Local Food Systems, Sustainable Farming

Just food now; public opportunities and responsibilities

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One of my previous posts described how the modern industrial food system is in “collapse.”  In this post, I offer some ideas on how town government, local colleges and community organizations can get involved to .…

“just grow food – and – grow food justly.”

While the USDA, the American Farm Bureau and national commodity groups like to talk about promoting local agriculture, most of their policies are more supportive of “big agriculture.”   If we are going to “grow food justly” we might want to look closer to home.  We need to start in our own backyards and neighborhoods and then work with town government, colleges and community organizations to strengthen the local food system.

This blog focuses on my experience working in my hometown, Amherst, Massachusetts.

Local Opportunities

One of the mantras from “big ag” is that you can’t feed the world with local food.  Well lets think again.  First, we need to ask what do we mean by local?  For a New Englander the answer may be obvious, as there is a strong sense of regional identity that stops at the Hudson River.  One of my favorite stories is of an 18th century tax collector from New York who tried to impose his authority over independent Vermonters.  Ethan Allen (of Green Mountain Boys fame) is reported to have shot him with buckshot (not fatally) and chased him away with the cry “…the gods of the valley are not the gods of the hills.” Although today we clearly need to trade with those outside of our region, it would be good to know just how much food are able to grow for ourselves in New England.

Toward that end, the Amherst Agricultural and Conservation Commissions invited Dr. Brian Donahue, Professor of Environmental History at Brandeis University (and a local farmer himself), to speak to a group of local residents about what might be possible.  Professor Donahue shared his estimates of how much food could be realistically produced in New England.  He thought we could grow:

  • Almost all of our vegetables
  • Half of our fruit
  • All of our  dairy products
  • Most of our beef and lamb
  • Most of our pastured pork, poultry and eggs

The following 25-minute video clip from his presentation provides more detail:

Can we grow more food in New England?

Professor Donahue said that although this was possible, it was by no means going to be easy.  If we want to grow more of our own food in New England, we have some work to do!

Local Responsibility

Ben Hewett’s book “The Town that Food Saved” tells the story of Hardwick, Vermont, a community that took responsibility for its own future.  While Amherst, MA may be a more cosmopolitan community, local food has an important place in our history and culture as well.  Our town emblem for example, is “the book and the plow”.   These symbols represent our respective commitment to higher education (we have 3 colleges in town) and farming (we are proud of our agricultural roots).  While this partnership is tested from time to time (as UMass faculty sometimes deride our history as a “cow college,” and farmers at times may laugh among themselves about the “eggheads” on campus), our success as a healthy community depends on mutual respect for both of these traditions.  This partnership is one of the strengths of our town and a foundation upon which we are trying to build a vibrant community-based food system.

To build a more vibrant local food system, town government, the colleges and community organizations need to take more responsibility.

Here are a few ideas to consider, based on a few of our experiences in Amherst:

Local government might:

Colleges and universities can help by:

Community organizations might:

As an example of a community-led project, a study commissioned by our neighboring town, Feed Northampton, proposes a public investment in food hubs that might provide communal food processing, packaging, cold storage and redistribution.  It might also include a slaughter facility, a community kitchen for processing vegetables, a maple sugar boiler, a cider press,  and a flour mill.  And residents of Sedgwick, Maine recently voted to adopt a Local Food and Self-Governance Ordinance, setting a precedent for other towns looking to preserve small-scale farming and food processing.  If we are going to have a more robust local agriculture, we need to take more responsibility for creating that vision ourselves.

I believe that we must work together to build more resilience into a food system that is dominated by global corporations, vulnerable to collapse in the industrial world, and already in collapse in many developing countries (as evidenced by recent unrest) by growing more food locally.

However if  your own town government, local organizations and colleges fail to provide leadership, it is up to “average” citizens to lead the way.  If we “start parade” the local leaders will gladly jump up in front and wave our “local foods”  flag!  My next blog will examine personal responsibility for helping to create a vibrant community-based food system and ask the question, “so how do I help?”

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For more ideas, videos and challenges along these lines, please join my Facebook Group; Just Food Now.  And for those of you from Amherst, please send me your favorite public initiatives to promote local food to add to my list for a future blog.

Sustainability Education

Education for sustainability; a holistic philosophy

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My last blog announcing a new certificate in Sustainable Food and Farming at the University of Massachusetts resulted in lots of inquiries.  While most were about specific courses and requirements, some asked about the pedagogy and underlying philosophy of our new program.  This blog attempts to describe the thinking that went into development of the certificate program as well as our undergraduate Sustainable Food and Farming major.  I hope it is also relevant to the many new degree programs, courses and curricula emerging around the world focused on education for sustainability.

Should sustainability be part of a public education?

The next generation of students graduating from public universities will be faced with an unprecedented challenge to redesign nearly every major natural resource based system on the planet.  These women and men will inherit systems of industrial and technological growth that are simultaneously destroying or depleting much of nature and endangering human and non-human species, while offering the highest standard of living and rate of consumption ever known.  These modern systems of industrial and technological development must be re-imagined and re-created in ways that no longer rely on non-renewable resources, use natural resources at non-sustainable rates, or cause harm to people or the natural world.

