The life-long activist and former monk Satish Kumar delivered an ‘Ode to the Land’ as his opening address to last week’s Oxford Real Farming Conference.
In it, Kumar reminded the wider world that “the land is our true security and our true life insurance policy”.
“As land feeds us,” he said, “we feed the land. It is a relationship of reciprocity and mutuality. Land and life thrive together.”
While extractive industrial farming treated the land “as a resource for the economy, a resource for making money”, Kumar said that: “Real farmers treat land as a source of life itself. They engage in regenerative ways of agriculture. Real farmers never take more than what the land can happily give; and they never take more than they need. Real farmers understand the economy of the land and abide by the law of the land, rather than being driven by greed and growth.”
Main image. Satish Kuma addressing the Oxford Real Farming Conference. Photo, Hugh Warwick.