07/16/12- Lessons on Human Nature

It's about half a week until I hit the road. My gear is mustered, and most of my supplies are laid in. I'm exchanging final emails with contacts about details. I'm hitting that angsty stage just before a trip- as Steinbeck wrote about in Travels with Charlie, there grows a conviction that it will never happen, that home is infinitely preferable to the discomforts of the road, that you're crazy to even think about going.

Where am I going? The “map answer” is: From West Central Minnesota up the Dakotas, across some of Manitoba and Ontario, back down to the Twin Cities via the North Shore of Lake Superior, then across Minnesota to Home. The “people answer” is: I'll be visiting folks who have accomplished things involving Sustainable Agriculture and Local Foods. The “philosophical answer,” the true core of my quest, is that I'm looking for signs of the new world that will emerge from our current predicament-ridden era.

Not to belabor the point, at the least we now face the end of about two centuries of energy-intensive, exploitative, “business as usual,” Industrial Civilization. Some respectable sources say that we may be facing much worse. I hope not.

Three of my efficient, courteous staffers

I experienced an incident the other night which has lessons for the situation. I'm Assistant Manager at a small-town, three-screen movie theatre. This means that I open and close, run projectors, sell tickets, supervise the cleanup and concessions staff, count money, and generally keep an eye on things. It's a great job for a writer- I can study and write during films and before we open.

Like any Mom and Pop scale business we have regulars. Among them are residents of local group homes for “challenged adults-” that's folks with handicaps, especially mental ones. A couple of nights each week they arrive in groups of five or six, with a caregiver/minder. That night I'd sold tickets to such a group. After the obligatory high fives and “have funs,” they went in to see The Amazing Spiderman.

About half way through the movie another regular came running out.

“Quick! Call 911! There's a guy in there having a heart attack!” he shouted.

I made the call, and ran upstairs to stop the projector and bring up the lights. The Good Samaritan said that he'd keep an eye on the cash drawer and all while I was gone. Three more guys came running out, saying, “Whatever we can do to help, just tell us!” They went out to wave down the emergency vehicles and make sure that the double exit doors were unlatched and wide open.

By the time I got back downstairs the EMTs and First Responders were there, working on the guy. None of the twenty or thirty folks in the movie freaked out. Many asked whether they could help.

In a very few minutes the ambulance arrived, and they wheeled the unconscious victim out on a gurney. Shit! It was one of the group home guys! As the Caregiver shepherded his flock out after their friend, one turned to reassure me with a big grin and two thumbs up.

“Thas' OK Shuck! We'll be back ta da movie next time!”

He had no idea what had just happened. I could have cried.

The first lesson I see in this is that most people, when they see trouble, want to help. It's pretty much an Article of Faith for me: Most people mean well. The other is that when bad things that are beyond their experience happen, they either put a good face on it, denying the severity, or they get mean, attacking the messenger: All people have limits on the bad news they can absorb. Both are normal. Humans are just like that.

The trouble today is, that while most people mean well, few can wrap their heads around the scope or time scale of the trouble we're in. Warning, warning, warning them isn't doing much good, as they freak out or stick their fingers in their ears and shout “la la la la la.”

We need to be able to say, “Yup, things are bad, but they'll get better after they get worse. Here's what we're gonna do...”

That's what I want to find out- what are those who see, doing? What comes in the next chapter of Humanity's saga?

Useless Meetings

“Singing songs and carrying signs
Mostly say, hooray for our side”
For What it's Worth, Buffalo Springfield


 In sadness and frustration, I walked out of another meeting today. We Progressives have seen more of them than we can count- meetings that accomplish little more than making the organizers feel that they “did something,” and maybe passed along some warm fuzzies, or more likely a vague dissatisfaction. They never seem to realize that people's time and money are precious, and that the huge tasks we have to handle are too big and too urgent for farting around. I've seen many well-intentioned projects stall out and accomplish nothing because of this basic lack or organization. You know exactly what I mean, if you're willing to admit it.

