Page 68 - Almanacco_ENG_2014

Family Farming68 almanaCthe real rebelSFor the past three decades, mean- while, thousands of Bretons have actu- ally been trying out alternative solutions to the speculative economic dogma. The first were those farmers who de- cided to put into practice different ways of working and selling their products, constructing networks that represent- ed a cheaper and more autonomous agriculture, organic farming, farms that processed and sold their own products, a short distribution chain and holiday farms with restaurant and hotel services. Today the accounts of these initiatives offer an exemplary les- son, showing how we can escape the industrial agriculture impasse, without requiring the interruption of produc- tion, without economic collapse andindeed with the creation of numerous jobs. Only one ingredient is missing: the political will to change the prevail- ing productive scale, in order to move from many local successes to the suc- cess of the whole region.Contrary to appearances, the descen- dants of the 1675 rebels are not the ephemeral 20,000 red caps who took to the streets in 2013, but rather the 50,000 people who came together to demonstrate peacefully against the Notre Dame des Landes airport, in Nantes in February 2014. They repre- sented 40 years of opposition against central power. To them we symbolically confer the bonedou gwer, a cap as green as meadow grass, as green as Brittany, as green as hope.@ quEntin BEnmAhdi