MLT Newsletter
July, 1994
Alternative Visions
LOCALIZING FOOD SYSTEMS: A KEY TO HEALTHIER CITIES
by Kenneth A. Dahlberg
[Note: This is a somewhat expanded version of a piece published in The Neighborhood Works.
February/March 1994, p.14,as part of a special issue dealing with urban
food issues. Subscriptions are available for $30 for six issues
(plus two handbooks) from The Neighborhood Works, 2125 W. North Ave.,
Chicago, IL 60647; phone (312) 278-4800. Reprinted with permission.]
The restructuring of agriculture and rural regions required to move
towards more sustainable agricultural and food systems also offers
neighborhood and city reformers many possibilities to rethink,
restructure, and localize their own food systems in order to make them
healthier. What restructuring? What food systems? Why
localize? my neighborhood activist friends ask.
What restructuring?
Current agriculture (national and international) is
unsustainable. Not only does it impose extremely high health,
social, and environmental costs, but it is highly fossil-fuel
dependent. In the U.S. it takes roughly 10 energy calories to
deliver 1 food calorie on our plates. As fossil fuel prices rise,
there will be a huge multiplier effect on food prices with resulting
chaos throughout the food system if this happens quickly. As we
move into the post-fossil-fuel era, we can either wait until things
collapse or start the necessary restructuring now. This
restructuring will greatly affect towns and cities as well as rural
regions.
What food systems? And
what are they anyway? It is not surprising that people raise
these questions since most are aware only of production
agriculture. Most city dwellers, not to mention city planners,
are otherwise illiterate when it comes to their local food
system. Few citizens or officials are aware of how dependent
their city is upon distant national and international systems (public
and private) for food and how vulnerable those systems are.
Neither are they aware of the extent and complexity of their local food
systems, much less their potential and the need to develop that
potential. This is reflected in the fact that no U.S. city (or
state) has a department of food. Equally, few people are aware
that the value of the produce from all U.S. gardens (urban and rural)
is roughly equivalent to that of the corn crop (approximately $18
billion/year!). Also, there is little awareness that
agricultural, horticultural, and food-related activities constitute
roughly 20-25% of a local economy (at least in those few regions where
studies have been done).
What then are local food systems anyway? The local
part starts at the household level, and then expands to the
neighborhood, municipal, and regional levels. At each level there
are different cycles, issues, problems, and possibilities. The food
part includes all the various social, symbolic, health, power, access,
and equity dimensions (things that get minimal consideration in
agriculture). The systems
part includes not just the production aspects of food (farmland
preservation, farmers markets, household & community gardens), but
processing issues (local vs. external), distribution issues
(transportation, warehousing), access issues (inner city grocery
stores, school breakfasts & lunches, food stamps, the WIC program,
etc.), use issues (food safety and handling, restaurants, street
vendors), food re-cycling (gleaning, food banks, food pantries and soup
kitchens), and waste stream issues (composting, garbage fed to pigs,
etc.). Besides the social, economic, and environmental issues
associated with the above, each also involves a number of ethical and
value issues which need to be included in our understandings.
Why localize? And what
are the potential benefits? Sustainable agriculturalists have
called for localization to increase environmental sustainability and to
develop and increase local markets and reduce dependence upon distant
(and often erratic) markets. Few of them have thought about the
other components of local food systems outlined above or how localizing
food systems and having more food grown locally and regionally for
local consumption opens new opportunities for neighborhoods, towns, and
cities to reduce social, environmental, and economic problems.
Such localization can help cities develop new ways to deal with
problems of hunger, joblessness, urban decay, declining tax bases, and
environmental degradation, plus help to meet the need for open and
green spaces.
The vision of creating healthier, more localized and more sustainable food systems includes such things as:
*Providing both long-term food security and better health for all local
residents by making a variety of safe and nutritious food available to
all;
*Providing a cushion of self-reliance against transport strikes, major
storms and disasters, and rising food prices resulting from oligopolies
and/or rising fossil fuel prices and their multiplier effects;
*Providing continuing employment for local farmers, horticulturalists, and food workers;
*Empowering households and neighborhoods and making them more
self-reliant by making more land, work, and employment available
throughout the food system;
*Recycling and freeing up more local dollars for local development by
increasing the energy and resource efficiency of local food systems,
especially by reducing energy costs and recycling organic wastes into
productive uses rather than putting them in expensive landfills;
*Creating a healthier, more diverse, and pleasant environment for
ourselves and our grandchildren by cleaning up air, water, and soil
systems and creating more green spaces and more diverse rural
landscapes, while at the same time reducing health costs and pollution
clean up costs;
*Reducing the dependence of people on emergency hunger and feeding programs by moving towards hunger prevention programs.
How do we go about creating healthier local and regional food systems?
At a personal level we can grow, process, and preserve more of our own
food. We can buy local food from farmers markets and u-picks, We
can join a community supported agriculture organization. As
citizens, we can support innovative neighborhood and municipal programs
and organizations. One exciting example has involved the creation
of food policy councils. They have sought to improve their local
food systems not only by coordinating and/or networking actions, but by
making policy recommendations, organizing groups, testifying and/or
lobbying, conducting or sponsoring policy research, and doing many
other creative things.
