act7_es

“So crop diversity, keeping it small, and moving crops around in a rotation is a time-honoured way, it’s nothing new. It was done years and years ago. There is a need to return to the small-scale ways where crops are rotated and care is placed into the soil to get the best out of the soil. What we harvest as a crop, nutritionally, for our own use as human beings for food, for the plate, is almost a by-product. Yes, in a sense it’s the end-product, but it’s a by-product of what the real cycle of life is about. So what goes on under the soil is, if anything, more important than what goes on on top of the soil.”

“Oh dear oh dear, oh dear, you know, what is attacking my food? I’m growing this food and something’s attacking it! I’ve got to do something about it! And some people scurry to the shop to see what they can buy, this or that, or the other. But, you know, the real wisdom keepers of organics, they know that it’s okay to allow 10% of your food to go to the biodiversity of life; why shouldn’t the caterpillars have some of it? Yes, within reason, and I know I haven’t got caterpillar language and I can’t speak nicely to the caterpillars: don’t take anymore of my cabbage. So, there are limits. But, generally speaking, if we allow a correct balance in what we grow, in a biodiversity the birds will come and pick the caterpillars. I’ve had people say to me ‘Wasps, what a nuisance they are!’ And I thought, well, are they really? I wonder what wasps do? And I studied wasps. And I discovered that wasps come down to these very caterpillars and pick them up when they’re small — whole, a whole caterpillar flying through the air, suddenly has wings!– and suddenly is no longer eating my cabbage! So, the wasps have a good use! We need to stop and study life carefully first, before running to the shelf, to the next poison chemical, to kill.”

“We don’t have to find a mountain to live on. We can connect through the eyes of a loved one, through a child, through an adult. But remember, we came in with nothing and we go out with nothing. But we can choose to leave behind a living library of life, a record of our time here on this planet. My journey, in my abilities as best as I’m able is to leave a good record for others to use. I believe it has a spiritual aspect to it to give something back to the collective consciousness of humanity that improves the quality of life on this beautiful planet. The Mayan have a saying: “Bei ti khan, Bei ti-lum” which also means ‘As in the sky, so in the earth’. As people who’ve lived close to the land, in their inheritance, they know the connection between the cosmos and Mother Earth. And we are the keepers of this beautiful blue-green planet, all of us, not just the indigenous peoples, because we are all indigenous peoples of our own land! We only have to touch it again!”

CONTACT: Michael Baker, Being Nature