FARMING AS A PROJECT
OF BELONGING
"A flower growing is hope in front of your eyes. You just need to see it."
Mohammed AbuJayyab
OUR GOALS
Our goal is to build a thousand small farms, in different parts of the world, in a period of ten years. How? Replacing machine energy to human energy, because we believe making beds and attending all the production process creates a community; working with our hands creates a community. Through low tech farming it is possible to invest in things that will stay in the place long term (sustainability). Manual tools instead of mechanic tools to avoid fossil fuels. Human energy: most of our budget is wages that go to people and can be transferred from one skilled person to others. So the sample farm is the base of training and knowledge for the people. And it is imperative that community support to build new farms.
MOTIVATION
The world we live in today presents us with a crisis that results from the constant tension between our desire to belong and our desire to be free. The refugees today are a victim of weaponizing this tension at a political level, but they are hardly the only ones. Our ever increasing urbanization is splitting us away from our small communities that we grew up in, from the neighbors that we used to know by name, and from places that we recognize by smell. We all come to big cities to seek our financial and social freedoms that come with the price tag of detachment.
It doesn’t have to be that way. Looking at refugees as a result of specific political crises helps us position ourselves as saviors that want to give them a hand to take them out of their misery. But the fact is that refugees are a symptom of the worsening crisis that is touching our humanity, and touching our deepest challenges of belonging. As people that experience this tension on a daily basis in our lives, we need to seek our collective salvation in working with refugees instead of trying to help them by charity at arms length.
SMALL FARMS AS
A FOOD SOURCE
Small farms that grow food locally produce food while big farms produce cash crops. Having a small farm close by that you could buy from directly bridges the increasing gap in the food supply chain and removes huge amounts of waste produced by the logistics of big agribusiness supply chain. Your farmer is no longer someone that makes a business decisions regardless of their health impact on you, but they are someone you know and care about as well as they do about you. Cutting the supply chain usual suspects – the super markets and big distributors – makes it possible to be small and profitable. Many farms sell directly to consumers through a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) that builds a closer relationship between the farmer and the consumer.
HOW POLITICAL
AND ECOLOGICAL
EDUCATION
CAN MEET
Getting a chance to learn about growing your own food from a refugee reverses the traditional roles that we perpetuate around refugees. The refugee helps you lead a better life by eating organic and healthy food that you watch grow. The refugee is no longer a victim, but is a helping hand that is extended to your society. A child no longer visits the farm to learn only about biology, but also about politics, economics and society. The children visiting the farm can offer in exchange their language, culture, and connection to the society that would be needed for a new member such as a refugee settling newly. The child stops being a passive receiver of knowledge and becomes an invested participant in it.