What is your path with the way you feed yourself?
“What does the potatoes feel?”, an experiment about radically sourcing food, and taking back one’s authority about feelings and food systems.
“What is your path with the way you feed yourself?” This apparently inoffensive question refers to a deeper way of relating to the world. Is it Scarcity or Connection and Creation that lead the dance of your life? Many people won’t go over the scarcity impulse, coming from the victim story that “I cannot do anything about it alone” as long with supermarket as an answer to it with its procession of invisible destructions.
“What does the potatoes feel?” is another way of saying it. If nature in itself had a voice, what would it says?
Are you ready to abandon the cult of loneliness and “I’m gonna do it alone” modern occidental mindset? The story about not having the power to do anything about something is a long term story that have irrigated slavery, allowed the domination of men upon women and the larger scale ecologic destruction of Planet Earth.
“As modern culture is about surviving instead of living, food becomes a means to survival and therefore it doesn’t matter where it comes from or how it’s getting produced.” -Anton Henrich
This article is made of 4 parts and 3 experiments in corresponding regions. We did held space for wandering with the question like a ‘Possibility Menu’ (items for challenges and questions for transformation).
1. A local Market experiment in France
2. Be awareness in action and source food, Mexico
3. Food and health, Aotearoa New Zealand
4. An experiment to put your awareness in action
Are you believing your stories or are you willing to step into another way of relating to the world? This is what this article is about, as long with “what does the potatoes feel?” a reminder that nature feels, within us, whether ones likes it or not.
1. A local Market experiment in France, by Gabriel Lechemin
As the streets were freezing cold and rainy, a january day, the cold going through the layers of my jacket, I decided to wander, instead of staying in the place I use for my regular Possibility Menu. 9h30am, perfect time. I declared that“this is Possibility Menu!”, left home and head in the middle of the market, looking for some kind of ‘hot spot’ where to land the question.
C. and M. were there buying vegetables — I know them because we are on the same choir — and I started asking them.
Me: “what is your path with the way you feed yourself?”
C: “This is a spiritual path to me, when I was young my mother was healing me with the plants from the garden. When I had a sore throat, my mother was harvesting slugs and hanging them until the juice would fall into a glass. Then she was adding sugar to make a kind of syrup. When I drank it, the sore throat was immediately fading away in a couple of hours or at least a day.”
- “What led you to this spiritual path?”
- “We (both speaking alternatively) have always been involved in the environment, counting Milan eagles today, doing our garden. This is normal for us to make our garden, as nature is medicine and is healing us. It is the base from which emerges philosophy and then relationship, so we buy food from the local market, organic and we cultivate a small garden.”
Heading toward the bee keeper, I asked her the same question.
She answered “this is not my education, rather my life experience that drove me to consume local and organic food”
Most of the people in the market shared the same observation: “as health is the base, it is necessary to have access to good products”, some shared something about the quality, less food but in higher quality. Some other shared how they judge the quality with their eye, how vegetables, cheeses look, as the appearance determines where in comes from for a connoisseur.
After freezing more in the cold, I found out that the main feeling underneath changes in the habits of people regarding food is triggered by anger: refusal of Monsanto, big companies and a taste for vegetables that have a real flavor.
I felt a kind of relief about the level of consciousness shared there.
I was about to ask how they feel about their path, the last lady I questionned said “good” and shared an anger about the consumption going on and the satisfaction of living a simple life.
“What does the potatoes feel?” well, in that case: anger!
2. Be awareness in action and source food, Mexico, by Anton Henrich
An interview in Chiapas, Mexico, with an owner of a small Falafel Restaurant. This would seems very common, yet the person interviewed was able to share his feelings about this ‘disturbing’ question. Some might have let themselves be blocked by shame, guilt at realizing something fundamental about food.
Taking back your power means freeing yourself from shame, and first of all letting your heart speak. Will you do the same?
I started off with: “What’s your relation to Food?”
His answer was joyful and direct:
„It´s Love, Life and Passion for me.“
When I started to go a bit deeper and asked him if he knows where it comes from, he figured that he roughly knows from which state of Mexico his chickpeas come and the tahin that comes from his ex mother-in-law. The rest of the stuff comes from big supermarkets. He doesn’t know where the veggies actually come from but he knows the young men who deliver them right to the restaurant since they were children.
