In the revolutionary spirit of Thomas Paine, author, historian, and gardener Kathleen Smythe declares in her pamphlet that the time has come for declaring independence from a global agricultural system that robs us of our food sovereignty and treats both consumers and farmers as mere colonial subjects; from the living Earth as inexhaustible rather than an exquisite complex of life that has slowly accumulated for millennia; and from human bodies as receptacles for whatever fossil fuel farming can produce most cheaply. Local food is our best hope in this declaration of inter-independence.

Kathleen Smythe is a professor at Xavier University where she addresses questions of contemporary relevance through historical investigation. She prefers bodily-engaged learning as seen in her most recent book, Bicycling Through Paradise: Historical Rides Around Cincinnati (2021). She is trained as an African historian with years of fieldwork experience in Tanzania. Africa’s Past, Our Future highlights ideas and institutions in African history that broaden our social, political, and economic imagination. Whole Earth Living: Reconnecting Earth, History, Body and Mind proposes a new sustainability framework based on long-term human interdependencies with the Earth.

Visit https://doi.org/10.57968/Middlebury.31169509 to read this pamphlet.

Visit https://www.newperennials.org/ for more information.