You Think the Earth Is a Dead Thing

One hundred and twenty-five hectares represents the amount of land occupied illicitly since 1983 by a collective of small farmers in Le Morne-Rouge in northern Martinique. As she harvests taro corms in her field, founding member Véronique Monjean retraces the collective’s history and their occupation of the land. In taking possession of what was, at the time, unoccupied property, the collective was seeking, above all, to counter the expansion of real-estate development, which threatened to reduce the area of arable land on the island. The collective favours subsistence agriculture and biodiversity through the rotation of local crops (tubers, root vegetables, etc.), which have the potential to provide for the island’s population in the event of a crisis or natural disaster.