A few weeks ago I wrote some drafty thoughts about the SA Human Rights Commission Inquiry into Food Systems. Dr Donna and I submitted them, and Heart and Soil was invited to talk about our submission with the commissioners, tomorrow. Despite the difficult challenge of finding clean clothes, leaving the farm and stepping onto a plane, I have lots of excitement and respect. We’re invited to share our voice! What an honour.

I will not speak perfectly tomorrow, but I hope that is ok. I share some of the ideas and slides here, from those of you who hear from me often and might find something helpful in a slide or a sentence. Thanks for reading and thinking of me tomorrow.

Even though I feel honoured to share my voice with the commission, I also know we all have a voice, and power, every day. We already have a voice and power, we just need to live that power out. And importantly, we only have as much power as the person in our community who is struggling. As long as there are people struggling, we are part of the solution.

You could say that the whole world is our community, and of course that is so.

But what the farm is always teaching me is that focusing on very small actions can ultimately lead us into big things. Small actions have a big impact in so many dimensions of our lives, ranging from what we can grow to how effective we feel about ourselves and our futures. And small actions evolve in relatively easy and natural way: the person we can talk to and encourage, the seed or tree we can plant every day, the very small daily acts of feeding ourselves well and normalising those actions, ripples out. They ripple out best when they come from depth rather than a sense of obligation or a theoretical understanding of how the world is supposed to be.

While we carry the suffering of the whole world with us, somehow that suffering must remain light, as heaviness serves noone, and ultimately we have to know our own smallness. As farmers and growers, we have constant reminders of our smallness, in the form of every shield bug and snail that manages to destroy our dinner, and with it our hopes and dreams, right?

Government probably can’t create depth or lightness. They can preserve the spaces where depth, hopefulness, and nourishment emerges.

It’s challenging to help and support people far away from us, but we can be present in the place we find ourselves, and do what we can to make life better right where we are.

I believe government can cultivate nourishing systems by focusing on the small: equipping small-scale farmers, lowering the barriers to entry, and finding ways to support low-cost, high-labour systems. Imagine lots of small places for growing, with secure tenure where people know they won’t have to move.

We recognise that we are one of many small-farmers, and we really hope I say something that’s useful to many of you reading. My ego and self-consciousness might trip me up in a space like this, but I know that you all can be part of the conversation somehow, and I hope taking you along in my heart will make me less worried about how I’m perceived.

I’d love to hear from you if there’s something you’d like me to keep in mind.

Coming up:

18-19 April Our son Eli Emerson Adams (13) will be having the first exhibition of this year’s paintings, right here at the farm. Save the date!

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