Our ideology
"Man believes he is invincible, invulnerable. Nothing could be further from the truth."
Lynn Margulis
"If someone asks me if in order to transform something it is enough to affirm that it is possible, I will say that it is not. But I will also say that to transform implies knowing that it is possible to do so"
Paulo Freire
“The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings.”
Masanobu Fukuoka
Human beings both on this side of the world and others have historically lived in areas where persecution, indifference and solitude were present. Those who are different and, who think, speak, feel and love differently are marginalized and punished. This is because they are not understood or do not want to be understood.
Why are humans exterminating both themselves and earth’s other species? Is this an ethical problem?
At one point in history, we started becoming more human, developing thought, affection, controlling fire, creating technology, language, art, science, religions, philosophy and myths among many other things. In contrast, today we are destroying the natural world, we are driving ourselves and others out of the social world.
Human beings imagine and think of multiple possible futures. Whether these worlds are oppressive or freeing are closely related to how they are imagined and intended.
There is always something that allows us to live, think and dream of better worlds. We need to change the meaning of being alive, break norms, and pick and dig through the gaps where innovation is emerging. We are in a critical era that creates situations that favor the emergence of purposeful and ethical thoughts.
The meaning of life leads us along paths already traveled by people who have established dreams and invite us by their path to walk with them. People who want this world in which we live to celebrate life. They want children and young people to be sure that the future they desire exists.
They have passed on to us a way of thinking that embraces the human qualities of thinking, feeling and loving, which for some reason today is removed from humanity. We have to be mindful that thinking differently is dangerous, it hurts both those who think differently and the systems that do everything they can to silence them.
Current social, historical and cultural conditions are conductive for ideas and thoughts but are also permissive of new idea of ethical and creative thinking.
Life itself is chaotic and disorderly and because of this it is full of ideas and dreams that allow social, cultural, scientific, historical, philosophical and artistic progress and advancement. People always have the courage to contribute to paradigmatic upheavals and crises; they are not coincidental or miraculous.
Our time is both rich in knowledge and lacking in regards to thought and reflection. We are in a crisis of reflection, ideas and ethics. However, there is always hope in movements of transformation, in the emergence of critical consciences, and in an awakening to new ways of reading the world and thought.
Unrestrained curiosity and astonishment are characteristics of children that often annoy adults. These qualities, curiosity and astonishment, must be nurtured in a world that tries to numb them.
Let's think about children, youth and women who live in this world that does not welcome them. They want to live in a society that takes care of the different and complicated, and that addresses their needs. They want to be allowed to think, to be, to grow and to build the life that they want to live.
Promoting thinking and axion requires thinking about how to make impoverished children, youth and women learn and think about what is possible and to practice a culture of welcoming differences and complexity that will allow them to build their future and the present.
Today we have the knowledge and technologies to create this future and present. Why don’t we? Because we need ethics, specifically ethics approached from a scientific perspective.
Throughout the history of evolution nature has sustained life, created and nurtured communities. For billions of years nature has maintained these communities at all stages of life. This is because natural selection favoured communities where individuals acted together for the benefit of the community. Humans call this behaviour ethical. This is why ethics has to do with community, for the common good and sustaining life.
And the way to sustain life is by building and nurturing communities from the local to the global level because the major problems of our time are systemic problems. They are all interconnected and interdependent and require systemic solutions. Solutions that do not solve a single problem in isolation but address it in the context of other related problems.
This is why we consider Organic Urban Agriculture to be community oriented and that it contributes to solving a number of large issues according to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG): reducing our dependency on energy (SDG 7), promote gender equality (SDG 5), produce healthy food (SDG 2), improve public health (SDG 3) because many illnesses are related to our diet. Organic Urban Agriculture also contributes to lessen climate change (SDG 13) which in turn, reduces the number of climate refugees and migrants.