THE PILLARS.

reconnection.

As beings, we should be preparing to contribute to the food system of the future. Real Roots Food Systems has a mission to help shift the collective mindset, to one where everyone in the community truly has a way to participate in this new food system. Whether this is through contributing to local composting, volunteering at one of our local farm sites, buying into our seasonal food shares, or (and ideally) growing a small, if not considerable, portion of your own food — we strive to support it through any means available to us. We must understand what it actually means to control the production of our community’s food…and the people within the community should have actual stake in that taking place.

I personally believe that we have left the production and quality of our food in somewhat dubious hands for long enough. Our society’s current model of large scale industrial agriculture is in need of overhaul…and particularly the importing food from far away countries is not built to last. Often it is not the fault of the large scale farmer’s we currently leave most of our food production up to…Here at home they are trying to compete with foreign countries with much lower wages — while abroad they are only responding to the demands of America’s rampant consumerism. Convincing the average American that expecting oranges to be for sale at the grocery store in January is unnatural and harming our environment may take a while…but getting someone to hop in and volunteer at their nearest farm once a month should not. It is of utmost importance to understand the process of growing our own food, and RRFS has a mission to make that idea simple and accessible. Our responsibility is to ourselves. It’s to our family and friends. It’s to our planet and the various species that work so hard to keep everything in balance. We are not separate from nature. We have to understand that we have a right to consume what we need to live, but if we fail to do our part in replenishing it we are forgetting the one true job we have as a species.

participation.

One of, if not the main pillar of RealRoots is that we are seeking to create a model for increased participation in one’s regional food system, in whatever region of the world you may find that our concepts apply. We have observations about the disconnection from our food that has resulted in our society, and a potential model for how we can begin to reclaim that connection through low-barrier, guided and intentional participation in a farm that has adopted this model. The ultimate goal is the decommidification of food in as large a capacity as possible without having any of the people of the world suffer unnecessarily as the result. We believe that a certain angle that we could take towards achieving this is having as many people participating in an aspect of growing their food as possible, learning the skills associated, and then incorporating growing food into their own lives as realistically as possible. The wheels of time keep turning…and the powers that be continue to influence our lives at a macro level that is hard to fathom. This helps us keep hopeless idealism in balance…and the reality is that some will never have the time, means or space to grow all of their food. However, we hope that our efforts contribute to helping people take one step closer to controlling their physical sustenance, and thus their right to exist.

biology.

Another piece of our current food system that is not built to last is our reliance on chemical inputs to be the main source of fertility for our food. The current scientific paradigm is that for food to be grown effectively and at a large scale, fertility must be replaced with synthetic chemical inputs on a regular basis. We reject this notion at RealRoots, and have made the opposite commitment. One of the pillars of RealRoots is the concerted effort to utilize biology as the main feature of our fertility plan for the land and the produce we grow. We believe that if the right conditions are provided, that is 1) low-till physical soil management, 2) regular cover cropping, 3) regular addition of compost, vermi-composts, and soil inoculates and 4) the introduction and protection of the proper predatory microorganisms, the soil will begin to regulate itself back into the proper cycling of nutrients required to grow annual vegetables. Extraction is real…but the soil is unfathomably abundant if it has the proper lifeforms present to make that abundance accessible.

food as light.

How well plants are able to absorb light translates directly into how well the plants are able to uptake nutrients and have them be readily available to the human or animal that consumes them. Understanding our food in this way is critical to relating to our bodies, our crops, and our environments in the most holistic way. The sun is the source of all life on the surface of the planet. Even at the depths of the ocean where the sun doesn’t “reach” the lifeforms there are subsisting on a chain of lifeforms that at some point need the sun. So re-establishing this relationship to our sun as the original life source and understanding the light it emits not just as heat and visible light.. but as information…is foundational to how we at RealRoots relate to growing our food. We believe in supporting the newly developing understanding and re-remembering of the fact that our food…at its most basic level…is a collection and concentration of light.

objectives.

1. To help the citizens of Richmond to participate in the building of a new, regenerative food system for our collective community.

2. To protect our soil and our water from threats both seen and unseen. 

3. To educate the current and the next generation on what it will take to be proper stewards of the land and of the planet as we enter the next era of human existence

4. To help research and develop the systems that will be required to strengthen and protect our food system, and ultimately our communities.

5. To create a hub of shared agricultural and nutritional knowledge for anyone worldwide that is committed to the shift of human consciousness and the liberation of the masses.