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Feeding the World as if People Mattered: Taking the right lessons from small farm systems - book excerpt
Amid plantation monocultures and industrialized farms built to maximize production at the expense of these social and ecological public costs, there are also many communities where economy and ecology are not in conflict. On small farms in India, Bosnia, and the USA that I profile in Feeding the world as if People Mattered, they are complementary elements of the same force. All embrace ecological diversity as the best path to keep the farm. Farming is a means to build institutions, create life-giving spaces, and identify the value of care work. In focusing on how small farms can provide space for solidarity amid rising temperatures, fascism, and inequality, smallholding farming has a radical potential for connection, mutual aid, and social reproduction in the twenty-first century. In lieu of technical fixes that these farms might offer to solve the problems of the world, I offer a few broad lessons. Lesson one from Araku, India: Farming is a way to keep families on their land. “Our initial focus was really on education and development,” explained Prandeep, a field officer for an organic coffee program. We were drinking Araku coffee in his office as his team explained the kind of work they were doing...
