This isn’t going to be one of our usual weekly updates. I can’t type the date above without acknowledging today’s anniversary.
Ten years since the world watched in disbelief as the twin towers fell in New York. I was working in the heart of the City of London at the time. I remember the horror and grief and hopelessness of American ex-pat colleagues crowding round a television set in the staff canteen, using their mobile phones to try and get through to loved ones at home.
And I remember the fear we all felt that London might be next. We looked into the sky not to enjoy its beauty but in bleak anxiety.
Interconnection
What has this got to do with the world of environmentally-friendly food production? Everything.
It’s all connected. The consumerism, power politics and poverty that make conflict more likely, the headlong rush to environmental catastrophe as we pass peak oil production and are advised to spend our way out of economic depression (presumably whether we have jobs or not!).
Food doesn’t just appear on our plates
Working a smallholding or farm using organic/traditional methods is bloody hard work. Grower members of the Wholesome Food Association live each season not knowing if the weather will be kind to their crops, if feed prices will sky-rocket, if they’ll have enough customers to buy their produce.
And those customers often go to some inconvenience and often additional expense to buy food that’s been produced by wholesome methods. (Of course we know that we’re now paying the huge hidden long-term cost of so-called “cheap” food.)
Earth
I don’t know whether we’ll make it through the next fifty years. There’s a huge amount to do. But there are countless people working on countless initiatives for peace, sustainability and more human-scale living.
And it strikes me, not for the first time, that the name of our planet and the name of the substance which nurtures us is the same. Earth. Grain by grain, garden by garden, farm by farm, we are making progress.
Gratitude
So in memory of all those who perished on this day ten years ago, and who continue to die today by violence, and from starvation and thirst, I’m just going to say thank you to our members and supporters and to everyone whose hard work is making a difference.
I’ll end with this video of the late John O’Donohue reading his poem Beannacht (Blessing):