Monocultures are destructive in many ways, but they all lead back to one key divide, nature and people. Nature and people are being divided through the environmental destruction due to monocultures, but also the social factors that monocultures create. They create a rift that at times may seem hard to be able to recover from. The divide between nature and people has become so great that some may see no hope for mending it.
Through this website I hope to have shed some light on possibilities of mending the nature-society divide through anti-extractivist methods and social change.
Mending is possible, people just have to enact change in their own ways
Movements across the globe are working to mend the divide between people and nature, and they are only getting started. We all need to work together in order to better our planet and the place we have on it.
The MST movement prompts social change in Brazil and is actively seeking for land reform in order to create that social change. They want to bring the land back to the people, especially the land sitting dormant, wasteful, and the land that is occupied by mass monoculture. This land is the most important that the MST targets because they know the harmful effects of monoculture and the divides it creates. The social change the MST prompts can be used to mend the nature society divide because it calls for action that will mend it. They call to bring people back to the land they want to live on and work for themselves.
In addition to social change, environmental change must take place in order to mend the divide between people and nature. Agroecology is a farming practice that has been taken up by not only the MST, but other movements across the globe. It can be used to mend the nature society divide because of the way people have to interact with nature in order to farm in this way. People have to pass down their hereditary knowledge of the land in order to make the most use of the soil and create diversity in the plants. People are more in tune with nature in this way and they have to be aware of the impact they have on the environment. This new way of farming is crucial to mending the nature society divide because it allows people to come back to nature and reconnect with it in a sustainable way.