Spirituality and Ecological Hope

Fostering Ecological Hope
Today from Margaret Swedish:

[I will be away from my computer for a few days.  Next post: June 11.]

Just what I needed this week.  After viewing ABC’s special, Earth 2100, I badly needed a jolt of hope.  It’s not that I don’t agree with the bleak portrayal of life in this century of looming ecological and human breakdowns, it’s just that I still don’t accept that as the only possibility.  Oh, we have a hard time ahead of us for sure.  Because there will be trouble – but there will be, there is also, possibility.

So, the perfect antidote was to attend last’s night premier here in Milwaukee of a new film by ana Sophia joanes entitled, Fresh, with the attending phrase, New thinking on what we’re eating.  The film is produced by Ripple Effect Productions.  Milwaukee was one of the premier sites because the film features our own Will Allen, CEO of Growing Power, one of the world’s movement leaders when it comes to recreating the food production system, what we eat and how we eat.  We blogged about Growing Power and Allen the other day.

The film offers stark contrast between industrial agriculture, which is contributing its lion’s share to the destruction of the planet, and organic, family, or community farming, which holds the potential of not only helping the planet heal and regenerate, but offering the possibility of actual real food, as in food with actual real nutrition, produced in a locally based sustainable way, for local populations across the world.

So we have country farmers, and we have urban farmers portrayed here.  It is from one of the featured farmers in this film that the phrase “respect for the design of nature” comes.  It is from nature itself, how it actually works, that this farmer designed his farming methods, and you will be so inspired by him, like a shot of adrenaline.

Okay, so then I pick up my papers this morning and on the front page of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is this article: Rooftop gardens all about growth.  You can start imagining the future — gardens everywhere, backyards, rooftops, city parks, corporate headquarters (this is actually happening here, too, thanks to Allen), suburban open areas — as the industrial farming industry begins to collapse due to overuse and contamination of soils, and collapse of aquifers and irrigation systems because of overuse and climate change.  This is a vision for how we survive that gross error that became industrial farming.

Industrial farm

Keep in mind that most industrial farming produces not food, but feed for cruel, inhumane, and unhealthy livestock production, and for the non-foods that are killing us by diabetes, high blood pressure and obesity — things like corn syrups and sugars, GMO soybean and other seed oils, etc.

Last night we had the good energy of the presence of Allen, joanes, Growing Power board members, and a local chef who uses Allen’s food, to add a full measure of inspiration.  The beauty of growing food in community systems like this is that anyone who wants can do it, or find a way to be part of it — from getting one’s hands in the soil to actual cooking of incredibly delicious food.

Looks good enough to eat, doesn't it?

So I recommend the film and hope it draws more people into a movement that can really change the future of the planet.  Besides its damage to land and water, industrial agriculture is a major source of carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gas emissions, a propellant of deforestation all around the globe, a threat to biodiversity and the genetics of nature because of the expanding use of genetically modified organisms and the practice of monocropping, and a major threat to our health because of the GMOs, antibiotics, and hormones that we receive on our plate and take into our bodies every time we eat industrially produced food.

Really, the film will cheer you up — and make you feel like you want to be a part of this.