I've seen what works, and I've seen what doesn't. Off the top of my head-

 

Meetings in general must provide:

1. A challenge to the attendees to change something in their lives or to tackle a task- to ACT.
   
2. Some new and interesting idea, not just a minor detail on something everyone already knew.
   
3. An Action Plan- What do we do next? What do I do next?
   
4. Some deeper insight than,”Yup, we're the good guys and they're the bad guys.”
   
5. Definite solace to people who've been hurt- with a plan of how to help, even if it's just active sympathy and meals for a week.
   
6. Clear affirmation that a good, or bad, situation is what it appears to be, and that we're there for each other in it.
   
7. A progress report of a quality and clarity that you could publish.
   

Any meeting without at least two of these is questionable. Any with NONE was a waste of time.

 

Business meetings must have a clear, logical flow, including:-

1. A clear agenda, either passed out or posted in big letters- and followed loudly and clearly.
   
2. Time to clearly discuss/debate any item to be voted on.
   
3. Candidates for offices speaking before the whole group before a vote is taken.
   

Failure to follow these will lead to confusion and resentment. If your group is incorporated, skipping them is likely illegal.

 

If it's an outdoor meeting-

1. Provide LOTS of big, clearly legible signage saying-
   
   1. Who is welcome.
      
   2. Where the meeting is.
      
   3. Where to park.
      
   4. When and where any formal meeting will convene.
      
2. If it's anything but a “blowing off steam” party, don't play music- it will limit conversation to trivialities. You will also annoy other people around you.
   
3. If you have outdoor cooked food, make sure that it is ready to go, and has adequate staff. For two people to serve 100 people could easily take two hours- two hours of hot sun, hungry, crabby folks, and mosquitoes.
   
4. Don't forget the drinks, the cooler, the napkins...
   

 

If it's a recruiting booth at an event-

1. Have big, clear signage announcing who you are- mounted above and behind your people.
   
2. Have “tagline” signage to pique people's interest.
   
3. Have well-informed, briefed, people manning the booth.
   
4. Have plenty of colorful, obviously informative literature. You have about 1/2 second to get your main idea across.
   
5. Don't assume that anyone passing by has any idea of who you are or what you stand for.
   
6. Saturate appropriate media ahead of time with the fact that you'll be there and why. Pay if you have to- then become so interesting that you won't have to the next time.
   

These are just for starters. There are more such rules, but you get the idea.

It may surprise you to know that there's a Right Wing, Conservative, Tea Party version of the Local Foods Movement. True, they do tend to be white, straight, Christians who are more concerned with keeping Commies out of government, the US out of the UN, and fluoride out of their water, than with social justice or sustainability. But, they know and use these rules. So do Corporate shills- which is why they're kicking the butts of arguably saner, more reality-based folks lately.

Willmar League of Women Voters Speech- 04/09/12

Open

Rural America is colluding with those who would destroy it.
That's the bad news. I'll get to the good news.
I first became aware of this trend while researching a class I taught at the University of Minnesota, Morris- Social and Ethical Implications of Technology.
This shouldn't have been a surprise. It's part of an overall trend in our society. Look at the election ads and corporate propaganda- human beings are not valued as persons, but as units of production and consumption to be used and manipulated.
This is called “Colonization.” It's what the European powers did to Africa, Asia and America in centuries past. They turned living places into resource bases, homelands into commodity dumps- not to serve the people there, but to serve powerful people somewhere else. I'm pleased to see East African and Hispanic folks here- You know exactly what I'm talking about. It's being done to us, right here and right now- if in a sneakier way.

