Food & Water featured

In Catalonia, a community-driven initiative has produced a successful case of ecologically aware agriculture, centred around the principles of degrowth.

The rivers, those beings that have always inhabited different worlds, are the ones that suggest to me that if there is a future to imagine, it is ancestral, because it is already present.

In 2017, researchers set out to calculate the environmental cost of the average loaf of bread. They found that the biggest impact came from growing the wheat used to bake it, with around 40% of the damage they measured coming from the runoff of synthetic fertilizers into the environment.

As a small research team of activists, practitioners and early career researchers participating in the British Council Farming for Climate Justice Programme we set out to learn more about the potential role of farmer-led and community-saved seeds in realising just climate resilience.

For permaculture to meet its potential, I believe these things must change. This list isn’t meant to be comprehensive. It’s just five things that I tend to notice often.

So what does happen when a family, with four hundred acres of historically abused land on their hands, decides to let go and let the land lead the way? To find that out, you’ll have to buy the book and read it yourself, which I wholeheartedly recommend.

As a wider reflection on succession, if farming families are able to pass on their core values – which in the majority of cases include safeguarding land, and producing good quality food at fair prices – as opposed to their outdated and sometimes damaging operational methods, we will see truly significant transformations in our food systems.