Education for sustainability should prepare students to address these daunting challenges.   While university leaders often talk about education as “an engine of economic growth” and a means of creating jobs, a more complete understanding of how public universities serve the public good would include attention to common human interests such as: affordable, nutritionally adequate food; adequate and affordable clothing and shelter; a healthy, livable environment; a means to provide for one’s livelihood, personal growth and community health; accessible health care; and accessible educational opportunities.   Education for sustainability should address these basic human needs.

What are the attributes of an education for sustainability?

A widely accepted conceptual model presents sustainability as a quest toward three interrelated objectives: 1) environmental integrity; 2) economic vitality; and 3) social equity.

This model however sets up  three competing objectives in which economic priorities almost always win out over environmental and social objectives.  Recently university leaders have begun to talk about “environmental sustainability” (which might be considered progress).  But I believe we must learn to view this model in a more holistic way, using systems thinking tools that allow us to integrate all three objectives rather than trading one off against another.

Some academics particularly struggle to incorporate social equity into their thinking.  According to an April 2001 Science article about sustainability science, the university research community has generally ignored the social impact of their studies.   The authors of this article call for a new science that is different in “structure, methods and content” from the science of the past.  Specifically the new sustainability science will need to approach problems from a holistic perspective that:

  1. transcends spatial scales from economic globalization to local farming practices;
  2. accounts for temporal inertia of global affects such as atmospheric ozone depletion and the movement of toxins;
  3. deals with the functional complexity of interacting systems and subsystems; and
  4. recognizes and honors a wide range of divergent opinion within the scientific community and between science and the larger society.

We must be clear that the call for a more integrative approach including social objectives does not represent the abandonment of rational, objective thought, but the evolution of human thought toward holism or systems thinking.  According to Ervin Lazlo, this “macroshift” represents the necessary evolution from logos to holos thinking with a significant change in focus as described in this table:

Logos

Holos
Reductionist thinking

Objective

Competitive

Individualistic

‘Head’ oriented

Separate from nature

Fragmented

Linear

 Holistic thinking

Subjective

Interdependent/collaborative

Community-based

Whole being (head, heart, body, spirit)

Connected with nature/ecological

Interconnected

Systems oriented

Education for sustainability goes beyond “mere knowledge”

Current undergraduate education focuses primarily on building knowledge within a specific academic discipline.  Education for sustainability on the other hand, requires a broad set of learning that integrates multiple disciplines with new practical skills and the evolution of personal and community wisdom.  Lacking wisdom, knowledge can be dangerous.  Human knowledge, for example, has built weapons capable of destroying everything we love.  Human knowledge has degraded ecosystems and created cycles of poverty and despair.  Knowledge “alone” cannot solve the problems that we have created.  To solve the problems of humanity, we must go beyond knowledge.  Today we need skills, knowledge AND wisdom (where wisdom is defined as the awareness of what has value in life).

Most university programs are grounded in a commitment to building instrumental knowledge, that is, knowledge about how the world works.  Instrumental knowledge is used to manipulate the environment, and while important, it must be balanced by communicative knowledge of values, ideas, feelings and cultural concepts such as justice, freedom, equality and love.  Communicative learning may rely on metaphors and analogies in addition to facts and data to unravel complex human and human-natural system relationships.  Learning tools such as decision cases, dialogue, service learning and story telling are core to communicative learning.  Lastly, while instrumental learning may thrive in hierarchical systems where the power of teachers is greater than students, communicative learning must occur in environments that support co-learning of both teachers and students.

Conclusion

Education for sustainability will require the integration of thinking and feeling, mind and body, science and spirit, knowledge and values, head and heart.  It will mean less time in classrooms and more time learning through experience.  It will require pedagogy founded on a model of transformative learning that engages the student’s mind, body and spirit, builds students’ capacity to make meaning of their experiences, and reconstruct their notion of self beyond the individual-self to include the family-self, community-self, and global-self.  Awareness of the connection between the individual, the community, and the cosmos are necessary attributes of education to prepare young people as leaders in sustainable world.

In my mind, few university programs fulfill this vision of education for sustainability (including our own certificate and major).   If you want an example however of a quality university program that truly prepares students to be leaders in a sustainable world, look to Living Routes Inc.  This program should be a model for us all!

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This blog was adapted from a proposal I wrote in 2002 for a new “sustainability studies” curriculum (interestingly, the proposal was rejected by university administration).   And for more ideas, videos and challenges along these lines, please join my Facebook Group; Just Food Now.   And go here for more of my World.edu posts.

Homegrown Revolution

Growing our own food: for a spiritual connection with the earth

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One of my previous blog posts focused on our efforts to change a local zoning bylaw to make it legal to raise backyard hens.  A side effect of this work has been several interviews with the local press, in which I am invariably asked why I raise hens.  

Frankly, I don’t always tell the whole truth.

I tend to talk about my desire to uncouple from the industrial food system and factory farms that contribute to diminishing fossil fuels, the threat of pandemic, and global climate change.  I also talk about my desire to be more self-sufficient and to have food to give to my neighbors as the reasons for growing a garden and raising hens.  And this is all true…. but not quite complete.  The truth is…..

…raising my own food also gives me with a spiritual connection with Mother Earth.

Going out in the morning before work to check for eggs and “say hello to the ladies,”  is a daily reminder of my connection with all of life.  It is away to reaffirm that we are part of – rather than apart from Mother Nature.  If I do this simple act with mindfulness, it can be a brief spiritual moment at the start of my day.

What and how we eat food can also be a sacred experience (or not).