Problem

In their 2009 book, Hollowing out the Middle, Patrick Carr and Maria Kefalas talked about the Rural Brain Drain, that how we educate our kids, how we train them to view rural life, ensures that the best and brightest grow up, excel in school, graduate- and leave. If they come back with “foreign ideas,” even wonderful ideas, it's an uphill battle to get anyone to listen to them.
But it isn't just education. We are doing the same thing with food- sending it away, and buying it back in inferior forms. We have some of the best soil on the planet, but many of our towns and counties are USDA-designated as food deserts.
Most farmers today aren't growing food, but producing industrial feedstocks. Old MacDonald's farm is a thing of the past. Look beside the highway-Those aren't farms in the sense we all used to know, but factories: They use highly mechanized and energy-wasteful methods to extract commodities which are useless without intensive processing. It isn't the farmers' fault- they know that the system is rigged against them, but what can they do?
According to a report by the Rural Economics Researcher Ken Meter of Crossroads Resource Center, once you compile all the numbers:

Nearly two-thirds of food consumed in Minnesota is produced out of state

and

Farmers (in Western Minnesota) lose $150 million each year producing food commodities, and also spend $ 600 million buying outside inputs, while consumers spend $ 250 million buying food from outside. This is a total loss of $1 billion of potential wealth each year. This loss amounts to 70 % of the value of all food commodities raised in the region.

So. We export our children through education. We export our soil, our water, and our true wealth through agriculture. This is not a good plan for long-term sustainability.
There is an oft-quoted Cree prophecy:
"When all the trees have been cut down, when all the animals have been hunted, when all the waters are polluted, when all the air is unsafe to breathe, only then will you discover you cannot eat money."

Relief

I should tell you who are at Garden Goddess. We're a good example of what's possible. We have seen huge changes in these last ten years:

Greenhouse/CSA Story:

In the Fall of 2002 we were getting our vegetables from the Easy Bean, a large CSA farm east of Milan, MN. When we opened that last box of the season, when we realized that we'd be dependent on grocery stores for “fresh” vegetables, Carol said, “Ya know, somebody ought to do something about this.”
“Somebody” soon became US. We spent three years in research, reading books, combing websites, visiting other installations, playing with and arguing over designs, before we came up with the Garden Goddess Greenhouse. We went back to first principles, as “standard” greenhouses are little changed from the first one built in 1843 in London. They are inefficient energy hogs. Our design uses something like 3% of the energy that a conventional greenhouse would. Others have built greenhouses based on our design, and their figures show the same savings.
In 2009 we published the Northlands Winter Greenhouse Manual. It's sold well, and is in its second printing. The book has led to requests for design help from all over North America, as well as Ireland, Bolivia, the Isle of Man, even Iran. Dozen or so greenhouses operating because of the book, and constantly hear second- and third-hand reports of others.
We've traveled tens of thousands of miles, presenting at conferences, conducting workshops, and helping others rethink their food options. We've spoken in big cities and teeny prairie villages. We've been before crowds of middle-aged hippies, and of tea-party enthusiasts. We've spoken with non-profits, farmers, and government officials. People have actually cried after some of our messages, since we brought them hope.
A concept that we've developed is “Building the Fifty Dollar Table.” When trying to recreate the food system into something more just and environmentally sound, you can't take on the big players in the current system, like Cargill and Monsanto, head-on. There is an old saying: “If someone asks you to sit down at the poker table, but they have $5000 and you have $50, DON'T SIT DOWN!” We are building that “other table” rather than playing an unwinnable game.
The most powerful force keeping things the way they are is ignorance. We believe that feeding ourselves is hard, maybe even illegal. We don't think that we can do much- but WE CAN DO MORE THAN WE THINK WE CAN. In our travels we've seen this time and again.
We've seen Community Gardens reduce crime and build community- what's more fundamental than food?
Neighborhood Gardens have created community among neighbors.
Locally prodeced foods have given small grocery stores a new lease on life.
West Central Minnesota is a hotbed of these activities, with dozens of local-food-dedicated producers, organizations providing training and support for them, and active projects to increase our ability to feed ourselves.

There are several worthy efforts in the Willmar area already:

Willmar High School runs a large greenhouse that we helped renovate from a semi-derilect unit on the MinnWest Technology Campus.
The East Side Farmers mMarket has been oiperating for decades, and is still going strong.
The Becker Avenue Farmers Market, right downtown, is a great operation, with a big year-opening event coming up next month.
The Community Owned Grocery, COG, is in its planning and fund-raising stage. It will be a full-range food store, with other services and products, centered on locally-produced goods, local ownership, and the local community.

