If you haven’t given it much thought – in these turbulent times, this is a very political page and you are very political readers . Growing your own food and medicine and making sure that others are fed, making your own remedies and healing yourself and others too are highly political acts which fly in the face of the current moves to distance us from our food sources. They banned in some places and have even received the ‘terrorism’ label and death penalty, if not summary execution at some times and in some cases.

In a world dominated by the unfettered growth of capital and the rising fascism that is necessary to protect, what we do here is an affront to the levels of control that these people have and want.

In the ongoing attacks on Palestine, Indigenous and local food systems were early targets. The concious destruction of thousand year old Olive groves and the flooding of underground fresh water systems with sea water were weapons in the genocide. Over the last decades the destruction of villages and the building of forests of imported and highly unsuitable Pine trees to hide traces if their existence is part of the continuing cultural erasure that is happening. We saw the same in North America with the willfull extermination of Buffalo along with the phrase ‘Every Buffako killed is an Indian dead’. The colonisers knew the depth of the relationship between Buffalo and some Native American nations.

Australia too isn’t lacking in examples of the destruction of food systems and knowledge in order to perpetuate the ever expansive greed of colonialism. The very existence of examples of Indigenous farming methods was buried for many decades with all Aboriginal Australians being relegated to the status of primitive hunter gatherers when that was only a single aspect of a wide and diverse toolbox of ways to get fed.

The clear aim of the WHO and all those other groups is to shift toward centralised food production and distribution (that is, control) against the reams of research papers that show that distributed food systems and locally grown and stored food are much more efficient and effective at stopping hunger. Not so profitable though…

We the people (don’t you love that phrase  though many Americans don’t seem to acknowledge that there’s more words after those) now have social media to spread knowledge of these things while in the past, we were limited to the dominant sources of news. We have these platforms where we can communicate ideas and organise resistance to the plans that ‘they’ have for our food and health care.

Grow your own food, host your own chickens,  make your own medicines and teach what you know. Heal yourself and others. Nothing can be more revolutionary than this.

We are all revolutionaries in some sense. Can we do more?

Ligaya Garden was initially created as a response to the heavy handed evils of the Abbott government, as a way to encourage folks to explore looking after themselves a little more through investigation what they can do in their own homes. This website was built to share what we learn and has covered water harvesting, composting, chickens, energy security and now we’re expanding it deep into herbal medicines.

We thank you all for your subscriptions, support and encouragement. Let’s hope we can all stay afloat together.

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