Putting food in our bodies is the most intimate act we do on a regular basis (generally more often than sex).  Eating food can either be a sterile, hurried act, offering little cause for joy – or a creative, spiritual act of connecting with other people, the earth – and thus with all of Creation.  According to Wendell Berry “when food… is no longer associated with farming and with the land, then the eaters are suffering a kind of cultural amnesia that is misleading and dangerous.” This amnesia prevents us from realizing the contribution food makes to our lives as a source of both physical and spiritual nourishment.

Berry presents a few ideas on how we may free ourselves from this amnesia when he suggests that we:

  • participate in food production to the extent that we can,
  • prepare our own food,
  • learn the origins of the food we buy,
  • deal directly with a local farmer, and;
  • learn more about the biology, ecology and sociology of our food.

I would add to the list, composting all usable kitchen and garden waste (cycle of life).

How we grow food and what we eat is a reflection of our relationship with Mother Earth.  If we are willing to accept continued dependence on a mechanized, specialized and industrial agricultural system, we will remain disconnected from the land, from Mother Earth, and perhaps from the Divine.  While an increasing number of people seem to desire a more intimate relationship with the earth through good food, most simply assume that industrial agriculture is a necessary component of an efficient global economy.

Francis Moore Lappe’ challenges this assumption when she asks; “why do we tolerate rules of economic life that violate our sense of the sacred“?   At the heart of this question is a tension between the economic world we know and the sacred world many of us desire.

Collecting my own eggs from backyard hens makes little economic sense, as industrial eggs are really cheap.  But I am more than an economic being.  Lappe’ writes: “only as we leave behind this false notion of the economic self will we be able to critique and resist economic rules that violate our deepest intuitions about our most basic human values, including… our need to cherish the sacred.”

Growing and eating our own food or purchasing from people we know can be both an economic and a sacred act.  Most Americans however worship the economic act, while ignoring the deeper, sacred implications.

E.F. Schumacher seems to agree when he wrote in his classic text, Small is Beautiful….

“the crude materialist sees agriculture as essentially directed toward food production.  A wider view sees agriculture as having to fulfill at least three tasks:

  1. “to keep man in touch with living nature, of which he is… a highly vulnerable part;
  2. to humanize and ennoble man’s wider habitat; and
  3. to bring forth the foodstuffs and other materials which are needed for… life.”

It seems that Schumacher is acknowledging the need to serve both the economic and the sacred self (if we can look past the sexist language in this 1970’s text).  He  continues…

“I do not believe that a civilization which recognizes only the third of these tasks, and which pursues it with such ruthlessness and violence that the other two tasks are…  systematically counteracted, has any chance of long-term survival.”

Strong language!  But I generally agree.  Hens raised in battery cages (for the efficiency required to keep the eggs cheap) are treated with ruthlessness and violence.

But it is not only the chickens that suffer from the industrial system!

Industrial agriculture has been eminently successful at displacing millions of people from the land, thus reducing the opportunity for most of us to have a personal relationship with our food and with Mother Earth.  Disconnection from the earth is a human disease, perhaps contributing to an increase in drug, alcohol and prescription drug use in the U.S.

Rediscovering the sacred is an act of healing  – or perhaps remembering.  In forgetting the sacred we have become unhealthy and un-whole.  From this place of illness, we ask the wrong questions and seek after the false-gods of consumerism and superficial amusements.  I believe we must rediscover ways to reconnect with the earth, perhaps by growing our own food, raising a few hens (for the eggs and the laughs), and buying real food from people in our own communities we know and trust, if we are to heal the damage we have caused to the global ecosystem and the human soul.  What do you think?

Please share your own thoughts below.

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Quotes from:

Berry, W. 1990. The pleasures of eating. IN: What are People For? North Point Press. San Francisco.

Moore Lappe’, F. 1990. Food, Farming, and Democracy. IN: Our Sustainable Table. Ed. R. Clark. North Point Press. San Francisco.

Schumacher, E.F. 1972. Small is Beautiful. Harper & Row.

This blog was adapted from an essay I wrote; Agriculture is a business, a lifestyle, and a conversation with the universe.

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I’d appreciate it if you would share this post with your friends. And for more ideas, videos and challenges along these lines, please join my Facebook Group; Just Food Now. And go here for more of my World.edu posts.

Sustainability Education

Changing bureaucratic institutions from the inside

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Last week, I wrote about fighting city hall to make my home town more “chicken friendly.”  After reading the blog, one of my students asked me “how do you work to change a bureaucratic institution without getting angry?”  This blog focuses on my experience working with bureaucracy; from local government to large universities.   I know that getting angry (even when its justified) rarely helps.

I’ve spent much of my academic career trying to change university programs (as both a faculty member and an administrator) to be more supportive of sustainability principles.  I’ve also worked within local government (serving on several town boards and commissions) to support local sustainable agriculture.  While institutions of power, may be influenced by outside pressure (including protests which certainly have value and are needed at times), my own experience is largely trying to change bureaurcacy “from the inside.”

When asked by students how to change bureaucratic institutions, I tell them the story of The Shambhala Worker Prophecy.

This story, adapted with permission from Joanna Macy, is said to have emerged from Tibetan Buddhism about twelve hundred years ago.  It predicts a time when great destructive powers have emerged – perhaps a time not unlike our own.

