Eat the Leaf🌿
food as medicine
Dear earthlings,
Food can be medicine or it can be poison, in the end you are what you eat. Below a story to remind you of the wonderfully healing properties in leaves.
🗞️ In Climate News
🌊 UK farmers warn of rotting crops after Storm Babet flooding.
🇧🇷 Lula partially blocks Anti-Indigenous Territory Rights bill.
🇵🇦 Protesters march in Panama against the contract extension for a huge copper mine.
🥗 Denmark unveils roadmap towards government-backed plant-based food.
🇦🇶 Rapid ice melt in west Antarctica now inevitable, research shows.
🗿 Ancient rock face carvings revealed by receding Amazon waters amid drought.
🏦 How European banks are linked to deforestation and slavery in Brazil.
📈 Cool Trends
♾️ eco-stories
🌿 Eat the Leaf
Earlier this year on a warm May morning, I volunteered with a friend, Cesare, at the Ortobioattivo farm, in Bellosguardo, a town a stone’s throw away from Florence. Every Monday morning, Cesare volunteers with the NGO Fili d’Erba, which takes care of children with disabilities. At the Ortobioattivo, Andrea Battiata the founder, teaches the children of Fili d’Erba how to grow their own vegetables, which they then sell on Thursdays at a farmer’s market in central Florence.
That morning, after tending to the garden with the kids, Andrea showed me around his farm and offered me a sweet strawberry that was circling around the hedge that held his biodiverse vegetable garden.
“I am Sicilian by origin, I lived my first twenty years in Trapani, in Western Sicily. And perhaps my propensity for good food derives from these origins, because in my family we ate very well. When you got up in the morning everyone’s first thought was what are we eating today? And then our day revolved around the meals.”
Andrea has a gentle yet jovial demeanor, as an observer it seems that he runs his farm with ease and positivity.
🌏 The Culture Column
📺 What we’re watching: Rotten
📸 Profile of the week: @ortobioattivo
📚 What we’re reading: Creating a Forest Garden by Martin Crawford
🤯 Scary fact we learnt this week: The fossil fuel industry receive "$11m in government subsidies every minute.