So far, these are rather “traditional” ideas. But moving on from there:

According to the AURI (Agricultural Utilization Reasearch Institute) report- “Minnesota Food Production Sector: Growing Green Jobs,” some of the growing opportunities are in:

• Producing Local Foods: People increasingly want to know where their food comes from.
• Distributing Food: Is this “commuter food,” or truly fresh?
• Locally-Sourced Food Service: Chefs and other food-service people know that freshness and quality are paramount.
• Organics: How food is raised, and what extra is in it, is a growing concern.
• Health and Food Safety: The more steps that food goes through, the greater the chances of contamination.
• Livestock Production: Locally raised, free-range meats are a growing market
• Urban Agriculture: People growing their own foods, in their own communities, share many benefits, including food security.

We're working on next steps, to implement these ideas. Two promising areas are-

C-squared

This is what we're calling a sort of “cooperative of cooperatives,” as local foods groups from around the region have been discussing how to organize a decentralized food distribution network.

Food Hubs

These a growing and highly profitable business for communities. To quote a new USDA study, Food Hubs provide:

• Expanded market opportunities for agricultural producers.
• Job creation in rural and urban areas.
• Increased access of fresh healthy foods for consumers, with strong potentials to reach underserved areas and food deserts (that's us)
  

A typical food hub:

• Is a socially driven business enterprise with a strong emphasis on “good prices” for producers and “good food” for consumers.
  
• Employs 6 full-time or part-time staff and uses volunteers regularly.
• Works with 40 regular food suppliers, many of whom are small and mid-sized farmers and ranchers.
• Offers a wide range of food products, with fresh produce being its major product category, and sells through multiple market channels, with restaurants being an important entry market.
  
• Is actively involved in their community, offering a wide range of services to both producers and consumers.
  

Payoff

Whenever I consult on such a project, I warn my clients that there are three main kinds of problems in a foods project- horticultural problems, engineering problems, and people problems, with people problems being the hardest. Building structures and raising crops are almost trivial compared to dealing with:

• well-meaning but ignorant nay-sayers- people who say, “If I don't already know it, it isn't worth knowing;”
  
• power-hungry manipulators- people who want nothing to happen unless they're in charge and get credit;
  
• petty bureaucrats enforcing inappropriate rules- people who don't understand that rules can become obsolete, or that sensible rules for Big Business are fatal to Mom and Pop operations;
  
• vested interests fearing a loss of power- those same Big Businesses that will claim “fairness” and “safety,” when neither is accurate, actually to shut down competition;
  
• dog-in-the-manger folks who will stop things just because they can.
  

I've seen projects sunk, delayed, or tripled in cost by all of these.
R. T. Rybak and Megan O'Hara came by our place last winter to discuss greenhouses, and they agreed. Witness the crazy wrangling over the City of Minneapolis' recently passed food policy, in the face of people raising tons of food in back yards and community gardens.
The League of Women Voters is dedicated to the American way of Politics- working with the craziest, most vital kind of people problems. You know that it all boils down to serving the community. You, here, are the people who can tackle the people problems that stand in the way of our thriving. Look up the people who raised their hands earlier- they can tell you where to start.

Sources-

• Ken Meter, Crossroads Resource Center, Minneapolis, 2008- Western Minnesota Local Farm & Food Economy (summary) http://www.crcworks.org/lea/wcmnsum06.pdf
• Ken Meter: Who Produces Minnesota's Food? http://www.crcworks.org/mnfoodimp81.pdf
• Hollowing out the Middle: The Rural Brain Drain and What It Means For America. Carr, Patrick J. and Kefalas, Maria J. ISBN-978-0807006146
• Regional Food Hubs: Understanding the scope and scale of food hub operations. 2012. Jim Barham. USDA Agricultural Marketing Service “Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food” Regional Food Hub Subcommittee Team Lead http://www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/getfile?dDocName=STELPRDC5088011
• AURI report “Minnesota Food Production Sector: Growing Green Jobs,” http://www.auri.org/wp-content/assets/legacy/research/MN%20Food%20Production%20Sector%20Growing%20Green%20Jobs.pdf

