School of Medicine hosts 'Farming is Medicine' event

Posted on: 28 October 2024

Trinity’s School of Medicine and the Faculty of Health Sciences recently hosted a public lecture given by Professor Rupa Marya a physician and author who co-leads Farming is Medicine.

Professor Marya works on the links between diversity of the gut microbiome and biodiversity of soil and has put theory into practice by co-creating a 1-acre rooftop farm in the urban centre of Oakland and a 38-acre Landback farm ( land returned to indigenous communities) on the rural coast of California.  Her novel medical approach to farming and medicine will be of interest to the food producer community and to policy makers and activists looking for ways to fix our broken food system. 

Professor Colin Doherty and Professor Rupa Marya

Rupa Marya said:

“Some of the ideas I share are unpopular in medicine because physicians have not been trained to think about whole systems health or even how to care. We have been trained to go as small and reductive as possible.  And we must continue to study molecular interactions, but I argue that at the same time, Medicine needs to go wide in the other direction, to understand systems-level interactions. We must understand both the microscopic and macroscopic phenomena that are influencing health.”

Professor Colin P Doherty, Head of School & Ellen Mayston Bates Chair of Epileptology at Trinity’s School of Medicine said:

“What Rupa is promoting with Dero Medicine and While systems health is just common sense! It’s been staring at us in plain sight. Changing our relationship to the earth, each other, the animals and plants is at the heart of well/being! Without that whole systems view everything problem comes with a siloed solution! Each disease has its precision therapy but when will be go upstream to understand the true ‘cause’ of our ailments? It was so refreshing to have her come and tell us what we should intrinsically know!”

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