Revolutionary plots: Farming vs War

In this article by Rebecca Solnit, she writes that Churchill tells Sassoon, a soldier at the time, "War is a normal occupation by man". which later he felt challenged and turned this argument to gardening or farming vs war. This two completely opposite occupations surely do not coincidence with each other, but I was wrong! In the beginning of this article, it gives examples of how agriculture is a form of war like cutting the rainforest or taking land from the poor.

The next section in the article is Housing Projects and Chokecherries. These next couple of paragraphs talk about farming. It all starts with a young group of idealistic anarchists lead by Antonio Roman-Alcala who had a dream of starting two collective bases: urban and rural. This group believed that life consisted both being urban and rural, not one or the other. Later the group wanted to test this theory by first having an experimental site which is located on the border of the Alemany Farm, which had been shut down after a corruption scandal in the organization, and Antonio mother's house. This abandon farm would be the perfect site of his new tactic of guerrilla gardening or farming which is unpermitted work on public or government land. Later on down the line, the farm became official and now hosts school field trips of fifty plus annually. In these field trips, children learn, eat and harvest the crops. The third section of this article is Principal Corps. This paragraphs talk about a second green revolution attempting to make up for the destructive first one. The first revolution failed because it increased alienation and toxicity, but it was reliable if you did not pay any attention to the amount of fossil fuel it depends on or on the carbon output, and other environmental impacts. The second green revolution's goals were to make organic and intimate foods grow for your mind and heart instead of just your bodies. This type of agriculture is only produce by a small portion of our country. This second green revolution is becoming a major success in today world with farmers increasing instead of decreasing, schoolyard gardens are becoming a project in most schools and people are starting to incorporate raising chickens, goats, cows, sheep into their life style to acquire organic non-processed foods. The final section of the article is Attacks and Retreats . “Some gardens are described as retreats, when they are really attacks,” famously said the gardener, artist, and provocateur Ian Hamilton Finlay. ( Revolutionary Plots by Solnit) this excerpt really struck me on how such beautiful things as a garden can be use as a safe haven from the world ( retreat) or a means of attack by symbolizing a political statement. The point Churchill wanted to get across was that gardening and war are two similarly different things but to imagine the world as one big garden, you will have your safe havens within that garden but naturally people will want to take out or kill the weeds (corporations, government etc...)

( https://orionmagazine.org/article/revolutionary-plots/)