The Shambhala Worker Prophecy claims that “…there will come a time when all life on Earth is in danger.  In this era, great barbarian forces will have arisen which have unfathomable destructive power.  New and unforeseen technologies will appear during this time, with the potential to lay waste to the world.

Do you believe “all life on Earth is in danger” today?

What “barbarian forces” might have created this situation?

“In this era, when the future of sentient life seems to hang by the frailest of threads, the kingdom of Shambhala will appear.

“The kingdom of Shambhala is not a geopolitical place, but a place that exists in the hearts and minds of the Shambhala Worker.  These workers wear no special uniform, nor do they have titles or ranks. They have no particular workplace, as their work is everywhere.  In fact, they look just like the barbarians on the outside, but they hold the kingdom of Shambhala on the inside.”

Do you know any “barbarians”?

Do you know of any “institutions of great destructive power”?

“Now the time comes when great courage – intellectual, moral and spiritual – is required of the Shambhala Workers.  The time comes when they must go into the very heart of the barbarian power, into the tall buildings, corporate offices, factories, and the citadels of learning where the weapons of destruction are made – to dismantle them.

“The Shambhala Workers have the courage to do this because they know that these destructive systems are ‘mind-made’.  That is, they are created by the human mind, and they can be unmade by the human mind.  The lie that these systems are the inevitable result of progress must be exposed by the Shambhala Workers.  Shambhala Workers know the dangers that threaten life on Earth are not visited upon us by any extraterrestrial powers, satanic deities, or preordained fate.  They arise from our own decisions, our own lifestyles, and our own relationships.  They arise from within us all.”

Do you know any Shambhala Workers?

Might you be one?

“The Shambhala Workers go into the corridors of power armed with the only tools that the barbarians don’t understand, and for which there is no defense.  The tools of the Shambhala Workers are compassion for all, and knowledge of the connectedness of all things.  Both are necessary.  They have to have compassion to do this work, because this is the source of their power – the passion to act along with others.

“But that tool by itself is not enough.  Compassion alone can burn you out, so you need the other tool – you need insight into the radical interdependence of all things.  With that wisdom you know that the work is not a battle between good guys and bad guys, because the line between good and bad runs through the landscape of every human heart.  With insight into our interrelatedness, you know that actions undertaken with pure intent have effects throughout the web of life, beyond what you can measure or discern.  By itself, that knowledge may be too conceptual to sustain you and keep you moving, so you need the energy that comes of compassion as well.

“Within each Shambhala Worker these two tools, compassion and insight, can sustain you as agents of wholesome change.  They are gifts for you to claim and share now in healing our world and our destructive institutions of power.”

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There are several interpretations of this prophecy.  Some portray the coming of the kingdom of Shambhala as an internal event, a metaphor for one’s inner spiritual journey.  Others present it as a transformation of the human social system that will occur at the just right time.  Now would be a good time!

So, when students invariably ask me if the time is now, I tell them that I think we have a choice.  I believe we can create the kingdom of Shambhala whenever we are ready to begin.

Do you know of anyone who might be a Shambhala Worker?  Are you?

Please post your own Shambhala Worker story in the comments box below.

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I’d appreciate it if you would share this post with your friends.  And for more ideas, videos and challenges along these lines, please join my Facebook Group; Just Food Now.   And go here for more of my World.edu posts.

Homegrown Revolution

Changing the zoning laws; making your town safe for backyard hens

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Last week I wrote about the rapidly growing practice of raising backyard hens (for the eggs and the laughs).  One of the problems in some communities however, is that zoning regulations may make raising hens illegal.

There seems to be a prejudice among some suburbanites regarding  raising chickens.  We know that hens are easier to care for than dogs and cats, and if managed well are not smelly or noisy (as many suburbanites imagine).

Many of us who are committed to family and neighborhood level self-sufficiency believe that the keeping of backyard hens, is an appropriately-scaled, practical and symbolic form of environmental, fiscal, and community sustainability.  Even though it may illicit  sneers from some people (often people who have never seen a live hen or eaten a really fresh egg), it is most important that we try to change these local laws to not only allow but to encourage backyard hens.  This is an issue of Food Sovereignty!

We MUST fight city hall!

Toward that end, I’ve been working with a group of neighbors in my own town to try to convince our Planning Board to change the zoning regulations to make a few backyard hens legal.  Before speaking publicly to town hall however, I applied for a Special Permit and went through the process of getting a Special Permit so that my own birds were legal.

The “educational experience” of getting a permit cost me $210, and took several months.  Most of my friends who raise hens, just don’t tell anyone – as they feel the regulatory process is simply too burdensome.  I fully understand this viewpoint, but I wanted to “get legal” myself so that I could try to change the regulations.

Once I had my own Special Permit (dutifully filed with the County Registry of Deeds), I began attending Planning Board meetings to ask for their help to change the law.  We got great press coverage, unanimous support from the town Agricultural Commission, and a statement from the local Board of Health agreeing that backyard hens did not represent a public health problem.   We were feeling pretty good!

Next, a group of about a dozen residents (with experience raising chickens) developed the basic concept for an amendment to the Town Zoning Bylaw and the Town General Bylaw, which would make it easier to raise backyard hens.  We met with the Planning Director on several occasions and got his help putting our ideas into the correct legal language.  The proposals were then submitted to the Planning Board along with a couple hundred e-signatures, asking for their support of our Citizens Petition that would eventually be voted on by annual Town Meeting.

