Food Futures: A Poetic Essay

Has the great “disruption” begun? as the earth begins to shiver and become feverish due to our oil-drunk civilization gulping a billion years of ancient sunlight in a few decades Amory Lovins calls the ancient deposits the “primal swamp goo” We have almost eaten them, or burnt them fast and furious Causing global warming Permafrost melting Oceans swelling Soils running dry Rivers surging in floods Scientists warn, if the carbon dioxide levels reach 500 parts per million, the average temperature on the planet will become excessive, leading to catastrophic consequences. Vandana Shiva of Navadanya (nine seeds) and peasant women of the Himalayas Are saving seeds and biocultural patrimony An ancient forest, a river and a soil-based civilization Are showing the way of an agri-centric, forest-centric civilization Where the forest is not measured as a cubic foot of timber By containing water, providing oxygen and retaining soil Forests have nurtured humans and humans have nurtured forests They say in the Andes and the Amazonas Criar y Criar This is a culture of mutual reciprocity not of monetary exchanges Where wild herbs and non-timber forest products are the lifeline for forest dwellers Forests attract rain as well as pollinators Forests restore watersheds as well as foodsheds Deeper than deep ecology Much more robust than political ecology Way richer than natural capitalism, or nature’s economy ecosystems services or trade in carbon emissions Healthy forest and farms do not emit carbon they sequester carbon in the soil It is an organic part of the cycle Scientists say soil organic material is about 60 percent carbon. The ancient forest dwellers embodied this knowledge by keeping hedgerows and woodlots Shamans, woodsmen, and sages built the bridge Between the wild and the domestic Between the farm and the forest As if Henry David Thoreau (the bachelor of nature) and Wendell Berry (the homesteader, householder) are in the same continuum New economy of place-based foods Not in having more but in having less having more in less Acting like a tree in an ecosystem Giving more than taking from its habitat In places, not in spaces In homes, not in houses In horizons, not in frontiers In huts, not in palaces In milpas, not in factory farms In ejidos, not in private plots In wagas, customary laws in the Gamo Highlands of Ethiopia In Pani Panchayats, Water Councils of India In human and animal labor not in tractors, and farm machineries In chacras, the cultivated fields o