From the Ground Up: Creating a Year-Round Sustainable Food System

When we think about our basic needs, creating a secure year-round food supply rises to the top. While our Federal Government supplied billions of dollars to support the crumbling financial system and auto industry, we see a much more critical need to direct funds to help Americans grow food close to where they live. We see American food security as a critical need that requires our best thinkers and attention. to bring back farming close to where we live and to make food production economically viable. 

As you may know, most of your food currently travels thousands of miles to reach your local market. With increasing oil prices coupled with unpredictable and more intense weather patterns draught and crop failure may become more common. It may not be that far in the future when one goes to the grocery store to see more expensive food items and empty spaces on the shelves.

Over the next two weeks we will be preparing a grant to submit to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). This new USDA Planning Grant is designed to fund special events to bring together diverse groups of experts to help solve a regional or national problem. We are focusing on assembling a group of individuals with expertise in solar greenhouse design and manufacturing, renewable energy production, compost manufacturing, seed production, urban agriculture, agricultural economy, and land planning and zoning.  Our goal is to convene a focused gathering in 2010 to develop a plan for national implementation to create an economically viable and biologically secure year-round urban food growing and distribution system.

As many of you know, we are experienced meeting planners, having put together over a dozen regional and national meetings for the cohousing industry since 1992. We have already contacted a number of national experts in the areas mentioned above who have agreed to participate if we are awarded the grant to focus on solutions for year round urban farming.

Since this USDA planning grant is based on matching funds, the USDA will match dollar for dollar actual funds raised or presenters contributing their time as an in-kind donation. Matching funds need to be in place at the time of the grant submittal by January 14, 2010. We welcome your input on individuals, companies and organizations you think would wish to participate in this meeting either as a presenter or as a donor. If you have ideas, please contact us as soon as possible. We will continue to post updated material about the USDA Planning Grant on our website.

Decentralize Food as Well as Power

Now that the "official" unemployment figures are at least 10.2 percent, it seems like a great time to focus on what kind of recovery we can collectivly create. As I have posted a number of times on this blog, the chances of returning to a debt and consumpution fueled ecomony are pretty small.

San Francisco Fed President Dr. Yellen asked today how strong the upturn will be. With high unemployment and idle productive capacity, we will need a very strong rebound to put unemployed people back to work and get underutilized factories, offices, and stores humming again. Traditional demand will most probably grow at too slow a pace to support vigorous expansion in the traditional markets. So what are we to do instead?

I suggest we take a step back and see what areas we desperately need to grow and begin pouring stimulus funds in those directions instead of our habit of propping up industries which may be past their usefulness and do not support the creation of a lower-carbon and more sustainable society. The efforts by the Federal and many State governments to encourage a green economy could be a great start. Supporting renewable energy technologies and an infrastructure to support it is already receiving much attention and is gain traction. Another segment worth immediate attention is food production.

The move to decentralize our power generation system should be followed by the creation of thousands of smaller more localized farms. These can create tens of thousands of productive jobs, will help to increase local food security and improve the freshness of our food by bringing it closer to where it is consumed. A Colorado company is pioneering a concept they call Agriburbia which combines residential and commercial development with local food production. Growing vegetables and raising small farm animals close to home may turn out to be one of the most important steps we can make to begin to rehire people who have lost their jobs while building local resilience.