Agroforestry is the answer to our very much needed re-connection to the life cycles humans are a part of. A natural system in syntropy basically just needs trimming to multiply life endlessly, and can recuperate any ecosystem – no matter how damaged -, even creating the possibility of growth for plants from other climates and soil characteristics.
Ernst Gotsch is such a huge inspiration, everyone should watch this:
Agroforestry is the answer to the decadent monoculture food systems we still rely on to feed ourselves. The best example we have in Brazil is Gotsch’s concepts application in a large-scale agroforestry: the “Toca” farm, where they are literally planting water.
Food is about where we stand as living beings. Not as professionals, urban people, struggling to make our to do lists by the end of the day; but as part of a fabulous planet, filled with such diversity of life. From which we feed ourselves, daily, many times a day. So in my point of view, it’s a kind of craziness to act as if food is nothing less than the single most important thing to learn and take a stand about.
I couldn’t agree more with Dan Barber: “I think we need to radically reconsider what agriculture looks like—perhaps it involves models like Veta La Palma, or agroforestry, or perennial wheat polycultures, like the ones being developed at The Land Institute. These are systems that demonstrate natural resilience and ecological stability, which are essential for facing the challenges ahead.”
This is where our food should come from, though instead, we’ve put ourselves in a crazy feeding cycle of poisons since the so called “green revolution”: which takes place in our homes, in how people choose to feed themselves. The best feature of Capitalism is that if everybody stops buying a particular thing, it just vanishes as if by pure magic. Wouldn’t it be great if everybody just stopped paying for poisoned food? Just like that, agro-toxics would disappear. But I’ve been recently faced with how hard it is to change other peoples’ food habits.
Since my last post, more people that I love got really sick. Unfortunately, all my efforts into sharing my food knowledge have been showing to be of little use to help neither of them. Through this experience I’ve learned that when it comes to food, people can get really attached to old costumes and out of date ideas. Even when their lives are at stake, they rationalize to maintain unhealthy habits for different reasons: the pleasure particular foods give them; laziness towards all the work you have to put into consistently buying organics (plus the work to process and cook them); also the complications eating organics brings into one’s life (restaurants really mean something entirely different after one takes the food red pill).
Despite the tough lessons I’ve learned, I still believe agroforestry has to win over our food production system. Otherwise we will not have a healthy perspective to look forward to. I believe divine inhabits in all of us, and although habits can be hard to change, we all carry that potential within. Each of us finds this connection with the impermanent through different triggers. We just have to nurture a big ass trigger for a large-scale connection with as many people as possible, as fast as we can.
I’d like to finish this post remembering the wise Dr. David Servan-Schreiber: “being a doctor didn’t stop me from getting cancer, don’t wake up the cancer in you”. May we all be able to avoid waking up the cancer in us, through the right food choices, that only come with taking the time to acquire this important knowledge. I still believe it’s not about how many years we have on this planet, it’s about how we choose to live them. And I’m trying to keep my family as far away from the pharmaceutical industry as possible.
Food Culture 