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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] The Local Food and Farming Revolution
  • Date: Thu, 01 Apr 2010 10:40:21 -0700



The Local Food and Farming Revolution
Mar 08, 2010 by Michael Brownlee
http://transition-times.com/blog/2010/03/08/the-local-food-and-farming-revolution/
[Note: This presentation was developed for the Colorado Agriculture "Big and
Small" Conference in Brighton, Colorado, on Feb. 26, 2010]

Before I get into the presentation, a few words about where I’m coming from.
As it happens, I grew up in a little farming community in northeastern
Colorado—Yuma—where my family owned the local drug store (complete with soda
fountain).

I’m a journalist and communicator at heart, and I started working for the
local newspaper in Yuma when I was in the sixth grade. I watched the
landscape and the town change with deep changes in agriculture.

For nearly the last five years I’ve been working on relocalization in Boulder
County and more recently across the state, working towards our communities
being able to meet their essential needs locally, and in the process to
become more resilient and self-reliant.

To begin this presentation, I’m going to give the briefest possible summary I
can of the situation, our potential response, and what’s possible—maybe five
minutes—then back it up with some details. Then I’ll talk about the
involvement of the Transition movement in food and agriculture, along with
some of the things we’re working on in Boulder County. Afterwards, I hope we
can discuss all this together for a little while.

I’m probably going to step on a few landmines here, maybe break some taboos.
But I ask for your patience.

Here’s my quick, thumbnail sketch of the situation, the highly condensed
version:

Because the way we eat and the way we grow our food is a major contributor to
climate change and global warming…

Because industrial food production is so energy-intensive and so dependent on
oil for fertilizer, pesticides, planting and harvesting, processing,
packaging, and transportation…

Because global oil production likely peaked in July 2008, which means that
energy will be increasingly expensive in the future…

Because the age of cheap fossil fuels has come to an end…

Because the economy has been based on an abundant supply of cheap fossil
fuels…

Because therefore food prices will soon increase dramatically, and food
shortages will begin to happen—even here—perhaps in the next couple of years…

Because the U.S. is becoming a net food importer…

Because humanity is now consuming more food than we are producing…

Because industrial agriculture—like the globalized economy—is at a crossroads
and is about to go into an unexpected decline…

Because much of the food that industrial agriculture produces is destroying
our national’s health …

Because the way we grow much of our food is destroying and washing away our
precious topsoil…

Because we can no longer conscionably support a food system that causes
hunger, starvation, and disease in other parts of the world…

Because the way we eat is destroying our connection with the earth, with the
natural processes and cycles of earth and sky, with those who grow our food,
with the essence of life…

Because the way we eat has seriously weakened our communities…

Because maybe less than one percent of our current diet is local…

Because in Colorado we spend more than ten billion dollars on food each year,
almost all of which is fleeing outside the state, lost to our local economies…

And because we know all this…

We must learn everything we can about our food predicament. We must all learn
to grow at least some of our own food. We must all support the revitalization
of local agriculture. We must end our dependence on fossil fuels, chemical
fertilizers, and mechanization in our food production. We must commit to
healing and rebuilding the soil everywhere we can. We must dramatically
increase local food production for local consumption.

We must rebuild the local food infrastructure for processing and
distribution. We must stop supporting and consuming non-local food. We must
support local farmers, local producers, local grocers, and local restaurants.

We must learn how to eat seasonally. We must learn how to preserve and store
food. We must plan how we’re going to build food security in our communities,
and plan how we’re going to feed our people when things get tough. We must be
prepared to share what we have to eat.

We must develop new skills and knowledge—composting, vermiculture,
permaculture, soil-building, seed-saving, cultivating, canning and
preserving, cooking, nutrition planning, herbal medicine.

We must make our foodshed as local as possible.

And we must do all this rather quickly.

If all this sounds like hard work, well, it is! But what would happen if we
did this?

