We have seen yet another year of unpredictable weather - increasing storms, hotter months of no rainfall leading to drought in our fields, and long wet autumns and winters that give no respite for the fields to recover effectively for grazing or sowing in the spring. Added to the climatic challenges, the dependency of our island on food, feed and fertiliser to produce food that is mostly exported off the island raises critical questions about food security and food sovereignty. Have we learned nothing from an Górta Mór? We may not be in a state of famine, but we are living among soil-depleted green deserts, overfed but undernourished, and with a reliance on imports that has harrowing reminders of the food dependency and heavy import/export patterns that were around at the time of the famine here in Ireland. We are living in a time of polycrises globally, and now more than ever the effects and shocks of these crises are ever present for us here in Ireland. Problems that used to be externalised as affecting communities in the Global South have made themselves so pronounced that there is no avoiding having to look at them. These are not new problems, but the effect of decades of neoliberalism that prioritised profit over people and wider nature, and which have been aggravated and exposed by the recent multiple system failures and crises. We are interested in Soil, Soul, Society - restoring ecosystems through agro-ecological food systems that can also restore the people working the land, restore the soils and wider biodiversity. It is important that social justice is a part of any food system or nature restoration project. How can our response to this food security crisis not leave anyone behind? How can we build local food systems that can make nutritional, organic and locally produced food available to everyone and give the food producers a good wage - reframing food as commodity to food as human right and agro ecological food producers as caregivers? Let us expect and demand food systems that are restorative for people and wider nature, restoring not depleting ecosystems and that are intended to feed local communities, not feed an external market. In our search for responses to the global polycrises, we are looking to our comrades and colleagues in other parts of the world, learning from and standing in solidarity with their efforts and responses to these crises. We have been inspired by the farmers in Kenya who have fought for seed sovereignty and challenging laws that made the indigenous and ancient act of seed saving illegal. We have learned of resilience, heritage and what sovereignty means to a nation under siege from farmers in the West Bank in Palestine. We have challenged ourselves at the limitations of what we have come to expect from our food systems and we are constantly searching for ways to decolonise ourselves, our minds and ways of being, and decolonise the food systems we are a part of. If ever there was a time to stand in solidarity with landworkers and food producers, learn from the struggles of peasants and activists over years of mobilisation, and understand the shared struggles and interdependencies affecting people across the globe - this is the time. If ever there was a time to stand and really listen to and act in solidarity with wider nature - this is the time. If not us, who? If not now, When? To see our webinar with the Kenyan seed saving Farmers click here
https://youtu.be/LnCnOslba7g?si=gqR6sK0jkOxJH_aU
