Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
The global crisis gives a chance for a new model of living to emerge – an economy of degrowth. In an interview with the LavkaGazeta, Teodor Shanin is reflecting on the role that farming can play in the new model of development.
One thing this pandemic has made clear is that food doesn’t come from supermarket shelves. It never did. Food comes from the soil, the sea – and the hands of people.
In the future, employment opportunities will probably cluster in low-carbon, labour-intensive sectors – among which farming will loom large.
Jean-Paul has dedicated much of his career to educating the next generation of farmers. In 1995, he was part of the original CRAFT (Collaborative Regional Alliance of Farmer Training).
The promotion of ‘junk agroecology’ initiatives opens up the possibility of greater greenwashing of socially and environmentally destructive forms of production, and more deeply entrenches the unjust dynamics which have led to the current crises.
We have here the ambitious groundwork, global in scale, for exactly the case for a small farm future that Smaje set out to write.
We must learn from our elders, so we can enjoy abundant gardens, nutritious food and a closeness to Nature for many generations to come.
It likely improves the odds if we discuss and prepare for a small farm future; and reading this book can help. I envision study groups passing around a copy and then discussing it.
This film is about the reality of global warming, impoverished diets and rising hunger, disease and deaths, and also about loving the land and other living things.
To break the bonds of dependence on capital is the objective of agriculture organized according to an explicitly oriented approach to remunerating labor and ensuring the ecological reproduction of the means of production. Agroecology is this approach.
The story of trying to hold the existing political centre will be a story of fascism, Caesarism, bread and circuses. Whereas the non-fascist story will be one of trying to create livelihoods as convivially as possible, mostly from the local resources – human and non-human – to hand.
More than ever, public support for healthy food production and distribution shows itself as a win-win strategy that is indispensable for combining long-standing social and economic challenges, now aggravated by the COVID-19 outbreak.
