Jonathan Latham, Executive Director of the Bioscience Resource Project talks about his background and experience in science. He also answers questions about the food movement and what makes it different from other environmental or social justice movements. In this far-ranging interview Latham discusses why people should be in the countryside and how social movements get co-opted. He shows that the “virtuous circles” created by agroecology can provide us with a “free lunch” and suggests how to get more people involved in growing food and caring for the land.
“However, it’s important to understand that if you have a biologically based economy in which people are growing food and looking after the land, it takes a lot of people to do that. People have been brought to the cities under false pretenses. What we need to do is to make the countryside a more attractive and convivial place. And also make land available for people to look after themselves. Half the reason people all over the world are going to cities is that they are being kicked off the land. Then they become isolated from the countryside and can no longer go back again. But the countryside in many ways is the place where most people should be, and if we want to stop industrial agriculture we’ll need more labor in the countryside.”
Read the entire interview at: http://jonathanlatham.net/acresusa-interview/