PreOccupied

Like everyone else, I find the Occupy Movement inspiring- sort of. Who doesn't thrill to the idea of the 99% rising up to protest the System that's turned them into wage slaves? How can you not admire people fighting back against those who are erasing all the gains we shed blood to make in the Twentieth Century? What's more historically amazing than people all over the world taking to the streets, mostly non-violently? It makes a '60s kid like me feel right at home.


Almost.

I have two main problems when comparing Occupy with the mid-century's movements. First off, it isn't really clear who or what these folks are fighting, or whether “They” can even be reached. The Civil Rights struggle was pretty straightforward- end Jim Crow and other such discrimination. Ditto the Women's Movement. The early Environmental Movement had equally clear goals: stop dumping crap in our air and water; stop poisoning the land and People. Stopping the Viet Nam war was also a pretty clear goal. Who was responsible for each of these was obvious. The problems could be remedied by cultural change, laws and regulations. We could vote out the “bad guys” and replace them with more enlightened souls. None of this involved a major overhaul of The System. It was all a logical progression of the earlier gains in the Twentieth Century.

Today the “enemy” is a nebulous agglomeration of corporations. They hold our credit cards, our bank accounts, our pensions, and the bonds and Certificates of Deposit of our local governments. They manage our currency. They dictate trade and monetary policy. They aren't even human persons, but legal persons, with the sole ethic of power and profit. They own politicians and shamelessly biased media outlets. They fund fake grass roots operations like the Tea Party. Aside from some obvious names like the Koch Brothers, this oppressor wears no human face. They are not answerable to us- socially, morally or politically. They don't care what we think, because they make the rules, unchallenged. As long as we participate in their financial and mercantile system all our daily living only strengthens them, like a horde of possessing demons in a B-grade horror flick.

The second problem is that it really doesn't matter. In a very real sense, we're like kids squabbling over sand castles on the beach while a tsunami is coming. We've already felt the earthquakes that have launched it toward our beach. I've talked with long-time Civil Rights, Farm, Women's and other activists; Many are fighting despair because they see that what’s coming will erase every gain that they fought for over decades. Anyone who tells you that Climate Change and Peak Petroleum aren't about to radically change our entire civilization is: A) Lying to protect their own power, which is indescribably despicable; B) In ignorant, fearful Denial, which is pathetic and self-defeating.

What I'm saying is that Occupy, however noble and exciting, is a possibly fatal misdirection of energies. It's trying to fix a system that doesn't want to be fixed, which will be swept away in the next few decades no matter what we do. It's like standing outside in a storm, yelling at the wind and rain to stop, instead of going inside.

So, what IS “going inside?” It's going into our communities. It's becoming locally resilient and self-sufficient: not cut off and isolated, but acting out the truth that the days of resource-guzzling economic giantism has come and gone. It means getting involved, as we have, with Local Foods, the Transition Movement, Slow Money and the like. It means disconnecting from “Their” system, stopping feeding the monster which is devouring us. If Occupy leads to that kind of long-term action, it will be worthwhile; If not, it will just be a flailing about that feels good but signifies nothing.

Building the Fifty Dollar Table

There's an old saying:

“If a man invites you to join his poker table, but you only have $50 while he and his buddies each have $5000, Don't Sit Down.”

Our food system is that $5000 table.

If you're a farmer, someone who just wants to live in the country, grow some food, maybe have a cow and some chickens, you soon find that you're in a game of high-stakes poker. It isn't Farmville. Outfits like Cargill, ADM, Monsanto, and the bank will tell you what to grow, when to plant it, where and when to sell it, and how much you'll get when you sell it. You'll work long hours and have a big cash flow, but actually make very little money. You buy more and bigger equipment to try to get ahead. No cow. No chickens. No real choices. They'll tell you that other choices like organic farming are too inefficient and don't bring in enough cash flow, that “You can't feed the world on Organics- they're just an elitist thing.” It's a lie. They don't want you to know that theirs isn't the only, or even the best, game in town.

