On the 23rd April, we spent the day south of Amstelveen at De Meent, a social project and agroecological farm which brings undocumented people to work at the farm 3 days per week. Here, people belong to a community, are free to take on the tasks they enjoy most, and are part of a project that sustainably grows food for social (food) projects.
We got to join De Meent at one of their regular working and farming days for our Mycelia Farming Day, which meant that we were a large group consisting of people from Mycelia van Hoop, the Agroecology Network, Boerengroup, De Meent and other individuals (including students, researchers, farmers, people from AZCs (asylum seekers’ centers) across the Netherlands, and activists).
We started the day together with tea and coffee and by sharing the translation of a word (here: Community) in the languages of everyone present. The goal was to share something personal of everyone’s background and origin, and to celebrate diversity – which is essential in human society just like in ecosystems and agriculture, especially agroecology.
After receiving a small tour of the farm, we then separated into groups and started working on different tasks: weeding some beds; digging a drench to grow asparagus; harvesting spinach, radishes, spring onion and salads; taking care of the chickens; making a fence out of willow branches; and cooking lunch for everyone (also using freshly picked spinach, spring onion and eggs), which we enjoyed together after some hard but fun work on the farm.
During the tea and snack break, Martina from Mycelia van Hoop facilitated an interactive activity to reflect on several questions in small groups and later share them with the rest of the group. We created a collective imaginary map of de Meent, our experiences and why it is important for us to be at De Meent today. Some topics included what is important to us in farming and why it is so important to us; what agroecology means to us; what we can individually bring to the farm and what motivates us to be here at De Meent.
This exercise and working on the farm together brought out many inspiring reflections and conversations about people’s personal experiences around farming and what it means to them. For example, many people said that farming is so important to them because without it, we and humans around the world wouldn’t be able to feed ourselves and survive. So, farming was seen as one of our deepest and most important connections with nature. Others mentioned that agroecological farming to them means being in nature, looking after the land, being connected to the area they live in, and learning from it. Similarly, farming was seen as a way to care not only for the land but also people and their community. Many viewed being part of a caring community as an important part of farming in such spaces, which enables people to build connections and friendships.
These conversations also served as a reminder for why we all do this work, and a motivation to keep going. We hope to be back at De Meent soon, and to see you at our coming Mycelia Farming Days!
