This remote community in Puerto Colombia moves its gardens regularly to allow the rainforest to renew
People, not production lines. Farms, not factories. Agriculture, not agri-business. From ice covered northern Sweden to the depths of the Amazon rainforest, the following stories tell of the men, women and families who supply 70 per cent of the world’s food. They challenge the myth that we need industrial agriculture to feed an increasing population. Could small-scale farming offer solutions to the planetary crises we face – from climate disruption to species mass extinction?
Reproduced from We Feed the World, an exhibition by the Gaia Foundation.
The community of Puerto Colombia lies in Vaupés, one of the most remote regions of the Colombian Amazon. There are six families here, each of which farms a ‘chagra’, or forest garden, where they grow crops like yucca, cassava and chillies. These chagras are moved by the families every couple of years, to allow the rainforest to regenerate.
In photos: sustainable forest gardening in Colombia
Photography by Stefan Ruiz
Small is beautiful: the smallholder farmers fighting climate change around the world
