Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
While a positivist science is often privileged in research, agroecology implies the mobilisation of different kinds of knowledges that reflect the multiple dimensions of agroecology as a science, practice and social movement.
Respecting the humanity and history of soil can help us grow a more resilient future for all.
At the European Action Gathering for Sustainable Food Systems in Marburg, Germany, Forum Synergies invited participants to consider aspects of intergenerational cooperation.
There is a wisdom to this time of the year. Perhaps by just sitting with the dark, the seeds of whatever I must do next will arrive on their own.
A family of action-takers: farmers and food systems workers, elected officials, administrations, researchers and educators, and members of civil society organisations – some friends, many strangers – who came together to call for an integrated policy shift for sustainable farming practices and a resilient food system.
Earlier this year I worked with the UK Agri-foods for Net Zero Network (AFN for short) to help them develop a set of scenarios about the future of food production and consumption. The purpose of the scenarios was to stretch their thinking around the types of research that could help to accelerate the transition of the sector to Net Zero.
Informed by the knowledge that leather originated in food systems, I aimed to explore how that connection could influence my work as a designer. I decided that in order to find answers to my questions, I’d need to follow it as a product from the field and confront its transformation into food and fibre.
If we start instead by attending to aspirational values — such as equity, empowerment, and respect and reciprocity with the natural world — we will better see the long-term transformative potential of solutions we already have in hand to build food systems that are more sustainable, regenerative and just.
The EU Horizon 2020 FRAMEwork project is supporting a transition to biodiversity sensitive farming by uniting farmer clusters and citizen observatories to protect sensitive ecosystems while ensuring food security.
Our weeds are just where they belong, in our fields, along our roads, in every compromised, degraded, or devastated ecosystem. Free food and medicine in our backyards. Essential for ecosystem restoration, perhaps they will also be essential for our future food and medicine.
Still, the wider issues concerning food, land and labour are important, and in view of the present historical moment on our farm and in the world it seems opportune to discuss them.
We will never approach resilience unless we wade into the vast pool of little-known and rarely used plants. This time of year, as many of you are buying seeds for the spring, consider devoting a piece of your land for experimenting with new crops and new varieties. Not all your experiments will work, but some might prove easier, healthier, more pest-resistant, tastier, or more suited to your particular patch of the landscape that what you are planting no