In spite of widespread public support as well as the encouragement of the Health Department, the Agricultural Commission, the Health Director, and the Animal Welfare Officer, the Planning Board Zoning Subcommittee remained unconvinced!  They insisted that some residents were worried about smells, noises, and rodents.  The Planning Board filed a revised version of our Town Meeting article, which would require abutter notification by certified mail and a public administrative hearing to ensure that our hens were not a hazard to public health and safety.

This was getting a bit absurd!

So a group of us showed up at the next Planning Board meeting and with the support of the town Agricultural Commission and lots of citizen support, we convinced the Planning Board to change their somewhat “draconian” recommendation.  Our compromise was to “license” our henhouses (much like a dog license) but to modify the process of neighbor notification to make it much simpler and more about education than regulation.  We are making progress!

But we had lots of work to do!

When a small group of hen owners began this process, we thought it would be obvious to any thinking individual that raising a few hens was not a public health threat, nor a nuisance.  We were wrong.   There were lots of good questions raised by members of the Planning Board and the general public, along with a few that were a bit over the edge.  Next we geared up for a good old fashioned public debate on the floor of a New England Town Meeting!   We tried to understand the concerns and fears of those who were in opposition and to answer all rational questions from our neighbors.

We wrote letters to the editor of our local paper, participated in several listserves and responded to questions on the Town Meeting discussion board.  When our article was heard by Town Meeting, we had the local Health Director, the local Animal Welfare Officer, the Agricultural Commission, the Planning Board, and the Select Board on our side.  While several objections were raised in public session, in the end the new bylaw was approved overwhelmingly by Town Meeting members.  When it was all over, I sent personal notes of thanks to all of the people involved and created a web page to celebrate our victory.

Of course, my town is not the only one dealing with this issue.  Here is a typical news story about changing the chicken laws!

………..

Based on our experience, I’ve got some suggestions for those of you who are considering trying to change your local regulations based on my experience so far.

  1. Find friends to help.  Unless you are unemployed, you will need to attend lots of meetings.  Having others help you cover these meetings will help (I’ve been criticized by town board members for not being able to show up at some meetings when I had to work).
  2. Study the issue and learn from others.  Follow the blogs, Facebook groups, and listserves for advice from others who are going through the same process.  You will feel less lonely, when things aren’t going well.
  3. Be patient and try not to get angry (I’m not particularly good at this).  When you have people who have no experience and are getting their information from the internet making decisions on what you can and can’t do in your backyard, it is difficult to be patient.  Anger won’t help – no matter what!
  4. Be persistent.  Its a bit of a game.   But if you continue to show up for public meetings and continue to share your message respectfully, the “crazy ideas” you propose at first will slowly become common sense.
  5. Volunteer for a town committee or board yourself.  It is really easy to criticize others (who are generally volunteers) when they disagree with your particular concern.  Sitting on the other side of the table gives you perspective, experience and respect for those volunteers, most of whom are doing a great job.

Finally, if you are not successful with a frontal assault (like a zoning change proposal), it might help to try to change the culture of the community.  Bring speakers to town to talk about bigger issues like sustainability, the “homegrown revolution,” self-sufficiency, the Transition Towns movement, Food Sovereignty, etc.  Asking for a change in zoning to allow backyard hens makes more sense in the context of this larger discussion.  I’ll let you know if it works!

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I’d appreciate it if you would share this post with your friends. And for more ideas, videos and challenges along these lines, please join my Facebook Group; Just Food Now. And go here for more of my World.edu posts.

Homegrown Revolution

Let's all raise hens (for the eggs and the laughs)

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For the past few weeks, I’ve been posting about food issues.  Last week, I wrote about the Food Sovereignty movement.  The prior week, I shared some ideas on how to deal with the emerging global food crisis.  This week, I thought I’d suggest a very simple action that almost anyone can take in response to these complex issues, and one that I’ve written about on my “local” blog in the past…….  raising backyard hens!

I find that when I spend too much time thinking about the many problems we face today, I can easily slip into a state of despair.  At these times, I need to “do something,” and even a simple action often helps.  Perhaps it makes no logical sense – but it works!  One of my favorite things to do when I’m “down” is to hang out with my backyard hens.

Of course I’ve got to go out to our hen house every day to collect the eggs (even in the coldest weather), so this has become something of a habit for me.  It helps me “get real” and relax for a few minutes.  I generally bring the “ladies” a gift; sometimes wilted leaves of some old greens, maybe a handful of worms (from my vermiculture bin), maybe a soft tomato or a handful of corn kernels (that I collected from local farm fields after the harvest).  The hens get pretty excited when they see me coming out the back door!

I’ve been raising hens in my backyard for years.  I don’t live on a farm but in a “normal” suburban neighborhood and I believe this is something almost anyone can do.  In addition to the eggs (which I share with my neighbors) I love to watch the ladies scratch, fight, talk strut, play, and “argue” with each other.  And the kids in the neighborhood love to come by and visit the girls too.

Let’s all raise hens!

Raising hens is a simple, practical response to the complexity of the global food crisis.  By taking small steps toward personal, family, and neighborhood self-sufficiency, we can begin to take more responsibility for our lives.  A few eggs each day won’t change the world, but it can change the way we think about the world.  It connects us to another creature and reminds us that we are part of a living system.  Or at least it can – if we pay attention.