“I’ve never thought about who is producing my food.” he said with some sadness in his voice. “ I should know where it comes from.“ he continued. After a moment reflecting on this, he starts to find reasons why he doesn’t know the hands his food goes through before he turns it into delicious but probably not very nutritious meals. „You know,“ he says: “The chain is so long that it’s very difficult for me to put myself into it. I wish people would just come to my front door to deliver their own products to me. Or have a system that is very transparent and trustworthy.“
What I learned from my discoveries:
The pressure my friend and other people ‘have to make money’ and their survival strategies hold them back to find out what has happened to the food before it comes to them.
Even though a part of my friend wants to know where it comes from it takes too much effort to do . His preferences to spend his time on other things are not letting him take the steps necessary to get clarity on where his food comes from.
For him there would have to be a supply system that delivers the food right to his restaurant. I know that there are possibilities that he could get his vegetables delivered from a close and organically working supplier. He might not know this information and he might fear that his product would become less affordable to his clients.
My questions are now:
-What is holding you back from looking for already existing local, organic producers to get supplies from them?
-What’s the purpose for you to sell food? Is it survival or a higher purpose or maybe both?
Modern culture has disconnected people so much from their foods and amongst them also the actual physical food. Nowadays we have almost all food produced in an industrial manner amongst this also the organic food. As modern culture is about surviving instead of living, food became a means to survival and therefore it doesn’t matter where it comes from or how it’s getting produced. Though when the culture is about living also the path of food and its production could become alive and serving life.
In the modern permaculture movement and also the regenerative agriculture movement people start to care about the aliveness and the holistic food production. On the other side I don’t see how this movement can grow and browden so the majority starts to prioritize alive food over industrial survival food.
Therefore the combination of regenerative work with the soil, the land and the global ecosystem for food production with an alternative culture that is about living rather than survival is fundamental to maintain an ecosystem that is supporting humans.
Most people in survival mode will not stop consuming industrial food which is destroying our ecosystem. A new culture is more than ever necessary to bear the level of responsibility us humans are meant for.
To support the new culture to come, alive food is necessary to make it thrive.
“What does the potatoes feel?” , in that case: sadness.
3. Food and health, by James Andrews
I found myself in conversation, and was about to leave when I remembered my intention to explore this question. So asked : “How do you relate to food?”
At first a humorous reply, I love it!
I held the space, and watched it flow.
She very soon began to describe her discovery of the link between health and the food she was eating. And how industrial food was causing illness through adulterated products. When she discovered natural food sourced directly from the plants, And having overcome her fear of certain foods that she knew she reacted to, she tried them and found there was no reaction. This was the wake up call.
Then she went onto describe projects she’s involved with, helping people grow food in her community and how so many people have been helping and providing their energy and resources to these projects. This reinforced what I already knew, that food production harvesting, cooking and sharing is like a pivot point around which we can dance.
“What does the potatoes feel?”, they feel joy!
4. Are you ready for an experiment?
As you might not be anymore inclined to denial after reading this, therefore I invite you for an experiment.
For one week, organize yourself as you know excatly where your food comes from. You have no excuses anymore for not knowing.
Here are some comon ways that can help you with this:
-CSAs, Community Supported Agriculture
-Local Market with direct producers
-growing your garden
-exchanging products with other gardeners and producers
-being part of a buying cooperative
Alternatively, you can ask yourself, if you want more spice:
What would you do to get your food if you have no money?
Good luck!
Will you let us know what does the potatoes feel?
It all started with an experiment distilled in our Amoeba Cell, as we name it — a bunch of crazy people from all over the world, gathering in the Purpose of expanding the Thoughtware of next Permaculture, Archan Permaculture.
Hint: this is not about gardening, and it starts with inner gardening and at the end, connects to being Earth Stewards. This is not gardening with beds we talk about mostly, rather how we come alive to life and expands our Possibilities to regenerate humans and the Earth.
This article is made of 6 hands writing : Anton Henrich, James Samuel and Gabriel Lechemin. Thanks to them.