Our health would improve greatly, especially the health of our children. We’d
feel more connected, more alive, more engaged, living more meaningful and
more satisfying lives. We’d be devoted to rebuilding the soil in our
farmlands. Our local farmers would be able to buy the land on which they
farm. We’d transform the landscape. Our agricultural land would mostly be
used for food production for local consumption. We’d produce thousands of new
jobs; our local economies would be robust! We’d dramatically reduce
greenhouse gas emissions and environmental degradation. We’d be sequestering
carbon in the soil, in plant growth. We’d have plans and food stores in place
to feed all our people in times of crisis or emergency. We’d all have a far
greater degree of food security and food sovereignty; major corporations
would no longer be in control of what and how we eat. Our foodshed would be
resilient and self-reliant.

The Food and Farming Predicament

Okay, now let me back up and go into a little more depth.

We face a daunting predicament with the way we’re producing and consuming our
food. We could frame the heart of our predicament around a key concept that
we’re all learning about these days: sustainability. Now, mostly we’ve been
forced into learning about sustainability because modern industrial
agriculture has some real problems here, and these have kind of crept up on
us. We didn’t see all this coming, but here’s some of what we’ve been
discovering (of course, most of you already know these things; I’m just
trying to put it into some kind of context):

First, industrial agriculture is having serious and unexpected environmental
impacts: fertilizer runoff has created dead zones in our oceans; the search
for more arable land has devastated our forests; irrigation methods have
depleted surface and ground water; the way we farm is eroding our topsoil and
reducing soil fertility; pesticides and herbicides have polluted our air and
water; monocropping has resulted in loss of habitat for many species.

And agriculture has become a major contributor to climate change. If we
consider the manufacture and use of pesticides and fertilizers; fuel and oil
for tractors, equipment, trucking and shipping; electricity for lighting,
cooling, and heating; and emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide
and other green house gases—the total impact of farming and food production
may be between 25 and 30 percent of the U.S.’s collective carbon footprint.

If we add to this the carbon sequestration that is lost every year through
deforestation to increase land for agricultural use, the total contribution
of industrial agriculture to climate change is simply enormous.

At the same time, it seems that much of the food we have been producing has
actually been decreasing in quality. Food is too cheap! We spend only 10% of
our income to feed ourselves; we don’t value food enough. We’ve seen an
epidemic of obesity and malnutrition (in Boulder County, 49% of our residents
are overweight or obese), along with a dramatic increase in chronic
food-related diseases and food-borne illnesses.

These impacts are serious enough, but may not even be the most significant
impacts of industrial agriculture. We’ve also witnessed the loss of the web
of connections at the heart of our society. Our towns and cities do not
function as communities any more. People are disconnected from food, from the
people who grow it, and from the land. There is a profound lack of public
awareness of environmental costs and health consequences of processed foods.
Rural economies have been left in shambles, as agricultural outputs are
shipped to distant markets. Our communities can no longer feed themselves.

At the same time, on top of all this, there is a growing global food crisis
that is symptomatic of our predicament. In the last couple of years, we’ve
seen runaway inflation of food prices, growing inequities in the availability
of food staples, food riots in at least 30 nations, and scientists calling
for a moratorium on biofuel production.

The food crisis is also local. In 2008, we witnessed 40,000 people show up at
the Miller Farm by Platteville when they opened their fields for gleaning.
Hunger is on the increase even in America, and it’s extending well into the
middle class. Poorer families often have to choose between food, medical
care, or heat. They just can’t afford them all.
The Coming “Perfect Global Storm”

Gleaning at Miller Farm

Most of us know in our bones that a sea change is coming in agriculture. But
the biggest driver of that change is not going to come from the issues that
I’ve mentioned so far.

The biggest driver is going to be the increasing cost and decreasing
availability of fossil fuels, especially oil. Because agriculture is so
dependent on oil, the entire system is extremely vulnerable to oil
depletion—and to oil price spikes.

The situation brewing on the horizon regarding oil compels us to begin
rethinking how we grow our food, and even how we eat.

The application of fossil fuels to the food system has supported a human
population growing from fewer than two billion in 1990 to nearly seven
billion today. In the process, the way we feed ourselves has changed
profoundly.

