As we clean, restore and rejuvenate our environment, we can also focus on what we eat. Our bodies can utilise the benefits of various plants in nature. Plants in many forms like fruits, leaves, roots, bark, flowers, seeds, resin and oil add vital components for our growth and well being. Plants need to be fresh and locally available to best utilise these benefits. Anybody who has growing their own food, can tell you that nothing can beat the taste, color, flavour and vibrancy of freshly plucked fruits and/or vegetables. If you cannot grow and have to buy food from a local store, it is always good to know the origins of the food and how it was grown. Encourage your local farmer and markets to go organic and explore more plant variety and diversity.
Technological support already exists via advances in indoor farming, integration of artificial intelligence and results of numerous studies to help us towards growing different varieties of food in various growth mediums and climatical conditions. There is also a need for a better economical model for farmers that can help them with the knowhow to grow a greater variety of plants and herbs that are not only good for the diversity of nature, but also give the farmer better financial benefits.
There are many families and communities around the world that are already self-sufficient in terms of food productions and are more than happy to help others gain that freedom. The efforts towards such a goal, the learning, has to begin with children at home and school via hands on training of growing food. You can become part of this process by simply trying to grow some vegetables and greens on your balcony, terrance or in your garden. If you live in a community, you can encourage other members to develop a community farm. The future lies in the acquisition of knowledge to grow our own organic food and work towards forming smaller communities that are locally self-sufficient.
Learn more about our efforts in this direction – The Garden Project:
The Garden Project
The Garden Project is one of our organisational efforts towards establishing a locally oriented, selfsufficient world. The project is planned as a trial to test making a single village in Austria completely self-sufficient in terms of providing food throughout the year. The work is planned in three phases:
Phase 1:
Preparing soil and reshaping landscape for increased growing space. So far, 75 different variations of vegetables, fruits and flowering plants have been planted in the garden in order to check the different parameters required to improve the space over the next few years. The goal is to have a fresh supply of organic produce for the Open Attempt team members and for all the elderly population in the benchmark village.
Phase 2:
Depending on the interest of the residents of the village and the support from public and/or private actors, the goal is to encourage everyone in the village to grow their own food. For those who cannot, especially for the elderly, the idea is to start a community farm that can be maintained by the Organisation.
Phase 3:
Build an indoor growing space to supply fresh food for four to five nearby villages during wintertime and during any kind of unrest. The goal is to build a model that can be useful for other villages to replicate and implement.
You can follow us on our social media platform to see the progress and to volunteer