One of the problems of course, is that zoning regulations in some towns make raising hens illegal.   I’ll write about my personal experience trying to change these laws in my hometown next week.   There seems to be a prejudice among some suburbanites regarding  raising chickens in the neighborhood.  We know that hens are easier to care for than dogs and cats, and if managed well are not smelly or dirty (as many suburbanites imagine).

The keeping of backyard hens, is an appropriately-scaled, practical and symbolic form of environmental, fiscal, and community sustainability.   And its fun and educational for kids!

To give you some idea on what it might be like to have hens in your backyard, have a look at this fun and instructional video.

………….

To help you get started, I’ve compiled a few resources that I share with my friends.

  1. An article on why to raise chickens
  2. A list of useful resources (links to more links)
  3. The City Chicken (a fun and useful web page)
  4. An excellent and simple description on how to raise hens
  5. A hen cartoon (check it out)

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I’d appreciate it if you would share this post with your friends. And for more ideas, videos and challenges along these lines, please join my Facebook Group; Just Food Now. And go here for more of my World.edu posts.

And if you happen to live in Western Massachusetts, join us for a workshop on Raising Backyard Hens on April 2, 2011!

Global Sustainability, Homegrown Revolution

Food Sovereignty: the people's response to the global food crisis

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Last week’s blog, “The Future of Food; Dealing with Collapse,” elicited a lot of comments.   A few of them reminded me that if we are going to address the global food crisis, we must listen to the people who do most of the work growing food.   We must hear from the peasants, farm workers, and small landholders who grow 50% of the food on the planet.

Without their voice,  policy makers responding to the food crisis, will continue to invest in the same industrial model for growing food that is the root cause of the problem.

If we care about sustainable food and farming, we must work for Food Sovereignty.

According to La Via Campesina, “Food Sovereignty is the right of peoples to define their own food and agriculture.”   One of the “raps” against sustainable agriculture is that while we talk about Social Equity as one of the three principles of sustainability, most of our efforts focus on Environmental Integrity and Economic Vitality.  Food Sovereignty provides a framework to make sure we maintain a focus on justice!

Food Sovereignty is about solutions!

La Via Campesina is a global movement of peasant farmers and workers.  In 1996, they introduced the concept of Food Sovereignty at the World Food Summit in Rome, and since then the principle of Food Sovereignty has been adopted by many organizations.

This movement which brings together the environmental, economic and social aspects of food production was created to serve the needs of small and medium-size farmers, migrant workers, the landless, women farmers, and indigenous peoples from all over the world.  These are the same people who are most likely use agroecological principles to grow food in a way that builds rather than degenerates natural resources.

A recent United Nations study claims that small farmers, using agroecological techniques, can double food production in 10 years.   These techniques are supported by the International Peasants Movement, La Via Campesina, which claims that peasants can feed the world.

According to Via Campesina “food sovereignty prioritizes local food production and consumption.  It gives a country the right to protect its local producers from cheap imports and to control production. It ensures that the rights to use and manage lands, territories, water, seeds, livestock and biodiversity are in the hands of those who produce food and not of the corporate sector. Therefore the implementation of genuine agrarian reform is one of the top priorities of the farmer’s movement.”

This global movement however, is not only relevant in developing countries.  Last week, a town in Maine passed the first Food Sovereignty law in the U.S.  I encourage you to learn more about this movement and to support one of the 148 member organizations in 69 countries working for Food Sovereignty.  And join the millions of small farmers and workers around the world on April 17, 2011 to celebrate the struggle of peasants and rural people to survive and continue feeding the world.

To learn more, go to April 17, 2011 – International Day of Peasant’s Struggles.

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Local Food Systems, Sustainable Farming

The future of food; dealing with collapse

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Did you know that almost one billion people are hungry – another one billion are chronically malnourished –  and still another one billion others are overweight due to poor eating habits?

This is a global food crisis!

Last week, I explored the root causes of this crisis.  Isn’t it strange to think that the structural cause of the food crisis is actually the industrial food system itself!  As fossil fuel becomes increasingly expensive, the system that is so dependent on petroleum for fertilizers, pesticides, irrigation technology, packaging and shipping, is unraveling at the seams and triggering political unrest.

But before you accuse me of being one of those “door and gloom” bloggers, I think there are realistic solutions to this crisis (especially for food exporting countries like the U.S.).  Other aspects of industrial societies are likely to experience more severe disruption than the food supply as oil prices rise.  This is at least partly because there are steps that individuals and local communities can take to respond to increasing food prices and potential shortages.  Today’s blog post examines some of those steps.

Last week I made the bold claim that we need to think creatively about;

  1. tax incentives for small, integrated farms committed to selling within their own community,
  2. public investment to support bioregional food systems (within a specific foodshed),
  3. changes in zoning regulations to support the “homegrown food revolution”and
  4. education programs encouraging family, neighborhood, community self-sufficiency, and local farming.

These social structures are needed to help us build much-needed resilience into the current industrial food system, which is vulnerable to collapse in the industrial world and already in collapse in many developing countries.  It is time to take action!

Of course the skeptic in me still wants to ask “how likely are those of us who are well-fed (perhaps overfed)  to take action“?  Evan D. G. Fraser and Andrew Rimas, in their book Empires of Food: Feast Famine, and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations, state that we are unlikely to get serious about a new food system until we have “a public outcry for tax incentives directed at promoting sustainable agriculture.”  Are you willing to cry out?

