Organic Horticulture Teachers (by  ben_austin_85@hotmail.co.uk)
“When the rain falls, it don’t fall on one man’s house. Remember that.” – Bob Marley

To attain ecological sustainability, as much food as possible needs to be organically grown as locally as possible; food miles need to become food inches. Unfortunately, few in contemporary society are skilled in this, and are then dependent on the contemporary unsustainable system/present means.

As collective action is often preferred when doing something ‘different’, as much support as possible is needed for people who wish to grow food. It seems to me that there is place today for those who can teach in person others how to grow food in the spaces available to them – it may be as little as herbs & seedlings on windowsills or mushrooms in airing cupboards, but such small-scale actions needn’t be scorned before being done – anything on the mass-scale, positive or negative, consists of the ‘small’ actions.

Several ways of teaching may be as a self-employed (presumably part-time) teacher, as part of a collective/co-op or working with HDRA/Garden Organic’s ‘Organic Food For All’ mentor-scheme. For those who aren’t skilled in growing organically yet, a period of WWOOFing may be best (and thus simultaneously furthering ecological lifestyles), or perhaps a conventional course…

Of course at present there are conventional institutions teaching organic horticulture, but the degree of their impersonality and hierarchy combined with the course’s costs, a little mystification and a culture rife with apathy is not resulting in much of the population being able to produce food independently. Perhaps instead what is needed is people moving from project to project as teachers and advisors, and perhaps in some circumstances workers… This way would be more decentralist and will involve more co-operation, community and respect for the individuality of projects, and hopefully involve less alienation, hierarchy and mystification. (I suppose one would also be in a good position for dispensing information and ideas on other means to ecological sustainability.) In keeping with the idea that ‘new’ activities are often more easily done in groups than alone, it is of note that in discovering those who are keen on growing their own food it will be easier to establish mutual-aid networks, environmental groups and a more ecologically-minded/orientated community.

To grow food appeals to many people, often from quite divergent points-of-view. There is obviously the ecologically-minded, and for those on the Left there is the greater likelihood of non-profit activities and shared community, as well as progress in inhibiting unfettered capitalism, for those on the Right there may be the appeal of the possibility of market gardens, the sense of being more independent from public organisations, as well as a furtherance of the ‘heritage’ (in practice and in seed collecting & use) & ‘traditions’ of UK history…

Aside from private household & the like, there is also the promise of schools developing organics projects – an idea gaining more & more popularity; & doing some teaching/support voluntarily will increase the likelihood of having a notice placed in your local library…

I hope this has been/is an idea worth entertaining seriously… www.wwoof.org.uk