Food & Water featured

On this Reality Roundtable, Nate is joined by Heather Cooley, Zach Weiss, and Mike Joy to discuss the importance of water and hydrology and the complex ways they impact our planet.

The certified organic system is part of the capitalist economic system. It makes it ”realistic” but it also forces it to adapt to the system in order to be successful. And as the system as a whole is not sustainable, it can also not be sustainable in the long run.

We are not powerless. Every time we make a purchase, especially with our food, there are consequences to our health and the health of our environment.

To find satisfaction you have to have an encounter with the real world and absorb its great subtleties. It’s difficult to make the deep connections about food without meeting the people that grow the plants or bake the bread, or doing those things yourself.

The developments of the organic certification system is today driven by the actors who have a vested interest in it, such as the standard-setters, certification bodies, government bureaucrats and consultants; not by the farmers, food producers, consumers and the trade they are supposed to serve.

So what’s a solution we can live with, as farmers? Here on the Roussière Farm, we have chosen to feed the people around us. For a little over seven years now, we’ve been taking our animals to the slaughterhouse ourselves, preparing our own meat boxes, and selling the meat we produce within 20 kilometers of our pastures.

It is clear that the EU support for farmers will be reduced given the concerns over EU’s security and increased defence spending, which I find logical in the current geopolitical context. All farmers will have to tighten their belts. However, I remain optimistic about organic farming, as more and more people in Lithuania are looking for such products. This trend is driving me forward.

There is a temptation to view rooftop farming as a novelty or a lifestyle trend, especially in middle-class contexts. But Living Greens work resists that narrative. It regrounds urban farming in the needs of ordinary people; farmers looking for dignified work, households seeking healthier food, and communities preparing for climate disruption.

Before I begin let me say that I think much of the global livestock industry is a horror show, and it’d be great to bring the curtain down on a lot of it. Also that cutting down wild forests or ploughing up wild grasslands are terrible ideas. And that there are a lot of good reasons to opt for veganism. That’s not what this is about.

The hope is that what began in the fields near Leipzig may well mark the start of a new chapter for Germany’s food system; one where bread becomes more than sustenance, but the shared ground for a fairer, more resilient future.

I often just say gardening is standing back and taking a look and seeing what nature’s already doing and not stand in its way. That’s it in a nutshell. If I had to put it all into one sentence, it would be that one.