Tending Our Land – M G Jackson & Nyla Coelho

Description

Tending our land is a simple, vivid and entirely new account of the great human enterprise of domesticating, selecting and tending successive generations of plants and animals to produce food. Universal in relevance, its contextual focus is India.

Intended primarily for policy makers and administrators of government, non-government, ‘development’ and business programmes that presently impact food production, it makes essential reading for academia and a discerning citizenry.

Above all, this is a story for a rapidly rising new generation of food producers – farmers, gardeners, land tenders, … and associated others. After five decades of witnessing the consequences of following the path prescribed by the chemical-based, loan-financed, corporate-controlled food production structures,it is meant to help them see that entrapment in the current industrial approach to food production is not inevitable.

The book presents a refreshing, new rationale and ethical imperative: we must endeavour to understand and abide by Nature’s Round – an ancient, but eminently relevant metaphor for our times.It urges readers to explore and develop this thought as a means to overcome the conceptual and emotional impasse at which we find ourselves today. It suggests that we attempt to relate to Nature by learning Her ways, and thereby create a novel civilisational Ethic of Permanence.