Self-reliance for urbanites in the heart of BKK On the 30th of June, we visited Grandpa Urban Farm in the heart of Bangkok. What solutions are available for urbanites? How can people in the heart of big metropoles like Bangkok acquire more autonomy and resilience? Grandpa Urban Farm bring some relevant answers to those questions and issues! The goal of this article is to share a bit about the history, the vision and the solutions that we saw at Grandpa Urban Farm.
0 Comments
Inspire from the wisdom of the Lazy Man Lahn, the ethnic minority defender from Vietnam, strongly advised us to meet Oshi: “Oshi is a man of wisdom, a real farmer”! This was more than enough to stimulate our curiosity. We left Laos end of June to meet Oshi in Chiang Mai, Thailand. We had a wonderful talk about happiness. It's very hard to sum up our meeting, synthesize a few hours of discussion and harmonise a bulk of thoughts into an article. We originally came to discover Oshi’s farm, his project and his vision, but the discussion actually turned up speaking mainly about happiness.
Oshi shared with us the story of his community, his project and activities, but also his point of view on the system (the societal system in Thailand and globally) and the so-called “modernity”. In this article we want to render some taste of Oshi’s powerful wisdom. Here is an overview of the lessons we remember from our talk:
Volunteering at “Namkhan permaculture eco-farm”, Luang Prabang, Laos In this article, we try something new. We use our professional experience and newly gathered knowledge to establish a diagnostic / report of the Namkhan eco-farm project. We refer to permaculture ethics and principles. We also look at the key permaculture domains, i.e. domains that require transformation to create a sustainable culture. Based on those references, we reflect upon our personal experience as volunteers for the “Namkhan Permaculture Eco-Farm” project near Luang Prabang, Laos. First, we want to inspire from David Holmgren’s “Permaculture Principles and Paths Beyond Sustainability” and recall that permaculture can be seen as “Tools to Assist in Ethical Decisions: In attempting to lead an ethical life we need conceptual tools that will allow us to find what is appropriate, is practical for the situation and context, and yet will have some enduring value in chaotically changing times. Permaculture, and especially permaculture design principles, are conceptual tools which many people are finding useful in this journey (…) [of] ethical adaptation to ecological realities.”. With our analysis, we want to provide objective feedback and suggest some ideas. We also want to better understand our feelings about this project and eventually justify them. |
Author
Laura & Mathieu Archives
October 2018
Categories
All
|