal and steel powerhouse is long gone. Like many ex-coal and steel towns, Liège is poor, with increasing numbers of households living in poverty, but it also has a strong solidarity culture, a diverse population – and the best waffles.
So far, so Belgian. But why are we talking about Liège? Because in 2013, a group of activists who wanted to make food and city life better, greener and fairer, brought 600 people – all with an interest in food production – together. It asked them to imagine what could be different in Liège, within one generation. It’s an interesting question, the fundamental one really: what change can we concretely effect within our lifetimes? What they arrived at was this: “That in 35 years, one generation, the majority of food consumed in the Liège region would be grown locally in the best ecological and social conditions.” That’s a nice, if wordy, aspiration. But the thing is, they’ve tried to make it happen and even – to a degree – have succeeded.
