Distillations/Constellations #2: the family farm
This past week, I listened to one of the best podcast series that I've heard in a long time. It's called Landed, by Farmerama, an "an award-winning podcast sharing the voices behind regenerative farming." (No, this isn't a sponsored shout-out, just a true recommendation!)
Not to give too much away, but the main thesis is this: Col Gordon, a farmer's son, goes back to his family farm in the Highlands of Scotland intending to pick up the reins, learns that "the family farm is a colonial concept", and has a journey of self-reflection which involves delving into colonial history, systemic issues around farming, and relationships with land.
It stood out for me for a variety of reasons. The podcast host is the person at the heart of the story. He's not a professional podcast host with NPR voice, he's not a journalist who has delved deep into a topic for the duration of an investigation cycle – he's a farmer who tells us, in this 4-part podcast series, about a journey he went on.
The episodes covered different disciplines and issues deftly, switching between taking a personal lens and systemic one, speaking to experts but rooting it in a personal story, in a way that felt so captivating and authentic. And one of the key learnings is this: the way that government departments and bureaucracy have drawn artificial lines between interrelated real-world topics (eg. different departments for land use, commerce, tax, housing, etc) makes having a holistic relationship between land and community extremely difficult, and this is harming us all – the land, the people, the environment, and biodiversity.
That finding – that artificial categories do more than just create a bit of bureaucratic chaos, they create actual harm, and in this case, harm that at some point we won't be able to undo – feels like something I keep coming up against in vastly different areas of my reading and learning.
But what might it look like to get rid of those categories and boundaries, and how might we go about building an alternative? In this podcast, they look at community ownership of land, and how banding together to pool resources and build solidarity can make a real difference in creating sustainable and inclusive approaches for the farmers, the environment and people who want to be part of these communities in some way. In the last part of the podcast, the host encourages listeners to talk to their neighbours, to reach out to people and to learn and listen (and, in a line that stood out to me for a number of reasons – Germany, I'm looking at you – to "not let our guilt about the past lead to our inaction in the future.")
When I was writing my book, I struggled with how to finish it in a way that wasn't just reiterating all the problems, and I actually ended up saying something fairly similar. Talking to your neighbours, expressing and living in solidarity with other people, really do feel like the foundations for addressing a whole host of problems that we're facing. In a way, that sounds so...daunting. But it's also not, in a way. It can just be a series of smaller actions that build up to something bigger, eventually. It can be a 'good morning' to a neighbour; a knock on the door and sharing a couple of slices of cake; an offer to water plants.
There can be online equivalents, too – showing support for others, standing up for someone who might be facing hate speech, for example. I've come across this labelled as "digital civil courage" here in Germany – showing up for each other online, taking responsibility for how people get treated in front of you. Easier said than done, I know – but worth thinking about as we go into the week.
Links and things
- This week I'll be talking about my book with friends from the wonderful Numun Fund, the first dedicated fund for feminist tech in, and for the Larger World. Registration is open now, and it's on Thursday 8th Feb at 13 UTC.
- I was excited to see this online recently: "When Kindness Kills: How algorithms accelerate savior swarms" – introducing the concept of "saviour swarms", an overwhelming flow of concentrated collective action, motivated by an uninformed desire to help, escalated by algorithmically-mediated communications, as defined by the authors, William R. Frey and J. Nathan Matias. It applies analysis of the long-talked about concept of white saviourism to the digital world – specifically, to online platforms.
- I'm enjoying the Vittles newsletter so much these days – Season 7 is about Food and Policy, and last week's issue The Fiscal Theme Park discussed how VAT (Value Added Tax) affects eating habits and restaurants in Britain.