The Farms of Life
Whether you can live tomorrow is decided today.
Don't believe us? Look.
Shipping through the Strait of Hormuz is disrupted.
Fertiliser supplies are becoming scarcer or more expensive.
Harvests are falling.
Fields are short of workers.
El Niño is setting in.
It is still just a crisis. We hope.
Tomorrow, we will still be able to eat.
Surely. We hope.
And this is where you have a choice to make.
Not a small one.
Not a choice about an investment, a house or a career.
A choice that can decide a life.
Perhaps more than one.
The lives of those you are responsible for.
You can carry on as you are.
Or decide to understand.
And prepare.
The world is changing without waiting for us.
We often wait for a decision, an election or a technology to improve our situation.
But meanwhile, the world keeps changing.
And problems do not come one at a time.
- Heat worsens drought.
- Drought weakens harvests.
- We pump more water.
- Water tables fall.
- Trees suffer.
- And the cycle feeds itself.
The danger may not be a catastrophe.
It is the accumulation.
And you — what do you do?
You know how to work.
You know how to earn money.
You may know how to lead, build, teach or care for people.
But if tomorrow there is not enough food:
what do you do?
Do you wait for someone to solve the problem?
Do you run out to find what is left?
Do you go gathering wild plants in the woods?
And then?
Stop for a moment.
Really think.
If you do not have an answer, there is nothing unusual about that.
That is exactly the question we have been working on for more than twenty years.
And the solution may be right in front of you.
On your own?
If you do not think about it for long, the answer seems simple.
A few supplies.
A garden.
Water.
A little energy.
And you do not need us.
But think a little further.
Who grows your food?
Who brings the water?
Who repairs things?
Who provides care?
Who protects you from the heat?
Who cares for the people you love?
And surviving is not enough.
You also need to learn, laugh, love, raise children and be glad to get up in the morning.
All of that takes skills, working hands and healthy people.
That is why a Farm of Life is not three families hidden behind a fence.
It is about 500 people.
Children and teenagers.
Hundreds of adults able to act.
And those who, after giving so much, also have the right to enjoy Life.
But you do not bring 500 people together with a snap of the fingers.
How do you begin?
So what do we do?
We come together.
Not to talk. To live.
One grows food, another cares for people, another repairs things, another looks after children or older people.
We share hands, knowledge, water and tools.
We learn what we do not yet know.
Alone, we will not last long. Together, we can endure.
That is a Farm of Life.
The Farm
How a community organises itself to live.
500 people.
Children, teenagers, adults, older people.
Among them are the Farmers: they are the ones who live, work, decide and keep the Farm alive.
And some of them take on a role for a time.
-
The Initiator
They get the Farm started and bring the first people together.
-
The Management Circle
It organises the community's gradual formation: it welcomes future Farmers until the planned size is reached, then organises the selection of those who can join the Farm after that.
-
The Mutual Security Circle
It keeps one question in view: will we still be able to meet our vital needs tomorrow?
A Farm is not alone
Because no community can do everything on its own.
- Solidarity between Farms
- Daughter Farms
- Shared projects
- The Pillars
- The Companions of Life
- Exchanges
- Specialisations
Protecting the work
So that what has been built remains in service of Life.
-
The Architect / Founder
He conceived, built, tested and passed on the work.
He does not run the Farms.
When the work can live without him, he steps back from operations.
-
The Founders' Circle
These are the people who took part in the project's birth and sustained it over time.
They preserve its memory.
They do not govern the Farms.
-
The Guardians
They protect the reason the work exists.
They make sure, in particular, that it remains:
- accessible to everyone;
- not turned into a business;
- faithful to its human and moral rules;
- in service of Life.
To guard is not to govern.
We are not asking you to believe us
You do not need to retrace those twenty years before you can use this work.
We will simply show you what we have built.
Then you can examine it from every angle.
Challenge a choice.
Suggest something better.
Explore a question further.
Or decide to take part.
Start simply by discovering how a Farm of Life works.
We are not selling this idea.
If this work can help a child, a family, thousands of people to keep living, we have no intention of turning it into a business.
What we have learned is yours to use.
Take it. Use it. Improve it.
Discover the Farms of Life
Inside the Farm
-
The Initiator
A Farm does not appear on its own. How does it begin?
Watch the film -
The Management Circle
How are the decisions of everyday life made?
Watch the film -
The Mutual Security Circle
Watch the film
A Farm is not alone
-
Solidarity
A Farm will never be able to do everything. So how does it get what it lacks?
Watch the film -
Projects
How can we achieve together what no one person — and sometimes no single Farm — could achieve alone?
Watch the film -
The Pillars
How do we recover, preserve and pass on the knowledge essential to Life?
Watch the film -
The Companions of Life
Some knowledge, some experience and some abilities can become essential.
We are looking for the people who carry them.
Coming soon
Protecting the work
-
The Architect
Why did someone have to try to think about the whole?
Watch the film -
The Founders' Circle
Watch the film -
The Guardians
How do we protect the project without creating an authority that runs everything?
Watch the film
You can go much further
This page is not meant to contain twenty years of work.
It is a doorway.
If you want to understand the assumptions, research, choices, proposed solutions and the work behind the Farms of Life, you can explore them in more depth through La Vie Demain.
Here, first of all, we want you to understand one thing:
We cannot stop the world from changing.
But we can learn to depend less on what is becoming fragile.