As a culinary nutritionist with a deep interest in nutritional ecology, I know that food touches everything in our lives and so can be a place where change can occur - both individually and collectively.
I make no claims that anything presented here are full and lasting answers to the complexity of what lies before us. What we are doing now is a ‘repair job’ because we haven’t planned our communities in a way that sustains life. Restoring community is part of the way forward (I’m taking the optimistic long view).
How we view the world determines how we choose to interact with the world. It has been our diverse traditions, cultures, stories, and music which sustained us - sustained life. These things are no longer fulfilling that role because they are no longer diverse, rich, complex, sacred and full of mystery. ‘Monoculture everything’ is now the norm. We have normalized that which is not normal. My local food system has been no exception. Without these various diversities there isn’t the necessary resilience needed to weather what is yet to come.
My work has also taught me that we can’t separate mental health from emotional health from physical health from spiritual health. It is all entirely interrelated and connected. Our personal health affects our community health. We have forgotten what is really required, and as a result, we (my community, at least) is collectively operating from a deficit position.
In order for all of this to happen, we need proper care - and one of the foundations for this is the accessibility to local, seasonal, nutrient dense, culturally appropriate food that has been grown/harvested to regenerative standards. This is easier said than done these days.
The bias and world view rooted in my work is that our deeply ingrained, collective, dominant, industrial value system of ‘fast, cheap and easy’ must die. It has had a long enough run. In its time it has shored-up conformity, uniformity, obedience and worshiped comfort - at all costs. It has also sought to side step the laws of nature, attempts to remain separate from consequence, avoids evolution, and ignores decay. Death is a part of living and life comes from death.
Small scale co-operative regenerative agriculture farms that support diverse forms of monetary exchange and are integrated with co-operative holistic care services (cradle to grave care) would be the collective aim as we all move forward. These partnerships and future alliances are intended to eventually influence other systems at the community level.
“When every economic relationship becomes a paid service, we are left independent of everyone we know and dependent, via money, on anonymous, distant service providers. That is a primary reason for the decline of community in modern societies, with its attendant alienation, loneliness, and psychological misery. Moreover, money is unsuited to facilitate the circulation and development of the unquantifiable things that truly make life rich.”— Charles Eisenstein
Here is the context.
“It may be that when we no longer know what to do we have come to our real work, and that when we no longer know which way to go we have come to our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.” ~ Wendell Berry
Change rarely comes without crisis. Village Poverty is our crisis.
The work (at a micro level) is to re-establish the unmet individual and community needs of reconnection and trust, through the pillars of personal care and food. After almost 400 years of colonialism, white supremacy, genocide and capitalism, we all have a lot of healing work to do in my region of the world - as was highlighted in the Truth and Reconciliation Report and the MMIW report
We have an opportunity to examine our beliefs and the belief systems that were put upon us - and then act accordingly. Our energy crisis, climate crisis, monetary crisis, food system crisis are all symptoms of the dominant belief systems. We all know that the social systems, which were predicated on these dominant belief systems, are no longer working for the people and the planet. It is time for a culture change.
Nipun Mehta believes that four key societal shifts can transform our culture: from consumption to contribution, transaction to trust, isolation to community, and scarcity to abundance.
Here where I live, wise Ojibway & Cree elders who keep Traditional Ecological Knowledge will tell you there is an order of things (and it is mostly circular): spring, summer, late summer, fall, winter; birth, aging, disease, decay, death; nothing in nature lives for itself; in nature after a period of growth, is a period of rest. Nature is never in a period of constant mass production.
The way of life in the modern world does not honour nature’s cycles. And because we are nature, we and we are no longer living in these cycles, we are not honouring who we innately are. All life wants to be honoured.
Studies done in my little corner of the world are indicating that climate change has arrived already as we are warming faster than other areas in my country and the world.
Studies also show our population is quite unwell. We have higher than average rates of chronic disease, postpartum depression and postpartum depletion, and higher rates of suicide. Much of this is from a collective dysfunctional way of life. What is missing is the container of true community where we feel safe, we are seen & recognized, we are heard and held. This is where trust is built, reconnection begins and necessary behaviour and cultural shifts start.
