Release Date: June 28th, 2023
*Disclaimer* This episode deals with mental health issues like depression, anxiety and suicide ideation. From all of us here at the show, we want to express our sympathy and care – it’s hard out there. If we can offer anything, it’s to call/text/message a friend. Making this show helped all of us mentally, and hopefully you have someone to chat to too.
Guest Toby Malloy joins series host Maddie Marmor to discuss how we are all connected to agriculture in some way through the inherent human instinct to share something common. This episode will bring the lens of Somatic Experiencing(™) to our understanding of both the climate and farm crisis as Maddie and Toby talk about the emotions, feelings and decisions farmers are making during this time of crisis. Adding context, warmth and the young farmer perspective are the voices of Hannah Dwyer, Ari Westhaver, Kishon Warmington and Jordan Rivers, with contributions from Elizabeth Cyr and Jessie MacInnis.
If you need more information about what you heard today, please check out the links below:
Cast
Madeline (Maddie) Marmor— Host/Producer
Maddie is a landless farmer born in downtown Toronto. She has been farming for the past 7 years on farms throughout Ontario and has grown food on the current and traditional lands of the Houdensaunee, Anishinabewaki, Attiwonderonk, Mississauga, Odawa, Wendake-Nionwentsïo, Petun, Saugeene - Ojibiway nations.Over the years she has come to recognize the privilege and political significance of farming on stolen land, knowledge which has informed her dedication to food sovereignty and agroecology. She is a member of the National Farmers Union and sits on the Climate Justice collective for the international social movement La Via Campesina.
Toby Malloy — Guest
Toby is a farmer living on Treaty 7 land in southern Alberta. She is also a therapist working in rural mental health. Toby is trained in Somatic Experiencing and is especially interested in how, as humans, as farmers, we are embodying, experiencing and navigating the farm and climate crisis.
Hannah Dwyer — Guest
Hannah is a tenant farmer on Sinixt, Ktunaxa, and Syilx land in Harrop, BC. She is determined to grow food using agroecological methods with and for community as a response to the many intersecting crises of our time. Her farming practices, including her ways of relating to land as a guest and a steward with precarious tenure, and her visions of equitable and just agrarian societies, are informed by the agricultural teachings of her Ashkenazi and Celtic ancestors and the wisdom of Indigenous peoples in the places she now finds home.
Ari Westhaver — Guest
Ari Westhaver is a farmworker based in the Fraser Valley on unceded Kwantlen territory where they grow organic mixed vegetables on a cooperative farm. Ari has been farming for 6 seasons and previously taught in a new farmer training program at Kwantlen Polytechnic University. Ari is deeply passionate about labour justice and farmland access, two issues that pose significant barriers to their generation of farmers. These issues brought them to join the NFU, where they currently serve as the Regional Coordinator for Region 8 (BC/YT) and are an active member of the Farm Worker Working Group.
Kishon Warmington — Guest
Jordan Rivers — Guest
Elizabeth Cyr — Contributor
Jessie MacInnis — Contributor
Jessie is a small-scale, first generation agroecological farmer and scholar-activist based in unceded and unsurrendered Mi'kmaq territory (aka Nova Scotia), Canada. Agroecology is a foundational part of their farm: from the practices they engage (cover crops, soil-health building, low-tillage, and crop and non-crop biodiversity) on the farm, to the ways in which they seek and share knowledge horizontally with other growers, to relationships they build with their community through solidarity approaches to food accessibility. Jessie is currently the Youth President of the National Farmers Union of Canada and has been extensively involved with La Via Campesina regionally and internationally for a number of years. She recently graduated from the first cohort of the Master of Human Rights (MHR) program at the University of Manitoba.