Luna Bleu Farm

96 Boles Rd, South Royalton, VT
www.lunableufarm.org
Art by Katie Runde

Products: Organic vegetables, chicken, and eggs

Where to buy: CSA memberships; Norwich Farmers Market, South Royalton Market

Building Better Systems

We exist within a hierarchy of systems. The ecological system is our largest container and developed over the course of billions of years. Humans emerged out of this natural ecosystem and organized themselves around social systems. These societies developed economies. Our food system is influenced by each of these systems and, in turn, influences each of them.

Suzanne Long and Tim Sanford of Luna Bleu Farm see how farms and farmers fit into this bigger picture. “We’ve always considered our farm as an ecosystem that models natural systems, working in tandem with the biology of plants and soils,” explained Suzanne. “Together these pieces can improve the water, nutrient, and carbon cycles that are an important part of the climate solution.”

Farms can help bring change to our social systems by facilitating collaboration and community care. Suzanne reflected, “Farms can be great places for people to come together and celebrate and learn and just connect with each other and the land upon which their food is grown. In times of distress, local farms can also be a center for community action or mutual aid — thinking of the community as a full ecosystem where all the different elements support each other.”

However, it’s hard to build supportive regenerative ecosystems when the money doesn’t support it. “It’s really our economic system and our policies that don’t foster regeneration. We’ve built an economic system that relies on extraction with some idea that we can just keep taking and taking and taking and there’s no giving back.”

But there’s hope to bring change to these systems.

“Farmers show that we can still feed populations while we figure out how to change the economic systems to support a regenerative approach to land use, and regenerate it back to those natural systems that keep things in balance.”