Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
We must look at how we can push forwards to strengthen our local food system, increasing resilience and ensuring sustainability while continuing to support those struggling, fighting for food justice, and prioritise our local farmers and producers.
Permaculture — a fusion of indigenous knowledge with modern science and technology — offers ways for people to meet their essential needs for food, water, sanitation and other non-material needs, with autonomy and harmony with nature.
Today, danger confronts all of us on this Earth. “We were already facing climate change, and now there is the pandemic,” Skye says. The seeds will always be there, to provide both food and a spiritual connection to the Earth, he says. “They are how we will survive.”
The Woodland Community Land Trust was incorporated in 1979, making it one of the oldest Community Land Trusts (CLTs) established in the United States. Located in the Clearfork Valley of northeastern Tennessee, a low-income Appalachian community dominated by extractive industry and concentrated land holding, economic, and political power, Woodland recently marked its 40th year in operation.
Water is in the hands of large producers who have dried out our territory and compromised the lives of our communities. Ours is an extreme case: Chile has entirely privatised water, which means that theft is institutionalised. Chile has clearly prioritised extractive industries over the rights of communities to water.
So let’s walk our way out of this pandemic. Walk our way to mental, emotional and physical health. Walk our way back to social
cohesion. Walk our way back to a functional society where anger and suspicion aren’t the normal ways we interact with each other.
The lockdown and threat of a global pandemic has turned a lot of people who previously may have depended solely on supermarkets for their food into gardeners and would-be farmers overnight.
Refugee Women of Bristol (RWoB) is a charity organisation that’s run by refugees, for refugees. The charity has been up and running since 2003 and I’ve been involved for more than 10 years. Connecting through food has always been at the heart of our work.
A growing movement of gardeners — from ethno-botanists to green-thumb hobbyists — is committed to spreading awareness of methods for enhancing the intricate ecological relationships in local spaces. Even more significant is how the interconnectedness of this knowledge can make a ‘global’ difference to landscapes everywhere.
Food is fundamental. While farmers have yet to face the full economic impact of this pandemic, their collaborative efforts, along with local grassroots networks, could mark the beginning of a new economy laboring to be born.
Appalachia knows need, and knows that in times of increased struggle, need increases for all. While much of the country might fall back at this time, Appalachia has stepped up in ways both official and grassroots. “Pandemic or not,” Keller said, “we still have a job to do.”
Each day now feels like a decisive day in the decade of decision that we have the fate to be alive in. Speeding up the pace at which we slow down. Slowing down the pace of destruction. Speeding up the pace of creation. Slowing down the machines. Speeding up our imaginations, going deeper in our dreams, and walking further, together, asking questions about the future we want. Right now.
