Food Heroes
-Food Hero from FAO-
One well-known food hero from the FAO's World Food Day campaign is Dr. Vandana Shiva. Being a renowned environmentalist and academic, Dr. Shiva has achieved major advances in food sovereignty and sustainable agriculture.
Food is a basic human right, and agricultural methods should be both socially and environmentally responsible, according to the principles that underpin her outstanding body of work.
The Navdanya movement, which assists farmers in adhering to traditional methods and encourages biodiversity protection, was formed by Dr Shiva.
In order to enable farmers to grow resilient crops without depending on commercial seeds, she founded seed banks through Navdanya that save native seeds. Together with empowering the community, this project fights industrial agriculture's loss of biodiversity.
-Japanese Food Hero-
Masanobu Fukuoka, an entrepreneur farmer and philosopher best known for creating natural farming methods, is one amazing Japanese food hero. Fukuoka advocated for little intervention and a profound regard for nature, challenging conventional agriculture practices with his outstanding approach. His theory promoted "do-nothing" farming, which enables crops to develop in harmony with their surroundings, and placed an emphasis on working with ecosystems rather than against them. Fukuoka uses techniques that improve soil health and biodiversity, including as mulching crops, avoiding tillage, and utilizing natural compost. His seminal work, "The One-Straw Revolution," has encouraged farmers all over the world to embrace sustainable farming methods that place ecological balance ahead of chemical inputs.
I became familiar with the work of Dr. Vandana Shiva through watching an excellent documentary titled "Seed": https://www.seedthemovie.com/ . I highly recommend it. The work of Masanobu Fukuoka is inspiring and I wish it was more widely known to people around the world. Although it is promoted as "do-nothing" farming, it actually requires a considerable amount of knowledge and work, which is made clear by this quote from a website about his work: "He makes it very clear that natural farming is not ‘abandonment’ – as this can lead to a complete collapse of the farming system. Rather, it is a methodology for the gradual transition of the farming system back to nature, in such a way that less work is required with each passing season, as the natural system builds upon itself." [From the Blog: https://www.permaculturenews.org/2020/07/25/the-philosophy-of-masanobu-fukuoka/ ]
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