Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
This manifesto is a call for constructive defiance. We cannot wait for top-down solutions. The future must be built from below—by cultivating water, restoring land, training youth, and constructing homes that regenerate rather than consume.
Crafting a story and connecting people are centrally important to successfully cultivating biodiversity, as Belgian farmer Tijs Boelens has found out in his work to integrate heritage grains into the supply chain.
Agroecology is a science, a set of practices, and a movement that is critical to the transition to sustainable food systems.
To sum up, I believe the recommendations for healthy food neglects the realities and limitations of the production system as well as of the market place. In addition, some of them are also based on flawed or weakly supported assumptions.
And the Gilgamesh epic as we have received it from the ancient cuneiform tablets is excellent propaganda supporting the idea that cities are better than nomadism and we must have kings ruling us. But my question is: What is a more realistic story about how the conflict played out between the city states in Mesopotamia and the older nomadic culture of the surrounding area?
The more I hear from farmers in the Midwest and elsewhere, the more I see people reimagining what legacy looks like and prioritizing the needs of future farmers. It’s encouraging to know so many people are thinking outside the box and working toward solutions that will help evolve agriculture.
Humans and human societies are ecologically active and dependent agents and the food-agro-ecosystems need to follow similar principles as other ecosystems in order to be sustainable in the long run.
How can the necessary relocalisation of food systems be reconciled with a need for exchange based on mutual aid, complementarity, and reciprocity? Can local biodiversity (and its products) support territorially grounded agricultural economies while also nurturing the emergence of spaces for innovation and cooperation across diverse realities?
As Graeber puts it in his lecture on Care and Freedom, “We need to reimagine production and consumption.” We need to produce ‘Care’ not money, and this is really the central ethos of the Care.Home.Farm project.
A healthy diet costs in global average US$3.68 per day in 2021. This is considerably higher than the average food expenditure in almost all low income countries, where people have to do with a diet dominated by staples and oils, lacking protein and a number of micronutrients. The cost of healthy food is also out of reach for many people living above the World Bank’s extreme poverty line.
The not-so-secret ingredient in a healthy local food ecology is the embodied presence of those involved. Ecological agriculture cannot be practiced remotely. The only way to manage any landscape sustainably is by living in it long enough, and intimately enough, to learn how to manage it well.
For Baldes, he wants to eventually hunt buffalo like someone would any other wildlife. He’s in the process of buying property to allow buffalo to roam like they did before western expansion.