In previous posts, I wrote that we need to shift our way of thinking before we are likely to create those necessary social structures.  But until we can imagine a future different from the past, it is unlikely we will see such a shift of thinking.  Imagination is key.

Lots of people today are interested in talking about solutions.  We are planning a public event in my hometown, Amherst, Massachusetts that might be an example.  This sort of event is not difficult to organize.  There are good resources and models within the Transition Towns movement and some communities have done their own research, such as Feed Northampton.  The important thing right now is to imagine a future different from the past, because peak oil changes EVERYTHING.

So, drawing from the experience of others (and my own imagination), here are some ideas to consider that might be applied to your own community:

  1. If you live in an urban area, consider growing food on rooftops, especially of public buildings which may have large flat expanses of roof.  This not only produces food but makes heating and cooling the building less expensive.  Look to re-configure parking lots with raised beds such as the organiponicos in Cuba.
  2. If you live in a suburban area, tear up that lawn and just grow food now! Don’t forget to consider hens, chickens and rabbits for meat, perhaps a milking goat, and bees!
  3. If you are in a rural area, ask if there are more human food crops that can be grown.  Much of the farmland in New England, for example, is still used to produce hay (some for cows, but much for riding horses).  Is this the best use of farm land?
  4. And no matter where you live, think about ways your community can make food farming a more attractive lifestyle.  Farmers (especially those who don’t own land) struggle with the economics of a food system that keeps food artificially cheap.  If we want more local food, we may need to help these farms compete more effectively within the global food system.  The Feed Northampton report, for example, proposes a public investment in food hubs that might provide communal food processing, packaging, cold storage and redistribution.  It might also include a slaughter facility, a community kitchen for processing vegetables, a maple sugar boiler, a cider press,  and a flour mill.

We need to begin by imagining possibilities and then get to work.  There are plenty of examples of ways in which you can get involved in creating a sustainable food system.  Think about:

1. Slow Food

2. Fair Trade

3. Bioregionalism

3. Public commitment to human right to a nutritious diet

4. Public commitment to insure food producers earn a living wage

5. Zoning laws that allow urban and suburban families to raise their own food (including animals) – a right to survival law

6. Decent wages and training for farm labor

7. Education for young farm managers

8. Research into appropriate technologies

9. Programs to bring local food into the workplace

10.  And of course, grow our own!

These are a beginning.  Lets dream together about the world we want to create….. and then lets get to work!

What suggestions do you have for creating a more sustainable food system?  Please post them below.

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I’d appreciate it if you would share this post with your friends. If you are interested in taking college courses in Sustainable Food and Farming online this summer, check us out at UMass.  And for more ideas, videos and challenges along these lines, please join my Facebook Group; Just Food Now.

Global Sustainability, Local Food Systems

Is the modern industrial food system "in collapse"?

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Cassandra (of Greek mythology) the daughter of King Priam, foresaw the destruction of Troy by the invading Greeks (who of course had come to retrieve  Helen).  Cassandra warned her father of the impending disaster – but no one believed her!  It seems the God Apollo, who had given her the gift of prophecy, had also cursed her by preventing anyone from believing her.

Frustrating, huh?

I suspect Evan Fraser and Andrew Rimias might understand her frustration.  Who are they you ask?

Well, they are just two of the modern Cassandras, who are trying to help us wake up to the impending collapse of the modern industrial food system.  But it seems Apollo is still up to his old tricks….. because based on our behavior, it seems we are still ignoring the warnings.

We didn’t listen to Tristan Stuart who reminded us in Waste, that “infinite abundance is an illusion.”  Nor did we hear Carolyn Steel, who claimed in Hungry City “our food system is no more secure, ethical or sustainable than Rome’s was.”  And Julian Cribb’s new book about food, The Coming Famine: The Global Food Crisis and What We Can Do to Avoid It, is also likely to go unheeded.

Its all just too depressing, isn’t it.  The “foodies” seem to be too wrapped up in what Fraser and Rimas call “the New Gluttony,” which, in their words “turn food into fashion – and undermines the critical danger we face.” Of course, most people don’t think much about the food system and just take the current food system for granted.

If you are one of the majority of people who seem to believe that somehow the food in the grocery store will always be plentiful, will always be cheap, and somehow is actually good for you – you should read Empires of Food.   Most astute observers of the modern industrial food and farming system recognize that the industrial food system is harmful to people, society and the earth….  and is vulnerable to collapse.  Not convinced, well read what some of the experts are saying…..

Or listen to this 11-year old kid!

I suspect I’ll be accused of being “alarmist” by some readers who would prefer not to be disturbed.  But when there is danger in our path, an alarm is exactly what is needed.  A billion people hungry, another billion malnourished, and another billion ‘overfed’ sounds like a problem.   Students often ask how do we wake up those people living in denial.

Personally, I don’t spend a lot of time trying to convince people that a system built on cheap fossil fuel is at risk in a peak oil economy.  I won’t argue that continued erosion of the natural resources upon which our high level of productivity is based –  is a prelude to disaster.  Nor do I like to point out (especially to people who are just not interested) that a system that allows a few large corporations to control the food supply is fundamentally unjust.

I’m actually much more interested in working on solutions; like tax incentives for small, integrated local farms, public investment in bioregional food production and distribution systems, changes in zoning laws which support the “homegrown food revolution”, and public education programs encouraging family, neighborhood, and community self-sufficiency.

