Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
How do we move away from a historically based, commodity-focused system that barely covers the cost of growing food to one that is more supportive of diverse small- and medium-scale farms? How do we ensure tasty and nourishing food, vibrant rural communities, and a range of farmer backgrounds?
The Dallas Food Justice Coalition provides a simple but powerful model. By bringing together community advocates from different areas of food justice, they’ve begun cultivating a grassroots solution to our broken food system that focuses on empowering and educating the community rather than simply providing aid.
And so we come to the thorny issue of landownership and property rights in a small farm future, which I discuss in Chapter 13 of my book.
When choosing what to eat, it is important to consider where and how it has been grown. Buying locally, seasonally or direct from producers is often a good way to ensure you know the true story of the food you are eating.
Going local is remembering the old ways, the ways in which all our ancestors used to live. Going local is about reconnecting to place, people and self. It is the ultimate reconnection our planet is calling for. A slower pace and more gentle way of being on this planet.
Feeding the soil and avoiding fossil fuels is the Holy Grail of sustainable farming. Techno-solutions aside, this will entail working with nature by mimicking nature – and harnessing the capabilities of ruminants.
With the potential for woodchip to boost soil health, hold onto water and promote plant growth, it is a small step to look at how to effectively harness that potential for rescuing degraded and damaged soils.
Sustainable farming systems that work in harmony with nature have an essential role to play and farmers want to be part of the movement for change.
Using Forest Research figures, we reckon that planting around 15% of our farm with wood pasture (around a third more than at present) could offset all of our emissions – something which we can definitely achieve without any real loss of agricultural production.
As someone who thinks that small family farms probably are the answer (depending a bit on what the question is) it seems worth stating the case for them, which I do below in the form of some bold declarations that I subsequently try to justify.
Like any other manifestation of culture, fermentation practices must be used in order to maintain relevance and stay alive. We must cherish and celebrate the diversity of fermentation practices around the world, and document and share them.
I believe this situation is applicable to the majority of the world’s farmers – in front of us is a monumental task, we need not only to maintain but to build soil fertility, which we must and can do by commencing a new relationship of the soils under our management, harvesting and growing the body of experience and evidence of the pioneers of soil building both historic and living.