If you're someone who eats, and just wants good food at a fair price, you're at the table, too. Most likely you have no neighborhood grocery store, but have to travel ten miles or so to a megastore. Aside from paying a few locals near-starvation wages, the megastore sends all the money you give it far away, making your community that much poorer. The food you buy there is full of toxic chemicals and allergy-inducing engineered proteins. This is why many countries around the world will not accept US food for import. Healthy kids? Forget it. Social and Economic Justice? Ditto.

(While I was writing this I came upon an appropriate TED video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rixyrCNVVGA&feature=player_embedded. It's a bit long, but worth it. If you aren't outraged by what the “$5000 Guys” have done to our food, you aren't paying attention.)

I really don't blame people who don't want to see these facts. As Gandhi said, when a people are deeply oppressed, when hope is banished, they cease to be able to even see that they are being wronged, and accept their situation as inevitable.

But the situation IS NOT hopeless. Many people are working to “Build the Fifty Dollar Table.” Carol and I have proven at least part of what can be done. Just yesterday we had a couple from Southern Minnesota come by to talk about building their own greenhouse like ours, so they and their families can eat real food in the winter.

Here are steps you can take, some easier, some harder:

• Get our book from the library, or buy it online (http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Northlands-Winter-Greenhouse-Manual/Carol-Ford/e/9780615297248/?itm=1). Build a community greenhouse using it;
• Plant a garden, better yet a community garden;
  
• Get to know your Farmers Market, and your farmers;
  
• Demand local, sustainably raised real food from your store, not over-processed “food-like products;”
  
• Start a food co-op or buying club.

Don't let the $5000 Guys make you sit at their toxic table! Help us all together to Build the Fifty Dollar Table. This will take work, as worthwhile things always do: Saving our lives, health and local economies is about as worthwhile as anything I can think of.

You Can Do More Than You Think You Can.

A Food System Like the Internet

The way food is produced and distributed in the US is the very model of inefficiency and insecurity.

Some will claim that it's very efficient. They use tricky accounting, taxpayer subsidies to ag corporations, profligate use of unsustainable cheap oil, and lax environmental “book keeping” to hide costs or pass them on to future generations.

They'll point to the abundance of cheap food in our stores, not mentioning that perhaps 2/3 of that food's real cost is hidden from the consumer. We end up paying those costs in taxes, health problems and a degraded environment. Nor will they mention that much of what's in those stores is “Food-Like Products;” over-processed things that are full of chemicals, extra sugar and extra salt that are bad for us- things that our grandparents wouldn't have eaten on a dare.

And don't even pretend that the system is secure. It's over-centralized structure and long supply lines make it anything but. Think of the e coli or salmonella scares; those are usually caused by mistakes at only one processing or storage facility, but end up affecting millions of people. And when that food is shipped thousands of miles it's vulnerable to increasing fuel prices, weather catastrophes, epidemics and terrorist attacks all along the route.

The ideal that the Industrial Food System is striving for looks like this:

Farms=>shipping=>Processor=>shipping=>

Wholesaler=>shipping=>

Retailer=>shipping=>Consumer

The more of these steps can be owned by the same company, the better. Forget all images of Old McDonald's Farm: The ideal modern farmer is an industrial employee, growing what The Company says, how The Company says, and ships it to The Company on Company trucks. There is no illusion that the farm belongs to the farmer: both belong to The Company.

Increasingly, every step in the chain belongs to The Company- even the Consumer. Billions are spent on advertising and lobbying every year, training consumers to buy whatever The Company wants to sell, and training lawmakers to stay out of The Company's way. Even the word “consumer” was invented in the mid-Twentieth by Corporate hacks. We're people, not “units of consumption.”

