Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
After such an inspiring visit, the momentum can only build: the Institut de Tramayes will join us at the Gathering in Plessé in November. They’ll participate in our opening day, where we’ll collectively explore the question: What is a Université Paysanne?
I wonder, how do the swallowtails drink if too many people buy meat from grocery stores? How does the blood return to the soil? How do the coyotes and the vultures feast on the entrails from the farmer and the hunter? Our wedges, our separation, spills over into all of life. A chink in the chain. We cannot divide ourselves without dividing everything.
At Rural Watch Africa Initiative (RUWAI), we believe that empowering one young person can ignite transformation across generations.
The Caatinga’s story isn’t one of survival in a dryland ecosystem – it’s a lesson of looking for the hidden patterns, finding alliances, and being patient. Well, and about fate of course. Because, if a forgotten biome can regrow from dust, what else might be possible?
A diet is the wrong entry point in the analysis of the food system and planetary health.
Chris Smaje openly admits that there are too many contingent variables to predict the future; many scenarios are plausible. That said, Finding Lights in a Dark Age offers some thoughtful, erudite speculation about what a healthy, post-capitalist world might look like and the choices we may need to make.
But while we’re all yelling at each other about how our favoured politics are the best, the more important political story might lie with constituents, including the urban poor, who are quietly innovating their own welfare, perhaps by leaving town.
What matters above all is that people get occupancy rights that give them the long-term residential security to address their livelihood needs, and it’s entirely possible that these will sometimes be obtained in urban or suburban situations.
There are mass-produced ciders on the market, usually packed full of added sugar and additives, but we were only interested in the artisanal drink — made with love and care, a great deal of back-breaking work and no small amount of skill.
The assumptions that sit behind this are that: consumption drives growth; that cheaper food is good for growth; that markets are the best way to provide cheaper food; that changing diets is not the job of government; and that food safety nets are not needed—or need only to be minimal.
And so now I’m home again, back to the farm, back to the book publication, back to a million things to do, back to trying to grow some produce and grow some politics that’s not far-left or far-right but equal to the present moment by dispensing with those figments of modernism and doing my bit to articulate more vital political traditions like Romanticism and distributism.
There’s an old saying that I won’t spell out completely, but which most readers will certainly have heard at least once in their lives, to wit: “Don’t sh– where you eat.”
