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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] The Shelburne Falls Food Security Plan and The Perennial Food Project
  • Date: Thu, 10 Dec 2009 19:50:24 -0700


CENTRAL CONNECTICUT RIVER VALLEY INSTITUTE, INC.
7 School Street, Shelburne Falls, MA 01370
(413) 625-2525 Fax: (413) 625-8485
Federal Tax Identification Number: 04-3529309
will@ccrvi.org
1
Community Food for Shelburne Falls and Beyond:
The Shelburne Falls Food Security Plan and The Perennial Food Project
http://www.scribd.com/doc/23846417/Community-Food-090128?autodown=pdf

We humans live as part of the natural world, one member of a community
much larger than our species alone. The natural world feeds and sustains us,
and our actions affect all other members of our community: we are all in this
together. Yet, most of us do not experience these realities either practically
or existentially with any frequency, if at all. One of the larger goals of the
Central Connecticut River Valley Institute (“CCRVI”), of Shelburne Falls,
Massachusetts, is to foster the emergence of a culture which encourages and
supports us to experience ourselves in these ways, to know ourselves as
“native” to the places where we live.

These positive principles and goals dovetail in our times with concerns about
the security and sustainability of our food supply systems. Large-scale, long
term, interconnected challenges such as global climate change, peak oil,
rising food and energy prices, the far-flung industrial food system, declining
food quality and safety, and the concentration of food production in the hands
of a few corporate agribusinesses leave small towns like Shelburne Falls
vulnerable. Thus, developing locally-owned, locally-controlled food systems
for ourselves can simultaneously realize CCRVI’s goal to reconnect us to the
natural world and each other. Therefore, CCRVI has initiated its Community
Food program.

Community Food initially encompasses two interrelated projects that build
upon and support each other as a whole system and that will also serve as
pilot projects and models for larger-scale implementation beyond the Village
of Shelburne Falls: the Shelburne Falls Food Security Plan and the Perennial
2 Food Project. The first project will be undertaken in collaboration with the
Conway School of Landscape Design and other local educational institutions.
The latter will be primarily initiated and run by The Apios Institute, a
subsidiary of CCRVI, which researches and educates the public about
perennial food gardening.

The Shelburne Falls Food Security Plan

The Shelburne Falls Food Security Plan aims to: (1) estimate and
characterize the minimum food requirements for the Village of Shelburne
Falls, and; (2) provide at least one viable vision for how the Village can
meet
its food needs locally. What do we eat through out the year? What food
production strategies and crops hold the most viability within the Village’s
specific site conditions and social context? What would a realistic maximum
food production scenario look like on household and neighborhood scales?
What implications would this scenario have for the Village and the farms in
the region? What directions can and should the community take to feed
ourselves successfully and happily?

We envision this project as a multi-year effort that will break the overall
goals
down into manageable objectives that build toward a comprehensive
understanding of Shelburne Falls’ food shed situation and reasonable
response to it. This approach will offer time to develop community
interaction, discussion, and support, and therefore build public engagement
that we hope will ultimately lead to concrete actions being undertaken by
community members in response to and as part of the project.

Project Overview
• Estimate the current and future annual food needs of the Village and
characterize the current “food shed” of the Village, that is:
- What do we eat and when?
- What are our basic food requirements and is everyone meeting their
basic food needs?
- Where does our food come from now, at what financial and ecological
3 costs?
- What local food supply sources exist, and what financial and
ecological costs do they entail?
- What food growing and preservation skills do Village residents
possess, and which are residents currently using?

CCRVI anticipates that these questions will be answered through some
combination of research using demographic and nutritional data, public
records, public meetings, and resident surveys and interviews. Initial efforts
will focus on publicly available data, with later work taking that information
deeper with surveys of actual food habits of community residents.

• Evaluate the potential for meeting the Village’s food needs within the
Village
itself by assessing the quality, character, and potential of the village
landscape and soils for food production. This will initially involve assessing
the development patterns and land use history of the village to evaluate the
implications of these patterns for crop selection, food production methods,
potential yields, and the social forms appropriate to the different social
habitats. It will eventually include implementing a soil lead sampling program
to assess soil lead levels on a village-wide basis, as well as characterizing
the different site conditions found within the village and the potential crops
suited to those conditions.

