Sail Cargo Supper Club
A ‘Sail Cargo Supper’ held at the Skip Garden
in Kings Cross last month was our first event with new partner, Global Generation. Gareth and Alex of New Dawn Traders, hosted the event, giving an introduction to the vision and vessels of the Sail Cargo Alliance. There was sumptious food prepared by Sadbh Moore - olive oil starters, summer roasted vegetables, chocolate cake, fig leaf ice cream and rum truffles. To drink - mojitos and natural Monk’s wine. All this produce was either sourced locally, often from the Skip Garden itself, or – if not – had been sail freighted. Olives, olive oil, and wine were from Portugal, sea salt from the south-west of France, rum from the Azores, coffee from Honduras and chocolate from the Dominican Republic.
All these products had reached London on sailing ships involved in teh Sail Cargo Alliance, meaning they were emissions free and ‘as good as local’ in terms of their transport impacts.
But ships transport more than stuff – they move ideas as well. And sail cargo is a symbolic movement. It’s a symbol of the transformation we need, not just in how products are moved, but in what products we move - how much we move as well as how. It’s a movement that links buyers and sellers, producers and consumers, communities, nations and continents. There’s the chance here to pioneer a supply chain on a human scale – ‘slow cargo’ – re-connecting people to products and to the movement of goods at a pace dictated by nature – an antidote to the 'just in time' , 'always available' culture of modern consumption.
‘Eat local, shop local, buy local’ are all great mottos for guiding us in how to live well whilst treading lightly on the earth. But they can lock us into some negative traits, in our relations to other people and to the planet. Trade opens us to the lives of other people, and can connect us through exchange – what do we have that you need, what can we bring home that you have made? Some of the staples of the new sail- freight trade – olive oil, wine – are the same as sea-traded in Roman times: simple essentials of a good life, where trade is necessary as local production isn’t possible.
Once the main trading routes in Europe were not overland but across the seas. Ports in England would have been linked with those in Ireland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain, in networks that brought people from across ‘borders’ into more contact with each other than they would often have shared with folk from the interiors of their own nations.
We think wind borne trade is one way of keeping us open to the world, whilst respecting nature – so a sustainable life doesn’t have to be insular or closed off. That’s especially important at a moment when many want to slam the doors to ‘outsiders’.