This was such an engaging course looking at the politics, policy, and environmental consequences of the world food system. It is so much more complicated and interconnected than I had imagined. I think my biggest takeaway is the connection between industrial agriculture practices and climate change. Industrial farming has removed people from being connected to the land. Monoculture production of… Read more »
Contemplative practice #9 asks what kind of soil I plant myself in. It’s a great question. For a good part of my life, the answer would have been industrial soil—overworked, pushed for yield, with little time to rest. I was not at all unique. Most of my friends and colleagues had talked about their busy-ness like the weather, resigned about… Read more »
My favorite contemplative practice was from Lesson 8, Soil and Water. I think about soil every day, believe it or not, from the small amount that gathers under my fingernails when I repot my flowers to the large swaths of it that make agriculture possible. When learning about the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway, I thought about what an… Read more »