A Journey with Humans and Non-humans

Jan 31, 2025 · Eric Chacra

january newsletter
A team meeting in 2019

The physical challenge

I had to be much more aware of what the physical body is telling me. The first years, I was becoming a zombie for one full day like twice a year because of exhaustion. I understood that drinking reverse osmosis water only was not a good idea at all so I end up doing my isotonic drink with normal filtered water and it was much better. Also, after 50 years old, one is supposed to eat more proteins (the body can’t store proteins unlike fat and glucose), and that I realized much later and that is for me one of the causes of health issues for most non-Indian physical workers here. Over the years, I have seen so many volunteers in the farm but not a single one could last over a couple of years in the farm because of the physical challenges especially. I only know Erik who is still doing heavy physical stuff that the workers of the farm can’t do or at least for a long time. So, 35 hours as a farmer in our context, even if one manages to not do only heavy work, I challenge anybody, especially those who never worked on a farm, to last over the years.

Human relationships challenges

Harmony is the key for me. As I joined the management core team of the farm years ago, I discovered the incredible perspectives of what we call “the others”. The difficulties to communicate between different cultures and backgrounds when you have no clue, when you don’t know the codes. I could really sense the various parameters related to the local culture and get rid of many of my conditionings, beliefs.

On top of all this, I came to meet the incredible people of the farm, the list is not so long but about the ones still here: Gérard and Bithi, Anshul, Erik, Jasmin and Aravinda, Nidhin, Kumar, the workers (so many fantastic smiling ladies !) etc. I am grateful, always.

So, what I can express is that I don’t know almost anything about farming. That is a paradox that real scientists know: the more they know about a specific topic, the more they understand that they don’t know. And finally, sometimes, I ask the following question to the people: What is the most important job in the world? Farming! because no farmers, no food, no way to live!