Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
For sure, the cow and the deer can easily co-exist. On our farm, there is plenty of wild-life co-existing with our small herd of five mother cows. There are deer, elk, boars, fox, voles, fox, the occasional lynx, a huge number of birds including flocks of geese, and cranes.
I believe deeply in the commons. I believe it is the only true economic expression of all this interconnected biophysical reality.
Without the need for dedicated land or water, honeybees offer a more stable climate future.
Food is the basis for lifestyle: Food is the connection to our authentic, biological nature as living creatures, sharing the world with a host of other creatures, in a complex global ecology. Get that right, and all the other things are ‘negotiable’.
Will carbon farming be a greenwashing disaster or a real opportunity for farmers and climate change mitigation?
Focusing on compassion and personal transformation as a prerequisite for external, wider-world change, Commonland’s use of Theory U processes sets its approach apart from traditional landscape restoration projects, which typically focus on biodiversity alone.
Food is not, should not, primarily be seen as a commodity to be bought or sold. To a large extent food is an expression of culture, solidarity and connectedness with the land. Food is also a human right.
This big vs small debate needs to be sorted out with a more detailed, targeted lens that does justice to the small-medium active farmers, individual or aggregated together in larger organisations.
A new course in Sweden poses the question, “what will a self-sufficient Hällefors Municipality taste like in 2030?”
Students on the course act like talent scouts. They search for unrealised food-growing potential across the region – people, unused land, forgotten traditions.
This is how a future that includes me was created. This, place-based farming, is wisdom. And, I suspect that, in places like mine, this is the only path that can lead to another future millennium.
Beyond the classical thematic advocacy for organic farming, animal welfare and nature conservation there is a new opportunity to embrace the climate, biodiversity, CAP, job-sharing movements – and the desire to reach a humane work-life balance.
Once we understood the intrinsic value of the natural world, not just what it contributes to our well-being, our economy and the local ecology, there was no going back.