• Assess the community’s social and cultural conditions relative to the
residents’ willingness, interest, skills, and time available to undertake
homebased
agriculture, participate in local food systems, and so on. This may
include evaluation of ordinances and zoning regulations that relate to food
production, skills assessments, and the envisioning of methods for tapping
the community’s social resources and filling its skills gaps, and perhaps some
oral history work with local elders who lived through the Great Depression.

• Develop scenarios for meeting as much of the Village’s food needs as
possible within the Village by developing schematic designs for one or more
neighborhoods of Shelburne Falls as food-producing urban landscapes.
Each scenario will develop food budgets for the neighborhoods designed and
describe the implications of the neighborhood scenario for the Village as a
4 whole and for the Village’s need for food from surrounding farms and farms
within and outside the region.

• Evaluate the farming community in the region immediately adjacent to
Shelburne Falls in terms of their current and potential crop types, production
levels, economic viability, and connection to the Village.

• Build community involvement and interest in the project through public
meetings and discussion, and by using existing community organizations to
gain awareness and acceptance of this work.

• Lay the groundwork for the future expansion of the Project to cover all of
Western Franklin County and eventually spiraling out into all of Western
Massachusetts, the rest of the Connecticut River Valley, and the rest of New
England.

Preliminary Strategy and Budget

• We intend to begin this project with a 12 week project by Conway School of
Landscape Design students in January through March 2009. This team will
begin by gathering publicly available data on food needs, assessing village
development patterns and their implications, community meetings,
neighborhood redesign visioning, and assessing of zoning and other local
ordinances. Later teams will refine and deepen this first iteration of work
with
more specific data from the village itself.

• Estimated costs for this first piece of work follow:

• The Conway School has access to a matching grant to help cover their
costs if we can find donors to provide matching funds. This matching fund
has $1,350 remaining in it at this time.
Conway School of Landscape Design team: $6,000
Project liaison, support, supervision $500
Total Estimated Costs $6,500
Funds raised to date -$3,000
Total Remaining to Raise $3,500 5

The Perennial Food Project

When most people think about growing food, annual crops come to mind, that
is, crops that grow for one season, go to seed and die or are harvested and
must be planted from seed the next year. This style of production has
dominated world agriculture for millennia, and, though it does currently feed
most of the world, it represents a high-maintenance, high-energy-input
approach that destroys soil and ecosystem health. The use of perennial
crops, those that live three or more years without replanting, is older than
annual agriculture, and has great potential as an adjunct to annual
agriculture. Perennial crop systems can produce plenty of food at lower
energetic and labor cost while rebuilding soil and ecosystem health. One of
the keys to such systems is the art of creating “polycultures” - patches of
ground with more than one species growing in them at a time. While
perennial crops and polycultures have received little research attention or
development, and are therefore most appropriate for home-scale gardens at
the moment, a number of perennial crops worthy of propagation and active
research exist.

The Perennial Food Project will propagate and research the culture of
perennial food crops at a home-scale level in a semi-urban village context.
Here we mean the phrase “the culture of perennial food crops” in its broadest
sense. This project will investigate, develop, and spread the horticultural
knowledge and practices required to grow perennial vegetables, herbs, edible
flowers, small fruits, tree fruits, and nuts as integrated ecosystems in a
village
setting. We will also mentor participant families in the harvest, cooking, and
enjoyment of the perennial crops they learn to grow, to support a shift of the
families’ cultures towards ways of life that include perennial food
production.
We have partly modeled this multi-year project on the highly successful Heifer
Project, where participants receive animals from the Heifer Project and then
give the animals’ offspring to others in their community and train them in
their
care. In this case, however, the participants will share perennial food plants
and mentor others in their culture and use. In this way, the project will
propagate not only the plants, but the human culture that goes with them, into
and around the village, and then out of the village into surrounding burgs. 6

We see this project as the initiation of, and pilot for, a much larger-scale
and
longer-term project intended to research, demonstrate, educate people about,
and propagate regenerative perennial agriculture in temperate climates
across the United States and the world. By starting in a small town like
Shelburne Falls, we hope to work out bugs in our systems and crystallize the
strategies and methods needed to turn this kind of program into a more
robust national and even worldwide program that operates along similar lines,
but will involve at-risk youth and low-income families in challenging urban
environments that desperately need better nutrition, skills, jobs, community,
and greater understanding of and connection to healthy ecosystems.

