The Farmversities Alliance
What would education look like if it were shaped by soil, seeds, and local farmers?
Our Invitation...
The Farmversities Alliance aims to regenerate and revalue organic and natural farming models, local economies, indigenous knowledge systems, and ancient wisdom traditions. This starts with restoring the dignity of farmers and the farming profession..
Modern agricultural universities are feeding us into the extractivist and toxic global economy at the expense of local communities and local ecosystems. The future of farming is far too important to be left in the hands of agricultural universities and global corporations.
In the face of climate emergency, it is crucial to re-build our sustainable food systems around the country. We invite you to join us in decolonizing industrial agricultural frameworks and in re-constructing a new foundation for contextualized knowledge production and sharing in partnership with local communities.
Farmversities believe that the land and the farmers are the real gurus.
What do Farmversities do?
OFFER LEARNING PROGRAMMES:
A Farmversity has learning and capacity building programmes on different themes such as (not limited to): soil, water, forest, agroecology, seed saving, composting, food processing and value addition, farm tools and equipment, action research, labor management, marketing, farm entrepreneurship, community building, digital technologies, decoding the global economy and decolonizing our mindsets. Courses are validated by Farmversities Network and Ecoversities Alliance.
BUILD LOCAL MARKETS AND POLICIES:
Farmversities focus on rebuilding local community markets, alternative currencies, reducing the distance of food miles and strengthening trust-bonds between farmers and communities. We support efforts of marketing, investment, branding and social media. As a network, we seek to re-define the system of economic profit, money and
unlimited economic growth with a vision of building a thriving local economy and regenerating local commons of real wealth. They also have developed local policy frameworks for supporting a regenerative food ecology. Local policies include regulations, subsidies, taxes, insurance, loans and resource mobilization.
CONDUCT LOCAL ACTION RESEARCH:
Farmversities are envisioned to be spaces of local active action research. Each Farmversity will specify specific areas of action research which they are engaged in they local context. They will be supported to make films and podcasts and publish papers related to
their research. They will also be encouraged to redefine what ‘research’ means. We will work towards regenerating open source local knowledge repository rather than private patents. This enables us to reshape and rebuild the creative commons where we share openly with each other, challenging the corporate way of copyrighting and patenting knowledge systems.
WEAVE COMMUNITY ECOSYSTEM:
Farmversities explore various community-building processes and the regeneration of social wealth and relationships through practices like community festivals, pop-up cafes, community arts, gift culture and spiritual farming. They work on healing and re-weaving the local rural and urban social fabric of young people, farmers, politicians, doctors, healers, spiritual leaders, chefs, sustainability practitioners, local government officials, etc. to build vibrant, dynamic local governance and leadership models at the panchayat, tehsil, district levels.
“The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings.” - Masanobu Fukuoka
Why opt for a life of natural and organic farming?
"We know our doctors. We know our accountants. Why don't we know our farmers?"
Learn more about natural and organic farming from master farmers.
Visit Some Farmversities...
Register your Farmversity here
Steps to declare yourself a Farmversity:
1. Choose a powerful name (preferably from your local context) and declare yourself an Farmversity by posting a board on your farm and on your website.
2. Get together at least 3 friends who are excited to learn/unlearn together and host the Farmversity
3. State your purpose and vision for your Farmversity. Be clear on who your starting learners will be.
4. Decide on what courses you feel excited to offer and local faculty-mentors.
5. Frame at least 3 action-research questions or focus areas which are important for you, your community, the world.
6. Take steps to build a local community ecosystem of farmers, chefs, healers, media, shops.
7. You can issue letters of recommendation or Farmversity certificates to your learners.