Food & Agriculture

In his inspiring August 8, 2009, keynote address to the Northeast Organic Farmers Association (NOFA), in Amherst, Mass., Milwaukee community activist and grower Will Allen called for nurturing a “good food revolution” in our cities and in our rural areas, a revolution he said was already underway.  “To really have a sustainable food system,” Allen argued, “we need small scale production in all areas.”  Allen suggested we needed to have 50 million more Americans involved in food production, from backyard gardens to local farms, in order to fundamentally change our current industrial food system. 

“We need good food in all of our communities. . . . Everybody should have access to the same safe, healthy, good food. . . . We can’t live in sustainable communities without making sure that everybody has access to good food.  We can’t live in a sustainable country, where we have inequities,” Allen reminded us.  He said that access to good food was a “basic right” that everyone is entitled to, and that it was our responsibility to make sure everyone in our country had that basic right.

Allen, a former professional basketball player, has for decades been a farmer, organizer and community entrepreneur. In 2008, the MacArthur Foundation selected Allen for one of its prestigious fellowships for his creative accomplishments and promising important future work.  Through his organization, Growing Power, Allen is now running six farms and an urban food market, doing bulk compost production from food and brewery waste and integrated greenhouse fish production and hydroponic food cropping (which he refers to as “aquaponics”), generating organic worm casting fertilizer for sale (through vermiculture), running youth gardening programs, launching inner city neighborhood flower plantings and beautification efforts, and consulting with developing countries on low-cost integrated food production and composting systems.
>>> More 

When the price of diesel spiked last summer, and food prices began climbing soon after, the light bulb went on in a lot of people’s heads:  it really doesn’t make sense to depend on a food supply that has to be trucked 1500 miles to reach our households.  Every meal is hostage to the price of diesel, assuming the food is even available at all.  With all the talk about national security, this most basic security, food security, was not being safeguarded.  The specter of food insecurity, a specter that already plagues millions of low-income Americans, now haunted middle-class kitchens, and has pushed many more people into action to help rebuild local agriculture.

In the Pioneer Valley of Massachusetts, there are about 685,000 people living in the communities along the Connecticut River, in the three counties at the heart of the Valley.  The river valley’s soil is some of the richest in the country, and the river tempers the climate and lengthens the growing season noticeably, compared to the frosty hilltowns east and west. Yet in those three counties there are only 1,960 farms, as of the USDA’s 2007 Agricultural Census count.  That’s not nearly enough, although it’s a good base to start from, and the good news is that in Massachusetts, the number of farms is slowly beginning to grow again.

We are far from being able to raise the bulk of our food nearby, however.  A 1997 estimate of the food self-sufficiency of the Pioneer Valley (food production in the Valley measured against food consumption), found a regional food self-sufficiency rate of only 17.8%.  That number has no doubt gone up some over the last few years, but a look at where the food in any Valley supermarket comes from quickly reveals we are nowhere near the comfort zone for a reliable local food supply.  Given the Pioneer Valley’s rich soil, decent climate, relatively abundant water, and excess of enterprising and committed citizens, there is no good reason for this region not to be one of the country’s pioneering examples of how to rebuild a local, sustainable and equitable food system.

Beyond increasing our food security, increasing local food production would have the following added benefits:

• It would increase and diversify local employment.  (The relatively small number of existing farms in the three counties spent over $30 million in hired and contract labor in 2007, not counting the employment of the farmers and their families, or businesses serving farms, according to the Agricultural Census.)

• It would increase the stability and vitality of the local economy, because food dollars that are being drained to other states and to foreign countries would be retained and circulated within the region.

More >>>

Page last modified: 8/13/09