“A better system will not automatically ensure a better life. In fact the opposite is true: only by creating a better life can a better system be developed” - Vaclav Havel
This initiative is a very small undertaking (that builds on resilience strategies), in an era where we no longer seem to have the luxury of time and feel, out of desperation, the urgency to scale out and scale up with our projects. It feels more like nudging in the whirlwind of chaos than a true proposed systems change - which seems to come with a level of certainty and lots of planning when all elements are so tightly synergistic. This all essentially boils down to bridge building & field building, an openness to be innovative and when necessary - become disruptive.
The goals are simple.
continue to erase ‘village poverty’ by restoring the ‘social glue’ through intergenerational relationships & ceremonies, by celebrating local distinctiveness, by promoting support networks, and by identifying economic opportunities that support drawdown in the small communities that have identified a ‘readiness’. Japan’s eldercare model has been inspirational.
continue to support, diversify and stay educated on alternative forms of currency at the local level, assisting in restoring autonomy, relieving poverty and promoting inclusion. Inclusion is one step closer to participation.
continue to establish land trusts for co-operative farms and co-operative holistic care businesses
reclaim food sovereignty and food security in this bio-region, at the grass-roots level, to thwart the epidemic of diseases related to diet and lifestyle
continue to expand the conversation around de-growth at the individual and community levels and in doing so, change the story about what thriving might look like in future years
There are obstacles.
“You can not build ecological integrity without human integrity. The land reflects the people.” - Ray Archuleta
sustainable localization depends on the removal of hidden subsidies that makes global trade possible. This is not a federal priority nor will it be in the near future.
the mandate of the current provincial government is to maintain the will of large corporate interests, and the north has always been their playground. The north is the economic engine of the province -> mining, forestry, hydro-electric power are sacred cows
without continuing education and deep cultural roots, our local extraction economy quickly erases all holds on tradition. Poverty, addiction to convenience, as well as, the preference for ‘fast, cheap & easy’ continue to undermine small gains.
keeping local currencies circulating when our economy has become delocalized and when seasonal local producers are competing with year-round cheaper imports, is a challenge (and shopping habits are hard to break). Local currencies have a tendency to accumulate in the hands of a few, and it doesn’t help that the percentage of use among the local population is still relatively insignificant. So, people get burned out, the novelty wears off, and it doesn’t get used to its potential.
going against our own family patterning and the collective belief systems of the community (that have been perpetuated by capitalistic beliefs and values for over a century) is a recipe for divide and isolation.
So what are the strategies?
“Live the question now. Perhaps then, someday in the future you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer. “ - Ranier Maria Rilke
go where you have influence; there seems to be more of a readiness in populations under 30 years of age, with high rates of mental illness, poor employment prospects, exclusion from the economic opportunities, dissatisfaction with the status quo. Also, smaller communities that have been gutted of services have a readiness to embrace newer strategies
Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women Report’s recommendations are legal imperatives based in "international and domestic human and Indigenous rights laws, including the Charter, the Constitution and the Honour of the Crown.”- Qajaq Robinson. If implemented, they will assist in making policy changes, at the federal level
current allies: Ontario Co-op Association, Slow Food Canada, local NFP organizations and charities with a food mandate, Ontario Native Women's Association, FN reserves with land based programming and engaged elders, private independent business (grocers, book stores, holistic care givers, restaurants, permaculturists), farmers, students, many town and a few city councillors, mothers & grandmothers, ancestors and most of all - local biology
future allies: engage with new immigrants being funnelled to this area by the federal gov’t - they still have their traditions intact which tend to value food and care, they bring with them new perspectives and ways of knowing
the benefits that have emerged are: diversified supply chains for micro producers of food and their support services, new local producers, collaboration between businesses as a newer norm, living seed banks have been established, alternative modes of care are being embraced in the absence/shortage of professionals in our health care system
the factors that have generated the benefits to date have been: the internet and social media channels for communication & promotion, community lectures and meetings, project led trainings, systems change ideas are moving from the fringe to the mainstream, investing in personal relationships, reaching out to professional bodies for help and guidance, a willingness to unlearn, & loving the ‘unloveable'
have the conversations... dance with the difficult ones, stay open to unfamiliar ideas, read, blog, vlog, diversify your life - it where you will find resilience