How to destroy the imperial food system
Written by Max Walker. Illustration by Natasha Phang-Lee.
Take yourself on the Overground half an hour out of Liverpool Street and you will find the leafy suburb of Chingford. Walk maybe another half-hour or so, awkwardly peering into people’s front gardens, and you might find a surreptitious gate which leads down a road to a slightly dilapidated set of greenhouses. This marks OrganicLea Community Growers, a hidden paradise in north-east London tucked behind the River Lea and the King George Reservoir. Tsouni Cooper – OrganicLea’s director – is amused at my lateness, which is evidently a common consequence of the farm’s location. ‘To be honest, we are almost happy when natural pests like the asparagus beetle find us!’ she laughs…