Back in the high life

Sinterklass was incredibly prescient in arranging advance delivery of his present as I was actually out of the country on his birthday party. Perhaps the knowledge that I hadn’t been naughty enough throughout the year was a subconscious reason for going away. I knew there was very little chance this year of being thrown into a sack and whisked away to sun and sangria land. But the main reason for being away was that I had been invited to go and talk at a conference in what can only be described as the German equivalent of Wageningen: the small town of Witzenhausen.

Witzenhausen probably became a university town for the same reason as Wageningen. The farmers didn’t want their sons being seduced by the pleasures of city life, never to return to the family farm. If anything Witzenhausen is smaller than Wageningen, but makes up for this by having its own railway station, being surrounded by rolling hills and having much of its medieval architecture intact. In the 1970s the university made the bold decision to become Europe’s first faculty dedicated to organic agriculture. There are still only three such faculties in Europe. Hence my invite to speak at their annual students’ conference: hence the ease of spotting the students, 20% of whom seemed to have thriving dreadlock ecosystems.



Getting invited to be a guest speaker there was an encouraging experience. I realised that over the last two years I have somewhat let go of my passion and engagement in advocating organic farming as tool for helping meet Millenium Development Goals, and especially for reducing food insecurity. I allowed myself to become too involved in the practicalities of establishing a functioning business in the NL. Financing and acquiring office space and furnishing a flat and the need to ensure that my business could support both of those changes took centre stage for a while, and led me to lose track of my broader vision of the work that I want to do. In my two or three days in Witzenhausen I came back to an understanding of the importance of this "mission" - in terms of having an something to inspire my own life - and also hopefully to inspire others. Thank you Moritz, the organizing committee, the audience and the people I spoke with in bars, and over lunch, for helping for me reestablish my commitment to this work and for giving me new and interesting insights and ideas.