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Subtle Agroecologies
Under culture you get ritual and agriculture,
it felt literally like what it means to be going back to being human
I hunger to be part of a community that holds at the centre,
so it can hold me, remind me when I get lost in my ‘busy-ness’,
when I forget about the sacred … be present
where I can hold this space for other beings, all beings.
Deep changes are, more often than not, slow gradual processes that seem so natural that we hardly
notice they are even happening, like the cultural changes taking place beneath the soil, in our guts, and
at our tables. I’m hungry for change.
I understand collaboration of life-giving and not life-taking.
The creation of living community in that time and space
helped create a collective mindset to preserve
and create energy that is positive.
Let’s go to the townships with this. Because in the townships, we do get to reach people who are practicing organic gardening,
who are using indigenous knowledge to produce.
These refections from participants document how FieldTable enlivened ways of coming to know
through the interrelationship between themselves and the animate matter of life. Within the liminal
space of this food ritual as refugia, our human capacity for naturecultural thinking and being-with
was enlivened through personal and collective intra-actions with food, artefacts and substances.
Their words speak of a longing for more sensuous experiences, for expansive conversations and for
regenerative cultural and agricultural practices that foster life-giving interconnectedness between
the personal body, the collective body and the body of land. In an exchange with Flora, Miche
refects on the signifcance of naturecultural rituals within agriculture and explores how FieldTable
contributes to such a recovery of the ‘cultural evolutionary potential’ of ritual (Turner, 1985: 165):
For us humans to be discovering what it means to be truly here is to reconnect with embodied knowing.
Being in a continuous relationship with the matter and processes of life is what makes us natureculture
creatures: our lifeblood, our life capacity and our consciousness comes from continuous interaction and
relationships through our bodies with the dynamic fow of the cosmos. Being in touch with, noticing more,
with spaciousness and focus, is what ritual allows, a space and time for attuning and attending through
our bodyminds with the living processes of the Earth. It also gives a great sense of joy to be in a ritual
that is respecting the self and the collective within the naturalcultural. Ritual connects us to the life force.
Conversation Exchange between Miche and Flora (5 June 2020).
FieldTable offered a taste of the catalytic power of the life force of exousiance which Salami
identifes as a stimulus of energy and will for change. FieldTable was a threshold space, a naturecultural refugium for people to experience their bodyminds, within communitas, as an instrument
of participatory and political consciousness in a relationship with the biodiversity of the land.
Encounters with each other and the matter of food within this contemporary ritual form generated
new thoughts, openings and actions. The initiatives emerging from FieldTable were wide-ranging
and continue to unfold, and include: the commission of a large-scale FieldTable artwork for the
farm offce; the impulse to create the infrastructure for food sharing with staff at the farm where
FieldTable took place; the Sustainability Institute linking to a local cooperative food hub and
creating food citizen lunches from the food garden and a follow up Agroecology Ndaba forum
exploring agroecological training with educators, students farmers, food activists and policymakers. Daryl Jacobs, Deputy Director at Elsenburg Agricultural Training College refected on the role
of food and soil rituals as offering transformative experiences of nature-based farming for young
trainee farmers:
What I value and treasure is the real deepened transformation … your healing of soul and soil. It
emphasises that we are part of one system, but unless we transform our thoughts processes from deep
within, from the soul, it will be superfcial.
Conversation with Daryl Jacobs (12 September 2016)
Subtle Agroecologies
Under culture you get ritual and agriculture,
it felt literally like what it means to be going back to being human
I hunger to be part of a community that holds at the centre,
so it can hold me, remind me when I get lost in my ‘busy-ness’,
when I forget about the sacred … be present
where I can hold this space for other beings, all beings.
Deep changes are, more often than not, slow gradual processes that seem so natural that we hardly
notice they are even happening, like the cultural changes taking place beneath the soil, in our guts, and
at our tables. I’m hungry for change.
I understand collaboration of life-giving and not life-taking.
The creation of living community in that time and space
helped create a collective mindset to preserve
and create energy that is positive.
Let’s go to the townships with this. Because in the townships, we do get to reach people who are practicing organic gardening,
who are using indigenous knowledge to produce.
These refections from participants document how FieldTable enlivened ways of coming to know
through the interrelationship between themselves and the animate matter of life. Within the liminal
space of this food ritual as refugia, our human capacity for naturecultural thinking and being-with
was enlivened through personal and collective intra-actions with food, artefacts and substances.
Their words speak of a longing for more sensuous experiences, for expansive conversations and for
regenerative cultural and agricultural practices that foster life-giving interconnectedness between
the personal body, the collective body and the body of land. In an exchange with Flora, Miche
refects on the signifcance of naturecultural rituals within agriculture and explores how FieldTable
contributes to such a recovery of the ‘cultural evolutionary potential’ of ritual (Turner, 1985: 165):
For us humans to be discovering what it means to be truly here is to reconnect with embodied knowing.
Being in a continuous relationship with the matter and processes of life is what makes us natureculture
creatures: our lifeblood, our life capacity and our consciousness comes from continuous interaction and
relationships through our bodies with the dynamic fow of the cosmos. Being in touch with, noticing more,
with spaciousness and focus, is what ritual allows, a space and time for attuning and attending through
our bodyminds with the living processes of the Earth. It also gives a great sense of joy to be in a ritual
that is respecting the self and the collective within the naturalcultural. Ritual connects us to the life force.
Conversation Exchange between Miche and Flora (5 June 2020).
FieldTable offered a taste of the catalytic power of the life force of exousiance which Salami
identifes as a stimulus of energy and will for change. FieldTable was a threshold space, a naturecultural refugium for people to experience their bodyminds, within communitas, as an instrument
of participatory and political consciousness in a relationship with the biodiversity of the land.
Encounters with each other and the matter of food within this contemporary ritual form generated
new thoughts, openings and actions. The initiatives emerging from FieldTable were wide-ranging
and continue to unfold, and include: the commission of a large-scale FieldTable artwork for the
farm offce; the impulse to create the infrastructure for food sharing with staff at the farm where
FieldTable took place; the Sustainability Institute linking to a local cooperative food hub and
creating food citizen lunches from the food garden and a follow up Agroecology Ndaba forum
exploring agroecological training with educators, students farmers, food activists and policymakers. Daryl Jacobs, Deputy Director at Elsenburg Agricultural Training College refected on the role
of food and soil rituals as offering transformative experiences of nature-based farming for young
trainee farmers:
What I value and treasure is the real deepened transformation … your healing of soul and soil. It
emphasises that we are part of one system, but unless we transform our thoughts processes from deep
within, from the soul, it will be superfcial.
Conversation with Daryl Jacobs (12 September 2016)