Let’s look at food as wealth. Obviously food is essential for life. But it is also the foundation of society. The farmer is the first one to take the raw resources of the earth and produce something from it. Without the farmer, civilization isn’t possible.

Yet, there are many ways to farm. In today’s society, we’ve become accustomed to huge tracts of land in cultivated rows. But indigenous peoples across the planet manage the land in a very different way, working with nature to maintain the balance of natural systems. We’ve been cultivating food for millennia and we have a lot yet to learn.

So let’s start where we are. This module begins with an inventory of food sources and ends with lines of action. First we’ll get a sense of what is happening now, where we live, in terms of food.