Project Overview

• Develop one or more standardized perennial polyculture designs for
different kinds of gardens that can function as replicate trials of species,
varieties, and polycultures during the project. We will begin with a focus on
herbaceous perennials (that is, non-woody plants that die back to the ground
each year) and then add woody crops (that is, shrubs and trees) as the
program develops.

• Select participating households. Begin with ten households the first year,
and double each year thereafter as participants become trainers and mentors
for others and have plants to share. Select households based on
demonstrated level of commitment, interest, and persistence; openness to
new food experiences; ability to cover a portion of the initial cost of the
gardens (though we intend to provide subsidies); desire and ability to work
cooperatively; their social skills and attitudes; and their potential as
future
trainers and mentors.

• Evaluate participants’ properties for lead and other factors, and select
garden sites. We believe that garden site selection is a critical part of the
project’s success, and plan to locate garden beds “in sight, in mind” as much
as possible given neighborhood, site, family, and cultural constraints. Each
site will receive one or two perennial polyculture beds as part of the
program,
but we will endeavor to integrate these beds into the participants’ landscapes
so that they do not seem to be a separate element visually or practically. The
more integrated they feel aesthetically, the more they will integrate into the
culture of each household.

• Train participants to install the gardens and facilitate a cooperative
“worknet”
where each household helps each other household to install their perennial
beds. This reduces installation costs and helps build community among
participants, which we also believe will help the gardens to succeed socially
and functionally. Two Worknet Leaders would guide families through the
process of installing the low income families’ gardens and support the
development of participants in the group to carry the worknets on beyond the
initial two days of organized support.

• Mentor participants in garden and plant culture as well as the food culture
of
the crops over a period of two or three years through a series of mentoring
visits that start with a higher frequency and gradually decrease over time.

• Mentor visits will also double as research data collection opportunities
that
monitor plant and the polyculture designs’ performance over a period of three
to four years. We will use this data to refine our standardized designs over
time. Research attention will also examine the human cultural side of the
gardens, particular designs, and crops, such as flavor ratings and acceptance
of new crops, attitude shifts and involvement in the gardens, management
and maintenance challenges and dynamics, and so on. This data will also
flow into perennial garden design refinements over time.

• As households and gardens mature, use them as propagation centers for
both the plants and the culture by spreading plant divisions to new
participants in the project and selecting among previous participants to find
new mentors and trainers to expand the project. Also work with local farmers
to grow perennial plants as nursery crops for our standardized designs.

• Feed data and experience back into the program to refine species
selections and polyculture bed designs, and to develop mentoring and
training methods that are increasingly effective. 8

• In subsequent years, multiply first the number of participants in the
project
within Shelburne Falls, and then add communities, as plants, mentors, and
funds become available: diversify the perennial bed designs, adding woody
crops; spread the program to other communities; begin working with at-risk
youth to help run the program; train mentors and participants in plant
breeding and selection; involve professional researchers in experiments using
the gardens that result; develop educational programs and tours using the
demonstration gardens the project has created; publish results of and studies
from the work.

First Year Budget Estimate

• Participants in the program will pay nominal fees to increase their
commitment to the workshop and worknet series. We plan to assist five low
income families with subsidies that will cover costs for plants, soil
amendments, and soil testing for their sites, while additional participants
will
cover these costs themselves. Fundraising will therefore primarily cover
salaries and expenses for running the program, with some money to
subsidize plants, testing, and amendments for the five low-income families.

Project Coordinator: $2,500.00
Workshop Instructors (3 days): 3,000.00
Worknet Leaders ( 2 people, 2 days ea.): 2,000.00
Mentor/Monitor (7 visits/site, 4 meetings): 5,000.00
Employee costs (workman’s comp, etc.): 1,250.00
Mileage for Apios staff: 750.00
Plants ($150 ea for 5 low inc families): 750.00
Soil Testing ($100 ea for 5 low inc sites): 500.00
Soil Amendments ($50 x 5 low inc sites) 250.00
Teaching Materials: 300.00
Insurance: . 500.00
Total $16,800.00 9

