Local food is the very heart of community. It is the adhesive that binds us all together, our one true collective need, beyond opinions and ideals, concepts and beliefs. Local food is our lowest common denominator. It is the foundation upon which whole civilisations have been built! People coming together in cooperation over this collective need is community. Fukuoka talks of sitting around the kitchen hearth making idle gossip. He says the fire place is the centre of the universe! Within community we find our cultural identity, celebration through music, arts, myth and of course cuisine.

Eating together is maybe the most obvious act of community and when that community eats food it has grown, we create a strong and resilient cultural identity. Working together with growing food, harvesting, cooking, making jams and pickles, celebrating with eating and music are of such importance and it seems that we have lost this perspective. When we recognise that profit is collective, our success depends on community and community depends on the food we at and our relationship to it, then we start to organise ourself around essential aspects of our lives, naturally addressing issues such as pollution, climate change, nutritional and medicinal health, education, economy etc

Masanobu Fukuoka

I had the opportunity to meet Masanobu Fukuoka in 2003 at Vanadan Shiva’s farm in Dehradoon. He was a short man with a long white beard, indigo kimono and wooden chappels. He looked like a zen master. He was already 92 years old and spoke very little. One typing he did say was that only a fool could understand his relationship with Mother Nature.The clever man has created Artificial intelligence, nano technology and even sent a car into outer space but there is no water left to drink!!!!

Fukuoka was the founder of “do nothing farming”or Natural farming, which explored a non-interventional agriculture. An agriculture that recognizes that nature is already perfect and there is nothing we can do to improve upon her. Fukuoka expressed this do-nothing farming through non-tillage direct sown rice cultivation where he eliminated the need for any mechanization, chemicals, plowing etc At Solitude we have explored the same by valuing the huge diversity of plants that make up our cultural nutritional heritage in the context of a food forest. Fukuoka’s philosophy is often mistaken for techniques. He aimed at nourishing the human soul through honoring Mother Nature and understanding our relationship to Her.