Milk is never just milk.
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WW2 rations with milk bottles, 2 person weekly war ration
by Imperial War Museums. Uploaded by Mark Cartwright, published on 19 June 2024.
Milk can mean care, childhood, health and home. But this familiar everyday substance is also shaped by colonial histories, global industry and decisions about whose knowledge, labour and ways of living matter.
Our project follows milk between Kenya and the UK to ask what it can tell us about power, memory, loss and the future of food.
BBC Ideas: Milk!
Five surprising things you probably didn’t know about milk’ explores how something seemingly so ordinary can reveal much bigger stories about human evolution, industrialisation, colonialism, language, animal relationships and the future of food.
Why Milk?
We can all relate to milk in some way, it is our first food, and whether or not we like milk, it’s something we encounter every day. Yet when you scratch under the surface, milk is surprisingly political. For example, governments in both the UK and Kenya were distributing free milk to school children in the 1980s.
Why Kenya and the uk?
To explore their historical connections and understand colonial legacies. Both Kenya and the UK have rich and diverse dairying heritage & practices including cows, sheep, goats and camels. In Kenya, European settlers introduced exotic breeds of cattle which shaped modern dairy farming in both countries.
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White Green and Pink Floral Ceramic Teacup With White Spoon
By cottonbro studio, Pexels.
A girl buys milk from a vendor in Kenya
Landgirl's Day- Everyday Life and Agriculture in West Sussex, England, UK, 1944
29 year old Land Girl Rosalind Cox (left)carries milk pails in the dairy on Mr Tupper's farm at Bignor in Sussex, as her colleague Helen Newmarch sits on a stool to milk 'Cleopatra'. The cattle here are shorthorn cows. Helen is from Worthing and was a shorthand typist before joining the Land Army.
Photo credit: Imperial War Museums