This unsustainable system developed over decades of shortsighted greediness and will eventually, perhaps soon, fall apart from its own contradictions and weaknesses. Cracks are evident and spreading. When it does go, many people will be hungry unless we can build its replacement before that happens.

We, and many others, are working on that new system. It resembles how the Internet is organized. It's no coincidence that that's also how living systems are often organized, something like this:

This is a very simplified version, but makes the point. This ideal is that a town or neighborhood mostly feeds itself. Local organic wastes go back into the food system as fertilizer. Surplus and luxury items can be traded along from others. What's that? Your town is too big? Pre-Industrial Ag kept some pretty big places in operation with a similar system- we can do at least as well. You can do more than you think you can.

Such a system is:

• Efficient- Nothing travels farther than it has to. No unneeded middlemen get their cuts. Money isn't spent to make people WANT more than they NEED.
  
• Secure- Fewer steps means fewer places for things to go wrong, and if they do they effect far fewer people. It's also like Neighborhood Watch- Farmers who are feeding their neighbors are more careful and accountable.
  
• Sustainable- Resources in an area are recycled with a minimum of fuss. Inherent efficiencies and natural rhythms form a system that can last.
  
• Resilient- Shortages and problems can be worked around and fixed using neighboring resources;
  
• Community Centered- The point is people feeding people, not people feeding those synthetic organisms- corporations.
  

While taking the needed practical steps, we must remember that the root of the problem is spiritual. It's about who and what we think we are. In the last few hundred years, with the Industrial Revolution, we learned to do many wonderful and clever things with our technology, but we forgot that we are beings firmly embedded in Nature, and in our societies. We've come to see ourselves as units of consumption, tools, counters on a game board, and mere resources. Such an attitude can't help but lead to disaster.

A Tahrir Square Moment- From Evolution to Revolution

Revolutions are boiling across Africa and the Middle East, not to mention Wisconsin and Ohio. People are opening their eyes to the failures of top-down, bigger is better, oligarchical government and economics. We all know that The Big Guys will fail us, or worse, so the return to community and human needs is becoming a wildfire all across the globe.

That fire was burning last Tuesday in Milan. We showed how much the Local Foods Movement has changed in only a few years- good food is not just the property of Yuppies any more. About one hundred people; farmers, dietitians, school lunch folks, buyers from big stores, and agency representatives, gathered to discuss how to move from the long-distance, petroleum-based food system to one about “food with a face.” (See the West Central Tribune's article.)

Such a gathering, in a town of 300, with a highly diverse group, could not have happened a few years ago. Many of the speakers talked about plugging along, promoting healthy foods and wise farm policy, for decades. They're amazed at what's happening now. They say “tipping point” a lot. They've toiled for “evolutionary change” in the Food System for a long time- now that's become Revolutionary Change.

There's a repeated saying in the recent remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still: “At the precipice, we change.” That's what's happening around us now. Right now. 2011 is becoming the Year of Revolutions. Only self-absorbed fools can't see that we're in a worldwide predicament. The People sense it. Old ways that have ceased to work are being rapidly replaced. Short-sighted doubters want to clamp down, thinking that a return to some imagined past, or more discipline against dissenters, will see us through. So, following the path to a wiser future, toward dealing with things as they actually are, becomes as much about dealing with violent dunderheads as with solving actual problems.

Local Foods is one of the ways we can adapt and thrive in the new, chancier, decentralized world.

>>>>>Garden Goddess News<<<<<

As you know, FARRMS is financing another printing of our book. We've firmed up the book launch event:
We'll be on hand for both April 2 and 3 in Fargo, at the Green Living Health Expo, signing books, talking, and singing a few songs. The BIG EVENT for us will be at Noon on Saturday- a press conference with us and representatives from other Local Foods-related groups.

Come on out, especially if you're a farmer or part of a foodie or sustainability group. Admission to the expo is FREE with a donation for the Great Plains Food Bank. Come show your solidarity with Local Foods folks from around the region! Meet people who you don't know, but are fellow “toilers in the fields.”