Relocalization may not replace the system of international trade which presently dominates the global food economy.  But there are surely things we should consider to help us build much-needed resilience into a food system in crisis today in the poorer nations – and on the verge of collapse in the industrialized world.

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Next week’s blog will explore some of these solutions.

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I’d appreciate it if you would share this post with your friends. And for more ideas, videos and challenges along these lines, please join my Facebook Group; Just Food Now.


Global Sustainability

The perfect storm: climate change

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This is Part III of an exploration of “the perfect storm” of: 

  1. Peak Oil
  2. Global Pandemic
  3. Climate Change

When we discussed the problem of climate change in my Sustainable Living class at UMass, some of the students in were surprised to find that I had learned about “global warming” when I was in college 40 years ago!   One student told me after class that I must have been wrong because he heard (in another class) that scientists became aware that climate change was a problem only recently.  So I took a look at the history of global climate change and found:

  • In 1896 a Swedish scientist published the idea that as humanity burned fossil fuels, carbon dioxide gas released to the Earth’s atmosphere would raise the planet’s average temperature.
  • In the 1930s, people realized that the United States had warmed significantly during the previous half-century.
  • In the 1950s, a few scientists began to look into the question with improved technology.
  • In the early 1970s, the rise of environmentalism raised awareness about climate change and more scientists took it seriously.

We have known about this treat for a long time.  One of the questions I get regularly from students is; “if you knew this might be a problem, why didn’t your generation do something about it?”

Good question!

So, once again I turn to the “iceberg” to try to understand the root cause of seemingly “crazy” and self-destructive human behavior.

If an intelligent human living in 1970 learned that their behavior might be causing harm to the planet, why would this person not change their behavior?

If we apply the iceberg tool, an event (which we can see above water) might be a one human choosing to ignore the evidence.

A pattern would be lots of individuals choosing to ignore the evidence (which is indeed what happened).

But what are the systemic structures that supported this particular pattern of behavior?  What organizations and policies specifically contributed to an entire society not paying heed to the warning?

Well, how about:

  • The U.S. Government under the Reagan administration
  • Automobile manufacturers that claimed they could not improve fuel efficiency
  • The U.S. Government under the Bush administration
  • Energy company sponsored advertisements that cast doubt upon the science of global climate change
  • The U.S. Government under the Clinton administration
  • Mass media that made “the good life” seem like the only life worth living
  • The U.S. Government under the second Bush administration
  • An entertainment industry that provides distractions that are much more pleasurable than worrying about the future
  • The U.S. Government under the Obama administration

The only problem in making a list of the social structures that support millions of people living in denial is that EVERYTHING about our culture supports this self-destructive behavior.

But lets continue.  The next question is “what mental models support these structures”?

A recent article in The Economist speculates on the belief systems (mental models) that explain why Americans seem unwilling to change our behavior.  They write:

  • “Psychological: The consequences of climate change are too awful to contemplate. Therefore, we’re denying the issue, as we used to deny monsters in the room by hiding under the blanket.
  • “Economic: The costs of a large-scale effort to fight global warming are too steep to bear. Therefore, we’re trying to ignore the issue, or pretending it doesn’t exist, or we believe that the economy (including development) is more important.
  • “Political: The fact that Democrats are always hammering on about climate change and Republicans aren’t suggests that this is a political issue, not a scientific one. This creates a feedback loop: if climate change were real, why is it so polarizing? Because it’s so polarizing, it must be slightly suspicious.
  • “Epistemological: Why should we believe in climate change? Where’s the evidence? All we know is what scientists say, and scientists are sometimes wrong.
  • “Metaphysical: God isn’t going to let millions of people die in an epic drought.”

In addition to these mental models, I will add my own:

  • the belief that the “world was made for us to use”
  • the worldview that “humans are not part of Mother Nature”
  • the hope that “government will protect us”
  • the “joke” that whomever dies with the most stuff wins

To change the patterns of behavior, we must change the structures; the policies and organizations that allow millions of humans to continue to avoid or deny the truth.   But to change the structures, we must change the way we think (mental models) because thoughts create actions and actions create thoughts.  This reinforcing feedback loop is very powerful and has allowed us to live in denial for a long time.

So the next logical question must be “what would cause us to wake up?”  The Academy Award winning 2006 documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” didn’t do it.  A highly respected report from Britain’s Government Economic Service (the Stern Report) which found that it would be less expensive to take action now than try to deal with the crisis later, didn’t do it.

My students often ask “where will we find the necessary political will and leadership to take action?”

Good question!

There are many interesting theories about why we seem to find it so hard to change our behavior, but my response is usually, “why are we so worried about everyone else – what are you willing to do?

The response from many students is to look for leadership from politicians and business leaders.  But we know that anyone in government is caught  in a systemic social structure that requires them to run for election every 2, 4, or 6 years.  They cannot afford to think about the long term.  And for business leaders it is much worse.  They must show profitability to shareholders every quarter (3 months) or their job may be in jeopardy. 

So who can think about the 7th generation?  Well, perhaps a mature adult taking a class on sustainable living?  Maybe you? 

I believe that individuals who are not afraid to act  must “join the sustainability parade” and the politicians and corporate leaders will “jump up front” when they see which way the parade is headed.

Are you willing to join the sustainability parade?

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