Farmer Rishi: Relearning the language of earth embodiment (ep288, ep289)
Green Dreamer with Kamea Chayne is a podcast exploring our paths to holistic healing, ecological regeneration, and true abundance and wellness for all. Subscribe to our show in any podcast app!
Rishi joins us in this episode to discuss:
why we need to challenge the dominant environmental messages of human impact inherently being destructive;
what it means to reframe the ways we think about water consumption;
and more.
Musical feature: Trust The Sun by Irene Skylakaki (IG: @ireneskylakaki, Spotify: Irene Skylakaki)
“Instead of saying to reduce water consumption, I say to increase the number of times the water gets used—from the time the water lands on the mountain to the time it goes into the ocean...”
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Here’s Rishi on rethinking the colonial water system:
“Instead of saying to reduce water consumption, I say to increase the number of times the water gets used—from the time the water lands on the mountain to the time it goes into the ocean...
For example, the rain falls, it may form into snow then melt. A deer drinks it, the deer pees it on a tree, the tree transpires it, it forms into clouds, it comes back down as rain, gets into the soil, the soil microorganisms are using the water, passing it to each other, then it comes back into a plant again, etc.
The water is used millions of times, and the movement of water is really slow. It may take years for the water to move from the mountain to the ocean.
In the colonial water systems from the past few hundred years, the water comes from the mountain, it goes into a pipe, energy is used to pump it into a treatment plant, it's pumped to your house, you use it maybe once or not at all before it goes into the drain, into a treatment plant again where more energy is used to clean the water and dump it into the ocean.
Instead of the water being used millions of times from mountain to ocean, it's used once or none at all. Instead, we have all of this energy used to clean, move, and filter the water. This is why we have an accumulation of damage from our water system in a cycle of destruction.”
About Farmer Rishi:
Farmer Rishi, featured in a previous episode of Green Dreamer (Instagram: @farmerrishi; YouTube: Regenerative Gardening with Farmer Rishi) is a small-scale farmer, land-artist, writer, and educator.
Since 2010, he has been working in the field of urban gardening and farming in Los Angeles, where he has helped create and establish hundreds of urban gardens. His work centers on the healing of people and Earth as one body. Rishi is the Executive Director of Sarvodaya Institute (@sarvodayafarms) and the Co-founder and Chief Gardening Officer of Healing Gardens Community (@healinggardens.co).
