A history of Women's Self Help Economic Groups and their role in moving an entire state into profitable agroecological farming--for health, biodiversity, and resilience.
a wonderful success story of practitioner empowerment; I wonder how to apply to mechanized agriculture which needs the same overhaul. Does it need the indispensable dedication and service mindedness of Viijay Kumar? Do we have the cohorts of people who will take up the practices being taught by the best farmers in each district? Do we have 20 years for this to take root and even will it take root over the opposition of BigAg? Here in Canada there is another wave of advocacy gathering resources under the leadership of the Canadian Organic Alliance to promote farmer conversion to regenerative organic practices. The same practices Viijay talks about. As you have written the caution to not "copy what they did in Andhra Pradesh and expect it to work where you are. You will need to learn to see your place as a whole at work, and find the intervention points that hold potential for change."
How, in your own unique place on this Earth, can your community create conditions for a paradigm shift to happen?
a wonderful success story of practitioner empowerment; I wonder how to apply to mechanized agriculture which needs the same overhaul. Does it need the indispensable dedication and service mindedness of Viijay Kumar? Do we have the cohorts of people who will take up the practices being taught by the best farmers in each district? Do we have 20 years for this to take root and even will it take root over the opposition of BigAg? Here in Canada there is another wave of advocacy gathering resources under the leadership of the Canadian Organic Alliance to promote farmer conversion to regenerative organic practices. The same practices Viijay talks about. As you have written the caution to not "copy what they did in Andhra Pradesh and expect it to work where you are. You will need to learn to see your place as a whole at work, and find the intervention points that hold potential for change."
How, in your own unique place on this Earth, can your community create conditions for a paradigm shift to happen?
One aspect that really woke up the women's will and motivation was the health aspect: the impact of pesticides on their families. I think the health aspects of water quality, air quality, heat waves vs. cool oases, and food quality are starting to be understood, especially as we see the current deterioration of health, lifespan, and immunity in people in the US. Not sure whether Canada's lifespan is dropping equivalently, or incidences of illnesses going up so quickly, but I suspect it's not that different. I was shocked to learn that a close family member of mine had never heard of glyphosate or Roundup, much less the effects on health that I wrote about in The Ecology of Care (it's always funny when I secretly discover through a conversation like that, that someone close to me didn't actually read my book :) But this to me is one of the potential intervention points that might start shifting things.
The health aspect is what drives most of my customers of organic regen ag food, esp young moms. I find it odd that the current project here in Canada to gain policy leverage from the feds does not even mention health. I sent your article to several of our food policy people (including Thorsten Arnold whom you know) as a prompt to explore the way to get wide spread grass roots support in a mechanized large scale ag system. One idea that got some traction is how Vijjay created a tiered certification system so growers were motivated by recognition of peers. Maybe we do Organic (basic), Regen Organic (mid) and Real Organic (top tier)!
a wonderful success story of practitioner empowerment; I wonder how to apply to mechanized agriculture which needs the same overhaul. Does it need the indispensable dedication and service mindedness of Viijay Kumar? Do we have the cohorts of people who will take up the practices being taught by the best farmers in each district? Do we have 20 years for this to take root and even will it take root over the opposition of BigAg? Here in Canada there is another wave of advocacy gathering resources under the leadership of the Canadian Organic Alliance to promote farmer conversion to regenerative organic practices. The same practices Viijay talks about. As you have written the caution to not "copy what they did in Andhra Pradesh and expect it to work where you are. You will need to learn to see your place as a whole at work, and find the intervention points that hold potential for change."
How, in your own unique place on this Earth, can your community create conditions for a paradigm shift to happen?
a wonderful success story of practitioner empowerment; I wonder how to apply to mechanized agriculture which needs the same overhaul. Does it need the indispensable dedication and service mindedness of Viijay Kumar? Do we have the cohorts of people who will take up the practices being taught by the best farmers in each district? Do we have 20 years for this to take root and even will it take root over the opposition of BigAg? Here in Canada there is another wave of advocacy gathering resources under the leadership of the Canadian Organic Alliance to promote farmer conversion to regenerative organic practices. The same practices Viijay talks about. As you have written the caution to not "copy what they did in Andhra Pradesh and expect it to work where you are. You will need to learn to see your place as a whole at work, and find the intervention points that hold potential for change."
How, in your own unique place on this Earth, can your community create conditions for a paradigm shift to happen?
Hi Ian,
One aspect that really woke up the women's will and motivation was the health aspect: the impact of pesticides on their families. I think the health aspects of water quality, air quality, heat waves vs. cool oases, and food quality are starting to be understood, especially as we see the current deterioration of health, lifespan, and immunity in people in the US. Not sure whether Canada's lifespan is dropping equivalently, or incidences of illnesses going up so quickly, but I suspect it's not that different. I was shocked to learn that a close family member of mine had never heard of glyphosate or Roundup, much less the effects on health that I wrote about in The Ecology of Care (it's always funny when I secretly discover through a conversation like that, that someone close to me didn't actually read my book :) But this to me is one of the potential intervention points that might start shifting things.
The health aspect is what drives most of my customers of organic regen ag food, esp young moms. I find it odd that the current project here in Canada to gain policy leverage from the feds does not even mention health. I sent your article to several of our food policy people (including Thorsten Arnold whom you know) as a prompt to explore the way to get wide spread grass roots support in a mechanized large scale ag system. One idea that got some traction is how Vijjay created a tiered certification system so growers were motivated by recognition of peers. Maybe we do Organic (basic), Regen Organic (mid) and Real Organic (top tier)!
See Sherry Tenpenny's substack just out on organic labeling https://drtenpenny.substack.com/p/organic-food-labeling/comments
Beautiful!
Will you be sharing these podcasts on spotify as well?
Hi Koen, is there an easy way to do that? And thanks for connecting, I've been meaning to reach out to you.
https://podcasters.spotify.com/
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