The population is expected to grow to about nine billion by the middle of
this century, and there is great concern about how we’re going to feed all
those people. The system is already straining to keep up.

What’s not on the radar of most people—including governments and industry—is
that our supply of cheap oil on which we all depend (most especially in
agriculture) is shrinking.

We’ve likely already reached the peak of global oil production, and are
facing an irreversible decline rate that will be somewhere between three and
nine percent per year. We’re at the tipping point right now.

So, the bottom line is not good news: Oil is going to become increasingly
scarce and increasingly expensive over time—beginning very soon. This will
fundamentally change how we farm and how we eat, and the local food and
farming revolution is in many ways an attempt to anticipate and prepare for
what’s inevitably coming.

Of course, it’s not just farming that’s going to be impacted, because our
entire globalized economy is based on an abundant supply of fossil fuels,
especially oil. The economic downturn we’ve recently experienced is directly
related to this dynamic. In 2008, oil rose to $147/barrel, precipitating a
global recession, and we’re still reeling from it.

There are now 98 oil producing nations in the world—and at least 64 of them
have already reached their peak in oil production and are in decline. That is
fundamentally why oil prices have been rising so dramatically.

Yes, it’s true that there is a bit more oil to be discovered and developed
and produced in various parts of the world. But oil discoveries peaked
globally around 1960, and have fallen off dramatically despite plenty of
investment in exploration. We’ve already picked all the low-hanging fruit,
the easy inexpensive oil. From here on in, oil is going to be increasingly
expensive and harder to get out of the ground. All the cheap oil has already
been burned.

And in a way, this is a very good thing. Because if we had unlimited
quantities of cheap oil to burn, and continued doing so, we would quickly
overwhelm the atmosphere with carbon to the point that it would be very
difficult to grow anything anywhere. Climate change at that level would be
devastating to all life on this planet.

Peak oil is an enormous predicament. Our ability to grow food to feed our
population has been based on cheap fossil fuels. In fact, our entire global
economy is based on cheap fossil fuels. And now we’re bumping into a very
fundamental resource limitation that will force us to change how we do almost
everything. Worse, though most economists don’t want to consider this yet,
peak oil signals the end of economic growth. We are learning that economic
growth as we have known it is profoundly unsustainable.

The implications for food and agriculture are staggering, and they are
urgent. Last year, the Soil Association in the UK published a key paper,
“Food Futures: Strategies for resilient food and farming.” In that document,
they say:

“Over the next 20 years we must make fundamental changes to the way we
farm, process, distribute, prepare and eat our food. Global food shortages
will be inevitable unless we act now to change our food and farming systems.”

One of the key researchers in this area is Richard Heinberg, Senior Fellow at
Post Carbon Institute, author of a number of important books that have helped
us understand our predicament. Last year, he co-authored a very important
paper, which I highly recommend to you, “The Food & Farming Transition:
Toward a Post Carbon Food System.” Here he maps the pathways to a much-needed
revolution in agriculture.

Richard is one of the most grounded and most incisive researchers and
communicators in the world regarding these issues. I’ve come to deeply trust
his perspective and his insights. In a paper titled, “What Will We Eat When
the Oil Runs Out?,” Richard says,

“To get to the heart of the crisis, we need a more fundamental reform of
agriculture than anything we have seen in many decades. In essence, we need
an agriculture that does not require fossil fuels…”

A non-fossil-fuel agricultural system! Well, the situation we’re facing does
mandate radical changes. Heinberg continues:

“The transition to a fossil-fuel-free food system does not constitute a
distant utopian proposal. It is an unavoidable, immediate, and immense
challenge that will call for unprecedented levels of creativity at all levels
of society.”

This is all part of a convergence of global crises—fossil fuel depletion,
climate change, and economic turmoil—which James Howard Kunstler has called
“The Long Emergency.” We need to understand that The Long Emergency is not a
problem that can be solved. It is a predicament, a long-term consequence of
our own actions to which we must now adapt.

