Hay Food Assembly

Saturday 27th January saw the launch of Hay’s first- ever Community Assembly, with over 100 people in attendance. It was part of a “Community Engagement Programme, launching New Community Assemblies as mini-parliaments to take powerful action in response to climate change” said Mike Eccles, a co-ordinator of Hay Community Resilience Initiative.

This Assembly addressed the food question: How might we support Hay-on-Wye, as a community, to become as self-sufficient as possible in sustainably- grown local food in the next 10 years, much as we did in the 1950s and 60s? It was attended by local farmers, horticultural food growers, food agencies, landowners, representatives from Hay Food Bank, Zero Waste Hay, Hay food businesses and many townspeople.

The event was massively oversubscribed with a long waiting list. “Over 200 people could have attended had there been space, which indicates the level of local interest. However, the Food Assembly will be ongoing, with many further opportunities to get involved.”

The Resilience Initiative is sponsored by Hay Public Library.org, a CIC initially set up to save Hay Library from closure. Now with the ‘closure’ issue resolved and the Library ‘saved’, the CIC has created - as a new Community Library Service - the opportunity to set up and run Community Assemblies - a new and effective form of deliberative democracy.

The Resilience Initiative has three ‘pillars’ to it.The first pillar is intended to self-organise Hay to become self- sufficient in locally, regeneratively grown food (Hay Food CSA); the second pillar is to enable us to become self- sufficient in Community-owned renewable Energy (Hay Energy); and the third pillar is to implement preventative measures to tackle mental health deterioration due to climate change, and reduce pressure and dependence on NHS resources (Hay Wellness).

So, in Hay we are proposing to change our story to one where we are acting as citizens and not ‘consumers’, empowering ourselves to address our own futures with hope, purpose and belonging.

This Assembly was sponsored and funded by The Welsh Government and Extinction Rebellion.

Article supplied by Hay Public Library