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Anger
is the order of the day. Irreversibly barren land, exhausted by
intensive exploitation, farmers who no longer get off their tractors
to be in touch with their land but rather to discern, powerless,
that the escalation in the race for profitability had reached its
point of no return. Against these absurdities, five small voices
speak out, serene, to give us a taste of knowing how to live on
the land of our ancestors. Couragous sowers and market gardeners
who have rediscovered and ressuscitated innumerable forgotten fruits,
herbs and vegetables. A thousand leagues from the dangers of monoculture.
The acrobats
of memory
They are very rare, these
small Provençal voices that oppose the eradication of vegetable
species. For your information: a large number of plant varieties,
although edible, are banned from public sale since they do not appear
on the lists of the very official French Catalogue. So, against
the tide of economic pressure these mavericks resist, at the expense
of mad feats, in order to develop this precious heritage and pass
it along. The rules of the game obviously are not financial enrichment
Because you have to be downright passionate to devote your life
to a seed that, good year or bad year, will impart the form, the
taste of a vegetable, possibly disappointing, maybe sublime, but
which has the merit of giving hope to the consumer tired of always
finding the same old produce everywhere.
Each operates the best they can, and manages pretty well.
But those whom we have met have in common a strong respect for their
land and are all part of the same family, those who follow in the
footsteps of their ancestors. Sometimes, all you need is a few acres,
and an ounce of knowledge, to recreate a universe. |