“…by focusing on environmental limits instead of on the social strategies that enable better environmental and social outcomes, we fail to engage the only force of nature that can help us: human aspirations for a better future.”
Soil Saturdays are immersive experiences in the sometimes hidden elements of a living farm. Here’s an excerpt from the walk series as summer turned to fall.
What might the Green New Deal mean for the farmscapes and food systems of the next century?
"The greatest challenge of our time is not how to live within the limits of the natural world, or how to overcome such limits. It isn’t about optimizing our planet to better serve humanity or the rest of nature. To engage productively with the world we are creating, we must focus on strategies for working more effectively together across all of our diverse and unequal social worlds…”
What Speth and Ellis are pointing to is what we at the Institute for Mindful Agriculture are calling “inner soils” and “social soils”. And I would be remiss not to mention them here as I believe they are as important for a healthy future as the above described soil health. In fact, one central mission at the Institute for Mindful Agriculture is to cultivate the social soil to grow a just, resilient, and regenerative food ecosystem, resulting in the growth of vibrant food sheds throughout our country.
...the incredible importance of “how” we choose to listen and to speak to one another...
“Our starting point is that agriculture and food are not just about production and consumption. They are about relationships and care, too, – care for each other, care for the land, care for living systems.
These social and ecological relationships to do with food although damaged by modernity, are being re-made by what we are calling social food projects. Such projects are about about care, not just consumption. They are about hospitality and connection – between people, and with place. They are a medium of solidarity among diverse cultures.”
…an understanding of and feeling for belonging and right relationship to our Earth, to each other and to ourselves are at the heart of any path towards a future that brings well-being for all…
This article is published in the current edition of Star & Furrow.
...if brought together more intentionally by the relevant players of a bioregion could multiply the capacity of scale of biodynamic agriculture: quality of soil, networked procurement, infrastructure, processing and distribution functions, collective capacity for action in high quality relationships across the food value chain and finally, 180 degree shift of perspective from isolated farmers towards highly integrated networks of farmers, producers and eaters co-organizing bio-regional food sheds.
“Humanity today is like a waking dreamer, caught between the fantasies of sleep and the chaos of the real world. The mind seeks but cannot find the precise place and hour. We have created a Star Wars civilization, with Stone Age emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technology. We thrash about. We are terribly confused by the mere fact of our existence, and a danger to ourselves and to the rest of life.”
– Edward O. Wilson, 2012
Six “windows” onto the “being of agriculture” place it into the current context of time and place, and ground it ecologically, socio-economically, and spiritually.
The Internet, journals, papers, twitter and the blogosphere are overflowing with talk and conversations on agriculture and food. Since the publication of Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma in 2006 our awareness and consciousness on food issues has reached new and amazing heights. Already in the early 2000s when the USDA invited public comments on its “Organic Rule” it received more comments than on any issue ever! What is going on here? Why is this happening, and can we detect some underlying patterns? These questions and a few more are at the root of a new initiative: The Institute for Mindful Agriculture.
