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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Group Encourages Relocalization of Food
  • Date: Tue, 05 Feb 2008 08:42:18 -0700


Group Encourages Relocalization of Food
Written by Jennifer Silverman
Thursday, 24 January 2008
http://www.mrcog-nm.gov/content/view/170/241/

The 2008 Quivira Coalition 7th annual conference just took place here in
Albuquerque at the Marriot Pyramid over the weekend of January 18th. The
theme for this yearÂ’s conference was Building Resilience: Creating Hope
in an Age of Consequences.

Echoing this theme, the group's Executive Director recently wrote, in an
opinion piece for the Albuquerque Tribune, that we must build economic
resilience in our economy through relocalization. Courtney White contents
that "the inevitability of rising energy costs, for instance, means more
and more of our daily lives, from food production to where we work and
play, will be lived closer to home. This won't be by choice, as it is
currently, but by necessity."

White contends that at a minimum, relocalization includes:

The development of local food and energy sources. Working landscapes
will become critical again. So will the innovations currently taking place
at the nexus of agriculture and ecology - a nexus that requires working
lands. Could New Mexico feed itself? If not, why not, and what can we do to
stimulate local food and energy production?

The increasing importance of farmers and ranchers. Not only does local
food and energy require local land, it also requires local people with
local knowledge to do the work. This means figuring out how to keep the
current generation of farmers and ranchers on the land, as well as
encourage the next generation to stay, come back or give agriculture a try.

Restoration becoming an important business. Producing local food and
energy from working landscapes, especially in quantity, will require
healthy land as well as best management practices that work within nature's
model. However, much of our land is in poor-to-fair condition for a variety
of reasons. The good news is that restoration can afford local communities
a bounty of jobs at good wages.







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