Summary

The Shelburne Falls Food Security Plan and the Perennial Food Project both
stand on their own as innovative, forward-thinking projects that will benefit
the
village of Shelburne Falls. However, taken together, they will help create an
interacting and self-reinforcing system that will help transform the village’s
food systems. They can, and will, also expand and extend from this small
burg to other places large and small, aiding the transition to a culture based
more solidly in place, more stable, resilient, and healthier, while also less
dependent on far flung industrial systems that damage the planet.
Please support these projects with your tax-deductible contributions of money
or material support, or by sharing this document with friends, family, and
associates who may be able to offer their support to this good work.
Donations in any amount may be sent to Central Connecticut River Valley
Institute, Inc., 7 School Street, Shelburne Falls, MA 01370. Thank you for
your time and consideration. 10

COMMUNITY FOOD GOALS AND PRINCIPLES

The Goals of Community Food are:
1. To help participants develop a deeper sense of being “native” to this place
by engaging them in an on-going process which reveals the interconnections
between humans and the part of the Earth they live within.
2. To promote the availability of more high-quality, locally-grown food for
our
community by empowering people to grow some or all of their own food in
their own yards using traditional gardening methods as well as perennial
gardening - a method which ultimately requires less time and effort than
traditional gardening.
3. To encourage and strengthen bonds between people in their
neighborhoods and community by creating mutually beneficial activities,
information, and food which can be shared with others.
4. To develop effective Community Food systems and materials in the
Shelburne Falls pilot project which then can be taken out to other
communities, towns, and cities.

CCRVI’s and Community Food’s Underlying Principles are:

1. We want to learn to become “native” to our “place” and to promote the
emergence of a culture which encourages and supports people to experience
themselves as “native” to their places. [Wes Jackson, Becoming Native to This
Place (see
the detailed bibliographic information below), the entire book generally and
Chapter 5 in particular] This means:

a. we seek to create “coherent communit[ies] embedded in the
ecological realities of [their] surrounding landscape” so that it is obvious
that
the community includes both the landscape and the people; [Becoming Native to
This Place, page 3]

b. we seek to engage in an on-going “conversation” with the landscape
11 and each other to discover what truly works for the good of the whole over
the
long run; [Becoming Native to This Place, page 40, we’ve paraphrased the
quote from Wendell Berry, and generally Chapter 4]

c. we value technology and science and believe they should be
subordinate to the human principles of connection, meaning, wholeness,
health, soul, spirit, and consciousness; [Becoming Native to This Place, page
39, we’ve
paraphrased]

d. we start with creating highly-effective local food systems as the
platform upon which our community is built; [Becoming Native to This Place,
generally
Chapter 3]

e. we believe that using less energy and resources will help us develop
a deeper sense of “nativeness” and we seek to discover a way “to earn our
living and amuse ourselves with the least expense to our life support system”;
[Becoming Native to This Place, page 5]

f. we believe that all parts of the Universe are alive, conscious, and
responsive and that we can learn to interact at deep levels with each part;
[Becoming Native to This Place, generally Chapter 3]

g. we believe that human-scale activities provide us with the best
chance of becoming and staying “native;” [Becoming Native to This Place,
pages 2-3] and
h. we believe that there is much to be learned from mimicking the
success of the natural world and the wisdom and practices of those who have
lived more closely with the natural world. [Becoming Native to This Place,
generally
Chapter 3]

2. We accept that we are profoundly ignorant of how to reclaim a deep
awareness of our interconnectedness with our landscape so we start with
small projects, develop redundant systems, and are always ready to
reevaluate, tweak, back out, and/or start over as necessary. [Becoming Native
to
This Place, we’ve paraphrased page 24]

3. We seek to live our lives on contemporary sunlight instead of ancient
sunlight.[Becoming Native to This Place, generally Chapter 1] 12

4. We value each person in our community because we know that we are all
part of a greater whole and thus inextricably connected.

Note: We honor the wisdom of Wes Jackson, of The Land Institute, Salina,
Kansas, as
contained in his book, Becoming Native to This Place, (Counterpoint,
Washington, D.C.,
1994, 1996) which expressed so eloquently the principles that have been
evolving inside
us for many years. The words we’ve used above to describe our principles are
mostly
Wes’. As indicated above, some are direct quotes and others we’ve tweaked,
summarized, paraphrased, and otherwise extracted into their present form.





  • [Livingontheland] The Shelburne Falls Food Security Plan and The Perennial Food Project, Tradingpost, 12/10/2009

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