Farming is Medicine: Advancing Whole Systems Health
Visiting Professor Lecture at Trinity College Dublin
In October 2024, I was honored to be invited to give a university-wide lecture on my work to innovate food systems based in healing and care by the Head of the School of Medicine, Dr. Colin Doherty, at Trinity College, Dublin.
Dr. Doherty is a visionary physician and a remarkable leader who is willing to take risks and to stretch his own field of imaginings about where medicine needs to go to be relevant to the health challenges that face humanity and the planet. The son of a cooper who built barrels for Guinness before stainless steel tanks relegated his craft to history and the feminist artist Patricia Hurl, Dr. Doherty’s own sense of moral clarity and urgency to heal comes from a specific history and lineage.
While some work to destroy, silence, and defame, others work to build, heal and innovate. It is a critical moment to build webs of communities around the world who are holding a vision for a future where the health of all is uplifted, not just the health of a few “chosen” people.
This lecture set off a wild set of events that now has me building relationships with the Irish agroecological farmers of Talamh Beo and the food systems whizz Ruth Hegarty, as well as a host of scholars, land stewards, thinkers and makers of the decolonial imaginary such as
and O’Hagan. We are working in all of our own spheres to midwife the healing that must come.What a blessing to be alive in this time of so much urgent need and to come with our full hearts into service. Enjoy the lecture.
Punjabi... Celtic... Indigenous... Musical... Medical: So many roots to this wisdom. Thank you.
You talked about the stories that are told about all colonized peoples meant to dehumanize them. I hear the words 'every accusation is a confession' said about the Zionists, because they are projecting their hatred and rage about the Jewish Holocaust onto the Palestinians. It seems to me that ALL dehumanization throughout history is actually our own projected shadow, and until we change that cycle, and bring our shadow into consciousness and integrate it, we will continue to fail learning that lesson and repeat endless wars and cycles of violence. Do you know any groups of historians and psychologists or therapists that are working to explicitly document this projection as reflected in human history, please? Thanks and keep up the great work!