Now, at first this might all sound like a disaster. But it doesn’t have to
be. It might turn out to be the best thing that’s ever happened to food and
agriculture.

Albert Bates, author of The Post Petroleum Survival Guide and Cookbook, says

“The Long Emergency is an opportunity to pause, to think through our
present course, and to adjust to a saner path for the future. We had best
face facts: we really have no choice. The Long Emergency is a horrible
predicament. It is also a wonderful opportunity to do a lot better. Let’s not
squander this moment.”

As Rob Hopkins, the founder of the Transition movement, says:

“Inherent within the challenges of peak oil and climate change is an
extraordinary opportunity to reinvent, rethink and rebuild the world around
us.”

In the face of all this, one of the most important things we can do—and must
do—is to completely rebuild our local foodsheds—from multiplying backyard and
frontyard gardens, to converting our local agricultural lands to growing food
for local consumption, to rebuilding local food storage and distribution
systems, to training people to learn farming as a wise and essential—and
sustainable—career choice.

Not only will all this help reduce the amount of fossil fuels embedded in
today’s food from fertilizer, pesticides and transport, but adopting a more
local organic diet will greatly contribute to our health, and our children’s
health. It will also reconnect us with those who grow our food, with the land
that supports and nurtures us, with the seasons, and with the natural
processes and cycles that are fundamental to all life. In the process, we’ll
rediscover what community really means. And for most of us, that will be an
unexpected and inspiring revelation.

Of course, what I’m pointing to here are qualities of sustainability that
can’t be measured, but which we know in our hearts are essential to
humanness—qualities and experiences that have been lost to our communities
for a long time.

This means that we have no choice but to quickly transition to a world no
longer dependent on fossil fuels, a world made up of communities and
economies that function within ecological limits. The age of economic growth
driven by cheap fossil fuels is over.

And the age of agriculture driven by cheap fossil fuels is over, too.

The Worldwatch Institute recently published its report, 2010 State of the
World: Transforming Cultures from Consumerism to Sustainability. In this
book, in an article titled “From Agriculture to Permaculture,” Albert Bates
and Toby Hemenway (both farmers and teachers of Permaculture) say:

“Humanity now confronts a critical challenge: to develop methods of
agriculture that sequester carbon, enhance soil fertility, preserve ecosystem
services, use less water, and hold more water in the landscape—all while
productively using a steadily compounding supply of human labor. In short, a
sustainable agriculture.”

Another perspective is from Sharon Astyk, a farmer and mother and writer. In
her latest book, A Nation of Farmers: Defeating the Food Crisis on American
Soil, she writes:

“Oil has replaced people in industrial agriculture, and now people have
to come back and replace the oil.”

Sharon calls for a food and farming revolution that is based on simply
choosing to change the nature of what we grow and what we eat.

“It is a call for more participation in the food system—100 million new
farmers and 200 million new cooks in the U.S., and many more worldwide.”

Agriculture is entering into a profound transition, and fundamentally it’s an
energy transition that will be unfolding over the next 10 to 15 years—and
there probably will be some pretty big bumps along the way. We will have less
available energy in the future. And renewables will not be able to come on
stream quickly enough or at sufficient scale to avoid fairly drastic changes.

The opportunity we have is to design our descent down this energy curve. Now,
the transition to a non-fossil-fuel food system will take some time. Nearly
every aspect of the process by which we feed ourselves must be redesigned.

But if we do this right, we have an opportunity to build a food and farming
system that is economically viable, environmentally sustainable, resilient
and self-reliant, that ensures food security and sovereignty for all, that
contributes to the health and happiness of our citizenry, and that
revitalizes our communities across the nation.

If we do this right, as Sharon Astyk says:

“Not only can we cease to do the harm that industrial agriculture does,
but we can replace it with something better—a better way of growing and
preparing food—and also a democracy of the sort that Thomas Jefferson
imagined for his nation, a democracy that is not vulnerable to being stolen
or sold, as our present one is.”





  • [Livingontheland] The Local Food and Farming Revolution, Tradingpost, 04/01/2010

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