Farmscapes

The farms in this image series look more like wild fields than food growing operations. This is a big part of why these farms are such a powerful solution for a host of ecological issues, including climate change, soil loss, resource depletion, pollution, and the general health of our entire ecosystem.

Medium: photography
Location: Japan, Korea, United States
Years: 2012 – 2017

These “natural farmers” use principles that the UN calls agroecology. For five years, my partner and I traveled through Japan, Korea, and California to meet and learn from them. In fact, we still maintain good friendships with many of them, continuing to visit often. These images were shot during the filming the documentary Final Straw: Food, Earth, Happiness, where we met hundreds of farmers who are regenerating the heath of farms, forests, and waterways. Their methods are based on cultivating relationships between farmer, consumer, and environment, resulting in biodiverse and resilient ecosystems not just on the farm, but throughout the wider social and natural ecosystems that interact with these farms. As you can imagine, this way of approaching food is nearly the polar opposite of how our society approaches it today. Anyone looking honestly at the state of our health and environmental wellness however, can see that this obviously needs to change.

Merging science and tradition, these farms are providing solutions by engaging multiple generations of urban dwellers to build truly resilient food ecosystems that also help draw down carbon near cities. These food systems are low-cost, requiring no investment in chemicals or heavy machinery, yet in an ironic twist, they are often far more productive than neighboring industrial farms. Engaging in this style of farming helps teach us how to integrate human needs with the needs of the biosphere, and how to build food systems that can withstand severe climactic shifts in weather over the long-term.

Related projects: Final Straw / Human:Nature / Harvest

Selected Images

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Exhibitions

Images from this series have been exhibited in:

• Forest is the Artist, PlaceMAK Gallery, Seoul, South Korea
• Food, Art, Nature, TENT Gallery, Edinburgh, Scotland
• Human+City+Nature, Space Noah, Seoul, South Korea
• Tool, Mind, Earth, Robert Callender International Residency, Kinghorn, Scotland
• Real Time Food, Oni Gallery, Megijima, Japan
• [Human:Nature], Megi House, Setouchi Triennale, Megijima, Japan

Publications

Images from this series have been published in:

• “불안과 경쟁 없는 이곳에서 ” (A Place Without Anxiety or Competition)
  열매하나 (Yeolmaehana Books) / Co-authored with Suhee Kang
  ISBN:9791196171117
• “자연농” (Final Straw: Wisdom from the Field)
  그물코 (Gemulko Books) / Co-authored with Suhee Kang 
  ISBN: 9788990090775
• 다큐 ‘자연농’을 찍은 감독들이 농촌 대신 도시에 정착한 이유 (Nature Film Directors Settle in City Instead of Countryside), Hello Farmer (Korea)
• Kaygının Olmadığı Bir Yaşam: Final Straw (A Life Without Worry: Final Straw), Film Hafazasi (Turkey)
• “The Branch: Suhee Kang and Patrick Lydon,” ちさいの本 (Japan)
• “Enlightenment Begins when Everything is Connected,” Huffington Post (Korea)
• “Happiness in a Slow Life – The Story of Final Straw,” ROAD Magazine (Korea)
• “Eco Farming. A Beautifully Poetic Look at our Food and Environment,” Clean Eating Magazine (USA)
• “We Are Farmers,” ESSEN Magazine(Korea)
• “What the Garden-Hacking Grandmas of South Korea Know,” YES! Magazine
• “Farmers, Chefs and Lawyers: Building an Ecology of One,” The Nature of Cities
• “Rice Fields, Rice Balls, and Relationships,” SocieCity
• “What Would Happen if we All Grew Food?,” Resilience
• “Megijima, What the Loss of Culture Teach us about Urban Nature,” The Nature of Cities