b'Im not sure if drinking beetroot vodka is a cultural act, but Im just going to assert that it is.Bringing money back down to earth is a cultural act. As is remembering, Il faut cultiver notre jardin. 20In an interview with Carlo Petrini, French farmer Pierre Rabhi remarked, If there are people who cultivate a small garden, I say, Wonderful! A garden is a political act, an act of resistance. 21Are there any words more charged than the word political? Call a thing political and conviviality goes out the window.Wouldnt it be just as accurate to say that a gardenand, by extension, a small, diversified, organic farm, which is in the commercial scheme of things more like a garden than like a factoryis important precisely because it is apolitical? There can be an element of resistance in it, but even more there is an ethos of constructive, personal engagement.Local food systems call for economic thinking that is both deeply conservative and deeply liberal. There is nothing Either/Or about it.20 We must cultivate our garden. Famously, the last line of Voltaires Candide. Heres what leads up to it: I have no idea what youre talking about; my general view is that people who meddle with politics usually meet a miserable end, and indeed they deserve to. I never bother with what is going on in Constantinople; I only worry about sending the fruits of the garden which I cultivate off to be sold there. Having said these words, he invited the strangers into his house; his two sons and two daughters presented them with several sorts of sherbet, which they had made themselves, with kaimak enriched with the candied-peel of citrons, with oranges, lemons, pine-apples, pistachio-nuts, and Mocha coffeeafter which the two daughters of the honest Muslim perfumed the strangers beards. You must have a vast and magnificent estate, said Candide to the Turk. I have only twenty acres, replied the old man; I and my children cultivate them; and our labour preserves us from three great evils: weariness, vice, and want. Candide, on his way home, reflected deeply on what the old man had said. This honest Turk, he said to Pangloss and Martin, seems to be in a far better place than kings. I also know, said Candide, that we must cultivate our garden. (Cited at https://www.theschooloflife.com/thebookoflife/cultivate-own-garden-voltaire/)21 Loving the Earth: Dialogues on the Future of Our Planet, by Carlo Petrini (Slow Food Editore, 2014), p. 214152'