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Bio-Intensive Market Gardening :

A Viable Future for Small-Scale Farming

Since the 1950s and 1960s, agriculture in Europe has become increasingly characterized by monocultures, mechanization, and specialization. Farms have grown larger, investments have become more expensive, and many farmers have become dependent on global markets, intermediaries, and fluctuating prices.

Every spring at Afrinoon, there is a moment of magic that never gets old — the first tiny pip in the shell of an egg that, just days before, you had almost given up on entirely.

In October I gave a Campfire presentation about Digital Permaculture for the Permaculture Association in the UK. The Campfire series is a space where practitioners share ideas, projects, and experiments with the wider permaculture community.

As part of the event, the talk was recorded. I expected that the recording would eventually appear online, so that others could access the content afterwards.

After more than 15 years of hosting volunteers on our permaculture farm, I thought I knew this terrain pretty well. We’ve hosted people from all over the world, in different life phases; with different expectations, skills and levels of initiative. I’ve seen beautiful exchanges; and I’ve seen situations slowly drain energy on all sides.

So when I decided to create an online course on how to successfully host volunteers, I didn’t expect to be surprised.

But I was.

While the new year is still fresh, I took some time to look back. At the European Permaculture Network (EuPN), we track site visits via Matomo. Matomo is a privacy-focuse open-source alternative to Google Analytics. Since we also host the EuPN on our own server, we have access to the raw server log files as well.

In a world where climate headlines can often overwhelm us, it can be easy to forget the power of small, local actions. For us—four women living in different parts of Europe, coming together around a shared design experiment reminded us just how much difference we can make when we act, reflect, and learn together.