Where Do We Go From Here

64 Reflect “And when I asked little Lisa where eggs and milk come from, she said, ‘From the shop!’, and she had no idea about farms at all!” Ah, for the good old days when we all milked the cow and gathered the eggs and… washed clothes by hand and cut wood for the stove and died early of curable diseases... ok, not all good I suppose. What we may have lost is the sense that the land we lived on and in was deeply important. We once needed to care for it so it would care for us. Industrial farming and the national and international transit of goods have led us far from any sense of our reliance on, and appreciation of, the gift of place God has given us. No wonder so many – especially younger people – are searching for something more authentic, sourcing local produce and talking about ‘food-miles’ in relation to what they buy. Of course, in so many places on earth, people still rely on the capacity of the land on which they live to sustain life. As the climate changes and regular seasons fluctuate, terror grips communities as they struggle to plan for cropping and survival. I watched in Kenya as a single engineer led a group of villagers in building an ABM-funded sand-dam across the local river. Sweating men wielded sledgehammers, smashing slabs of rock from the sides of the river. Those slabs were carried away on improvised stretchers of bound branches, then placed into the dam wall. Women mixed concrete in 40 degree heat. No-one was getting paid. The dam was the payment. Come the monsoon