The types of issues they have addressed include the following. Production:
promoting household & community gardens; seeking to preserve local
farmers and farmland; promoting community supported agriculture. Processing: encouraging local food processing plants as well as household and community canning programs. Distribution:
promoting full use of available government programs (school breakfasts;
food stamps; WIC, etc.); coordinating emergency feeding systems (food
pantries; soup kitchens, food banks, etc.); ensuring availability of
inner city supermarkets; encouraging local farmers markets and
promoting local produce. Use: promoting healthy and nutritious diets and meal preparation. Recycling and composting: encouraging this throughout all phases of the food system. Waste disposal: using creative approaches to minimize the wastes generated in each stage of the food system.
Until recently, we have been blind to the importance of food in local
and regional environments and economies. The emerging crises of
sustainability will require us to shape and fit current fragments and
pieces into genuine and sustainable food systems. With vision, we
can also do this in a way that will simultaneously empower families and
neighborhoods, reduce many local problems and costs, and make our
communities healthier, more self-reliant and equitable.
Self-reliance Without Zeal: A Confessional
by Mike Phillips
"It's okay to fart around." --Kurt Vonnegut, 1993
Last -week it took me nearly seven hours to put up 32 quarts of
strawberries—that included 16 pints of jam and a gallon and a
half of cordial.* I made quite a mess and both of my thumbs got
sore from gouging caps. I kept thinking that for ten or twelve
dollars I could probably buy a case of strawberry jam at Sam's
Club. Then again, I hate shopping; and there's that tinge of
satisfaction every time I go into the pantry and see a growing number
of Mason Jars. I don't mean to imply that Mason jars out number
the things we buy from the store, simply that there are more than there
were previously.
I wish that I had a passion for homesteading. (I come from a long
line of tract house dwellers.) In the past ten years, Lisa and I
have always grown vegetables and cut fire wood from our woods.
I've planted a lot of trees and other perennials, including a vineyard
and a small orchard sitting on top of hard-packed clay that always
escapes frost-freeze but has yet to yield fruit. There's chickens
in the barn, fresh eggs in the refrigerator and roasters in the
freezer. Condense the past decade into a few sentences and you'd
think we're destined for the cover of Harrowsmith/Country Life.
(I don't even like to read that stuff.) We aren't that
self-reliant. Any family with the impetus would have done in four
years what it took us ten to do. I don't even like
gardening all that much, and I've put 100 times more effort into
lounging on the couch picking my guitar than tending to chickens,
fruits, and vegetables. Nonetheless, our household economy grows a
little each year.
I've found that the modicum of effort put into food
preservation—even an occasional seven hour stretch at the kitchen
sink—still leaves plenty of time for child rearing, careers, and
loafing. In fact, the best part about living in the country is
sitting in the shade on the front porch reading or writing a letter and
distracted only by the din of children playing and songbirds marking
territory.
Our neighbors are much more enthusiastic homesteaders than we are and
they help drag us along. This year we got most of our vegetable
flats form the people next door. (They got the use of our roto
tiller.) Our other neighbors to the south took it upon themselves
to organize a community garden since they have access to a tractor with
a cultivator. So, there's two acres of sweetcorn sitting there
that will soon be divided between five households. It seems to me
that any attempt at self-reliance is contingent upon having good
neighbors.
Sometimes I fear—especially when I think about the safety record
of the Palisades Nuclear Power Plant, 35 miles northwest as the crow
flies—that civilization has run amuck and that self-reliance is
our only sane response if we envision any just and sustainable
future. I feel a bit sheepish that I'm not doing more to hold up
my end of such a noble endeavor.
I keep plugging away. I try to break down "self-provisioning"
(Maynard Kaufman's term and an apt description) into small tasks so I
won't get overwhelmed--you couldn't give me a milk cow. If it
becomes an innate part of housework it's not such an ordeal. That's how
I was able to spend seven hours putting up strawberries. Hell, if I had
to think about it, I probably wouldn't do it.
*Sally Kaufman's Cordials
(This is a slight variation from the recipe
Lisa got from Sally many years ago.)
Combine: 5-6 cups crushed berries (black caps,
cherries, raspberries, et al)
1.75 liters cheap vodka
2 cups water
5 cups sugar
Mix together for 10 to thirty days (One gallon
wide mouthed glass jars work well); strain;
wait one month or more and rack off into
decanters. Makes an excellent after dinner liqueur.
The income generated from the sale of the farm has allowed the MLT Board of Directors to informally commit to
help finance the Michigan Organic Food and Farm Alliance (MOFFA). The
Board approved $3,000 in February, and $3,500 in April of this
year. Another $3,500 will be made available to the organization
in the fall contingent upon a favorable update. Optimally, MOFFA
will eventually obtain foundation support. (For an overview of
MOFFA and our role, please refer to the January MLT newsletter.)
The Bangor area Local Exchange Trading System (LETS) started up in May
with 22 active members. The bartering program was featured in the
Benton Harbor Herald-Palladium back in March. On Sunday, July 31,
1994 there will be a LETS Fair at the farm of Maynard Kaufman and
Barbara Geisler from 3 to 5 pm. Following will be a potluck and
then the MLT meeting. All are welcome.
Our protracted writing/poetry contest is over. As you may recall,
the contest had two objectives: First, we hoped to come up with a
name or slogan that would [romantically] promote community
self-reliance and local economic viability as exemplified by the LETS
program. Second, since we are groping with the broad cultural
changes of our time, we are in search of "...a new poetic mythology.
The call was put forth, a group of judges was assembled, and we waited
for entries. There were five. Unfortunately, none of the
submissions interested or inspired the judges. So, a "consolation
prize" of $25 will be sent to all five participants. Meanwhile,
we'll continue to grope.
--Mike Phillips, Editor
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