From 15 October Milan hosts a very special photography exhibition: a selection of twenty shots by Peter Caton showing how it is possible to grow (and eat) food without polluting.
On the eve of World Food Day, falling on 16 October, Greenpeace fires its arrow in support of sustainable agriculture and against the failing system of industrial farming, based on the depletion of soils through monocultures, the loss of biodiversity, and the intensive use of pesticides and GMOs.
The photography exhibition Food for Life brings together twenty iconic images from a larger project commissioned by Greenpeace from Peter Caton, a photographer of international standing, who over a 10-month journey documented successful models of low-environmental-impact farming in Brazil, China, Kenya, France, California and Cambodia.
According to Greenpeace, it is smallholder farmers who feed the world, producing 70 per cent of the planet's food. And it is precisely these farmers that Caton chose to portray, in order to give them the recognition they deserve.
"With this exhibition we want to bring people closer to farming, to the land and to farmers," explains Federica Ferrario, head of Greenpeace's sustainable agriculture campaign. "We live in a sick food production system, based on industrial agriculture. Most of us don't know where the food we eat comes from, who grows it or what dangerous substances it contains. It is a system built on monocultures, GMOs and the intensive use of pesticides and chemical fertilisers, which puts biodiversity at risk and in which farmers are treated as labourers. A system controlled by large corporations whose only interest is profit, with no concern for long-term health implications, food security or the environment. Peter Caton's photographs show the more human face of farming, in contrast to the current system, which is anonymous and industrialised. We would like the scenes of life we have gathered in this exhibition to bring people closer to this beautiful and endangered reality, from which we have drifted away for too long. We can all become part of the change," Ferrario added.
Food for Life © Peter Caton
The exhibition is set up outdoors, from 15 to 29 October, in a pedestrian area in the centre of Milan (Corso Vittorio Emanuele, adjacent to Piazza San Carlo). Solar panels will be used to light the structures.