Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Increasing self-provisioning by communities take chunks of our lives out of the market and will at the same time lead to less consumption and less emissions as self-provisioning reduces the time available for salaried work and thereby shrinks the economy and human demands on ecosystems.
At the moment Agrihouse’s focus is on building small, cost-effective ponds to capture and store water, creating a replicable model that other small farms can adopt. In doing so, the farm aims to become a hub for sustainable development in Italy, supporting farmers ready to transition toward regenerative and agroecological practices, while providing a real-world example of what ecosystem restoration can look like.
Given how absolutely fun it is to make clothes that you wear, and wear clothes that you make, I expect this equation to come out better than what people might think. And I expect that to be the same for every beautiful handcrafted item we create and use at Care Home Farm. But either way, it will be real, and that’s relaxing.
As Reed and I talked about acorns, eventually I realized that what we were really discussing was something entirely different. We were trading cultural stories about what it means to be human.
In ways I won’t rehash again here, I think our society puts too much weight on the term ‘farmer’, and still more on ‘real farmer’. One reason I’ve embraced the identity of ‘farmer’ is to push back against this, but I’ve sometimes felt uncomfortable when others represent me as an example of that revered and semi-mythical being, the real farmer.
A healthy ecosystem is diverse and small-scale manufacturing systems have the potential to contain much more diversity than industrial levels of production. I use bread and linen – basic daily items of food and textiles to illustrate this position.
What’s needed now is a holistic vision, one that frames agroecology as a system, not a simple set of tools, and aligns funding models accordingly. Piecemeal policies will not cut it. Only by backing the full chain, from producers to consumers, can we build a resilient, truly sustainable food system.
Nigeria’s food crisis is serious—but it’s also a massive opportunity. When households grow food, youths return to the land, and organizations like RUWAI lead the charge, we create a system that is resilient, just, and abundant.
When farmers face wet winters and dry summers, recharge can help store excess surface water, making it accessible during the growing season. In certain instances, like when farmlands are restored into floodplains, aquifer recharge can also double as habitat restoration for wildlife.
How can a culture of responsible foraging actually come into being? My thought is that if you are a forager, you really should give back in actual reparative ways and perhaps find ways to forage that don’t negatively impact the limited public land and rare plant species we have.
At its heart, food sovereignty is a people-led response to the existential threats and multiple crises facing agri-food systems.
Crop diversification to improve the soil microbiome is key to the approach of the Andhra Pradesh Community-Managed Natural Farming (APCNF) movement.
