A Day in the Life at UN Women of the World
March 18th Report UN WOMEN 2016
By Joanne Cheng
The sixth day of UN Women World Conference 2016 featured an important panel discussion on women’s leadership program pressing environmental and social issues. Below is one of the speeches on environmental advocacy presented by Temple of Understanding: Food Sovereignty,Women and Sustainability, the Roots of System Change”
I’m part of a organic farm on Cape Cod called Pure Joy Farm in Massachusetts. I just want to tell you how transformative my life has become by having the direct experience of working on farm watching the miracle of food grow, being able to wonder in the farm and pick up a little bit of arugula, eat my micronutrient without even putting them in a plate. Its really is easier about that; I had the experience of get back and understand chicken a little bit more, having to relate to a flock of them. for my own dietary practices, I know these chicken live in what my niece call it Tajmahal of chicken coops. Even when they are contained and protected from cayotes, they have a huge area to roam; they are eager to search for bones, they have a interesting practice, they scratch the ground without looking.
They then buck up and look down what they uncovered, its a interesting method of digging up the bugs or worms. Eating these fresh eggs so close to the source, experiencing those egg yolk that look like sunrise, they stand up tall, the color is vibrant. unless the color changes, there got to be problems with the feed, you can actually think about what leftover food you put into the feed of the chicken a few days earlier and understand you might have a lot of garlic. Cape Cod is basically a sand farm so we are farming in sand with seaweed. There are particular season involved, we have to pay attention to when the tide would rise. Incredible amount of seaweed dumped on the shore.
The progress thats made in agriculture is really to understand that we are not doing extractive agricultural model. Its not about heavy equipments going in and digging through the soil and turning it over. It’s actually layering it on top, and developing and protecting a network of interconnectedness that’s going on in the soil. Those bugs, those microbes, those worms all really really matter. Its being all part of the cycle of carbon sequestration which is Carbon is pulled out the air by using from different kinds of lagoons and different kinds ground covers, those can pull the carbon and bring it back to earth safely held for us. There are miracles happening in this line of work. There are local regional development happening and there are enough farmers markets. Farmers are thinking if you plant that I will plant something different. The market provides socializing opportunities for people to share and barter their local wares, local honey, or chocolates. What nourishes me and our local community on Saturday people of all ages come together in a very grey winter. Community based market place was normal a hundred years ago. but now its much more money based, profit based, environmentally destructive kind of exchange, using too much oil.There are so many levels to think about what happened to agriculture. how we will feed and nourish our local communities. What we put on our table or in our mouths are all critical issues.
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