🇪🇺 Yesterday, I interviewed brand new European Commissioner for Agriculture and Food, Christophe Hansen 🚜
His words:
🌳 We have to stop seeing nature and agriculture as two different things
🥬 Who thinks winter vegetables are boring?
And you can only eat cabbage?
Think again!
A lot of vegetables can still survive on the field; the colder it gets, the tastier it gets.
Personally, I love winter vegetables, since they have such a profound flavor.
We're all connected
Trees breathe out. We breathe in
We fulfill each other
Forming the circle of life
But there is more than oxygen
Trees sweat, rain falls
Rivers flow, flying rivers flow in the opposite direction
Half of the rain that falls is created by trees
Let's turn the entire earth into a Blue Zone! 🌎
Who's in?
Blue zones are regions where people have exceptionally long lives beyond the age of 80
Why isn't the entire planet a Blue Zone yet?
We literally have all the ingredients to make this happen; let's do this!
Every winter garden needs evergreens! 🌲
Otherwise, the view can be a bit sad
Evergreens smell delicious, and many of them are edible or medicinal, too
Pines are my favorite: the needles are super tasty and contain vitamin C.
You can eat them raw or make herbal tea from them.
The future of medicine will be focused on gut health.
What happens in our gut, influences our entire body.
And it is not our gut that’s doing the job; it is the universe of bacteria that live there that is responsible for human health.
Humans tend to give up before they even have started
A lot can be learned from trees
Did you know that even when a tree is 99% dead, it keeps growing into the shape it's meant to grow into?
Largest marine protected area in North Atlantic being created 🐋🐳🐬
👉🏽 Welcome to the Azores
This nine-island archipelago is an autonomous region roughly 1,500 km (932 miles) west of mainland Portugal and home to unique marine biodiversity.
What a fantastic news, great ambition!
🥗 Chefs might be the most important people on earth
👉 This is Dan Barber, forerunner of regenerative agriculture
The Farm-to-Fork movement became great thanks to Dan, he's healing the earth, one bite at a time.
Do you know the funny thing? Caring for the environment is just an added bonus.
💦 People dig their own graves, literally
Sometimes, problems can be straightforward
Implementing solutions is easy in theory
In practice, however, it takes lots of (political) courage to create change
Are people capable of doing major system shifts before a disaster?
💦 Waste no water
👉🏽Infiltrate every drop
This is how we should design our streets
Trees not only help with the water cycle
A large oak tree can transpire 151.000 liters per day! (That's 40.000 gallons)
Imagine the effect on flood prevention!
Bonus: They also absorb and clean pollutants
How do you flood your city? 💦
Straighten rivers & concrete them
How do you save your city?
Say hello to nature-based solutions!
Rivers are supposed to meander and have floodplains
City parks should have wadi's that can have a dual purpose of play place or picnic zone
Do you know the story of the Three Sisters?
🌽🫘🍈 Corn, beans, and squash!
Corn provides a sturdy stalk for the beans to climb, beans enrich the soil with nitrogen, and squash spreads across the ground, shielding the soil
