Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
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.
Increasing self-provisioning by communities take chunks of our lives out of the market and will at the same time lead to less consumption and less emissions as self-provisioning reduces the time available for salaried work and thereby shrinks the economy and human demands on ecosystems.
At the moment Agrihouse’s focus is on building small, cost-effective ponds to capture and store water, creating a replicable model that other small farms can adopt. In doing so, the farm aims to become a hub for sustainable development in Italy, supporting farmers ready to transition toward regenerative and agroecological practices, while providing a real-world example of what ecosystem restoration can look like.
Given how absolutely fun it is to make clothes that you wear, and wear clothes that you make, I expect this equation to come out better than what people might think. And I expect that to be the same for every beautiful handcrafted item we create and use at Care Home Farm. But either way, it will be real, and that’s relaxing.
