“Our obsession with Big Ag and production is based not really in food, it's about money and capitalism and driving growth and all of that obsession. So we have to understand that these two things are separate. They present as industrial agriculture, but actually the problem isn't industrial agriculture—it’s a symptom of capitalism.
“We can't just assume that someone farming over there is bad because they're doing industrial agriculture. Actually, they are reacting and responding to a series of policy decisions and political and economic levers that have been pulled by other people in order to force them to behave in a particular way, to produce a product that you know is going to not serve their interests, but is going to serve the people who are pulling the levers.”
Can regenerative farming fix our food systems?
One relatively effective action for an individual to combat climate change is going vegan. Industrial agriculture is razing the Amazon rainforest, facilitating endless suffering, and causing a health crisis. However, regenerative farmer Nikki Yoxall says whilst these things are all huge problems, going vegan doesn’t treat the root of the problem—capitalism.
Founder of Regenerative Women On The Land, Nikki joins me to discuss the patriarchal thinking embedded in our economic systems which trickle down to our food systems; the importance of accepting and celebrating death; the disconnection between humanity and nature; and the necessity to understand that animals—including farm animals—are a critical in healthy and functioning ecosystems. We discuss agroecology, the homogenisation of food, the disaggregation of food from our land supply, and Nikki ends by imploring us to invite farmers in to understand the complexity of the challenges we face rather than ignoring the generational wealth of knowledge, concern and connection held by the industry, many of whom are working to regenerate a healthy society from the ground up.
Patriarchy and Pasture | Nikki Yoxall