Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
For centuries, the gifts of nature have been thoughtfully nurtured according to seasonal rhythms, and foods now deemed “wild” have been cultivated with the same devotion as a cherished garden. This truth challenges the prevailing notion of untouched wilderness, revealing instead a landscape shaped by generations of mindful stewardship.
This is what it feels and sounds like to be embedded within an intact Indigenous culture. It is alive, vibrant, and strong. The very existence of the Samburu pastoralists comes from and exists with the land, and the land is happy with it.
Of course, in the end, you can’t decouple farming (or any other human endeavour) from the ecological frameworks. The global commodified food system has a global impact on the whole Earth system, primarily through its impact on the critical cycles of carbon, water and nitrogen. These, in turn, also influence the global food system.
Though nature’s cycles are increasingly uncertain, the Nisg̱a’a relationship with the beloved oily oolie is steadfast. Once the grease is ready, the workers will siphon it off and strain it into jars—preserving a taste that links hundreds of generations of human and fish for another season.
These projects and many others like them are quite literally weaving traditional knowledge, culture, and Native values more deeply into these villages and communities across Southeast Alaska.
Through the food gathering and pollination accidents of bees and other pollinators, the world’s most nutritious, tastiest fruits and vegetables are brought to the tables of the world’s 7.9 billion people. Indirectly, bees keep us well-fed.
This focus on resilient agrarianism underlines the point that ‘taking care of ourselves in a world on fire’ – to invoke the subtitle of Adam’s book – is going to be a heavily rural affair.
Is it smart to intentionally give up control over the release of modern GM plants at the very moment when AI technology will transform this technology to the extent that human intelligence may no longer be in the driving seat?
First you taste the fruit, then you know the territory, then you find the flower. That is the way round it is. Sometimes you travel a long way to come home with empty hands.
The rise of supermarket chains, the fast food chains, factory farming, food waste, the conversion of landscapes into monocultures, food deserts, obesity, malnutrition, ultra-processed food, you name it –the four mega-drivers have a lot more explanatory power than the prevailing, and infantile, narrative of consumer preferences.
And so, I plant. I keep pounding the ground, accompanied by several jars of saved seeds… I am lifted from my lethargy by the promise of arugula, endive, radicchio, lettuce, chicory… and resilience.
Immigration and border security will be the likely focus of U.S.-Mexico relations under the new Trump administration. But there also is a growing water crisis along the U.S.–Mexico border that affects tens of millions of people on both sides, and it can only be managed if the two governments work together.
