Blessing the Hands that Feed Us

by Vicki Robin

  Local Everywhere?

  What better way to nourish life than relational eating! It’s a daily act. What we eat is one way we vote on the future—a mouthful at a time. Also, buying local “buys” more local food capacity, which increases food security, soil fertility, and local prosperity. So I asked myself how my 10-mile experiment might have value for more than just me and my farmers and a few other people crazy enough to try it. Can local be one of those positive options that actually alters the outcome?

  I like heading into the unknown with a powerful question so I asked, Can local really scale up to feed the people?

  At first blush, scaling up local sounds ridiculous. You can’t have large-scale small-scale. Local by its very nature is diverse, entrepreneurial, adaptive to microclimates, individualistic unto quirky. Local is relational.

  Organic could scale up because it’s about standards for growing food—seeds, practices, and inputs. There can be “organic everywhere,” but local everywhere seems a contradiction in terms.

  Do you scale up eaters? Increase the proportion of local for each eater in a locale? Increase the number of locavores, full converts, in a locale? Aim at 50 percent of your eaters on a 50/50 diet year-round?

  Do you scale up farms? More cows for the Long family or more garlic from Georgie? Is that asking inherently small-scale family farms to grow beyond their natural lands, acquire more property, become an ever more vertically integrated business. Would “Long’s beef” or “Georgie’s garlic” become rootless brands, product pulled from anywhere. Cascadian Farms did that—grew beyond Gene Kahn’s original berry patch and became a powerful brand. In doing so, it left the community behind—the berries came from everywhere—though not the values.

  Do you scale up land in production, get new farmers onto fallow land so that we double, triple, or more the number of five-acre-and-under properties in production? More farmers on fallow land would increase farm stands, CSAs, farmers’ markets, supplies for grocers and restaurants. That’s closer, but if these new farmers are going to fare well financially, they need a system of financial fairness, not just a few customers who can afford to pay the true cost.

  I sat with these contradictions until the next key insight showed up. I realized I had stumbled into a rigged fight. How can local win in a contest for who will feed the world? If “scale up” means to get big enough to pump food out to the masses, it’s guaranteed that local would lose.

  “Put everyone on a local diet,” the industrial system says through its many mouthpieces, “and people would starve. Civilizations would collapse. We’d be back in the Dark Ages, serfs with hoes. With seven billion people on the planet, there is no alternative to the food industrial complex.”

  There is no alternative. Where had I heard that before? Ah, a dozen years earlier when Margaret Thatcher, speaking for neoliberal economic policies, said TINA—there is no alternative—to corporate globalization. What global civil society said on the streets of Seattle in 1999, protesting the WTO (World Trade Organization), and in every year since, was “There are many alternatives! And we are living them now!”

  Maybe local can’t feed the world the way the global industrial system does, but “locals feeding locals” can multiply sideways, linking arms. In fact, this is already happening. The strength of local is the very everywhere-ness of it, the guerrilla-ness of it.

  Now we are on new ground with a new question. How can local scale sideways—and feed the world? I like that question. In it I see the hope I’ve been seeking, a place to stand, actions to take, and a humble attitude. No longer fixated on fixing or stopping things, I can participate in restoring, regenerating, and relocalizing life. You could call it “relational hope.” In fact, I think I will.

  It Takes a System to Feed a Village

  If vertical integration is the key strategy of global brands, then horizontal distribution with webs of relationships is the strategy of scaling local sideways. We need to repair our food web. We need a system to support all the people and institutions that bring local food to our table: the growers, distributors, butchers, packagers, processors, marketers, retail outlets, chefs, lenders, advocates, educators, and artists. It takes a system to feed a village, to paraphrase the old African proverb.

  Local food scales neighbor to neighbor, network to network, relational every step of the way, putting trust and community first. We can see that clearly in farmers’ markets. The market itself is a technology for connecting growers to the public and to one another such that everyone wins. We can see that through Mike Nichols of Whidbey Green Goods, who increases local production by encouraging small growers to grow a bit more for market—and then sells their food to his customers. We see it at Grange meetings and at county fairs, those once-a-year extravaganzas for the food, farming, animal husbandry, processing, educational, and commerce communities to strut their stuff, dance, gossip, and meet and greet.

  The USDA’s definition of local as four hundred miles—as silly as that seems to hyperlocavores—actually helps us imagine “local everywhere.” Four hundred miles delineates a region, not just a city or even county. True regional agriculture is defined more by geography and climate than by distance, yet at least this four-hundred-mile local opens up that space of relational hope. We can link up and strengthen regional food systems so that appropriately-sized farms, stores, distributors, and processing plants can flourish together, leapfrogging from one success to the next.

  Could such regional food and farming networks supply even 10 percent, or a bodacious 25 percent, or a miraculous 50 percent, of what their eaters need to survive? Could each of us stand in the middle of where we live, as I was learning to do, and look out on a flourishing landscape of food as far as the eye could see? In cities we’d see yards and rooftops and community gardens. Farther we’d see farmland and dairies and ranches oriented around feeding their region. Farther we’d of course see larger-scale operations with a global reach, hopefully with fair wages and good working conditions and healthy practices and good corporate citizenship. Farther still (if you live in a temperate climate) you’d see the tropics, with coffee, tea, fruit, and spices, grown sustainably and traded fairly.

  Take a moment now and look out from where you live to the landscapes of food, the windowsill, the yard, the neighborhood, city, region, nation, and communities around the world. See food everywhere—all of it relational, as in knowable by you. Now imagine someone a thousand miles away likewise standing and looking out on his or her food system, eventually overlapping with yours. Imagine everyone everywhere being able to stand in food systems that feed their people and feed their hope.

  A Local World

  To do this exercise for myself, I simply got out my map and ruler. The 50-miles-as-the-crow-flies diet I undertook in February got me south almost to Olympia, north almost to Bellingham, west out to Sequim on the Olympic Peninsula, where Nash’s large market garden is, and east to the foothills of the Cascade Mountains. This is, in fact, Puget Sound, a natural basin that nourished the Coast Salish tribes for millennia and the early settlers of the region for a century plus. One hundred miles, a more common measure for locavores, would reach over to the Yakima Valley to bring me ample warm-weather fruits and vegetables—tomatoes, peaches, apricots, grapes, peppers, as well as hops (yum, beer), oats, wheat, and barley—plus a lot more meat. A USDA “local,” four hundred miles, would reach into Oregon, northern California, Idaho, and Montana and well into British Columbia, almost to Manitoba. Exploring these food ranges, I realized how well we would eat should we, by choice or necessity, confine ourselves to a four-hundred-mile radius.

  Oh, yeah? you might say. What about New York City? Gotcha.

  Out came the ruler and another map.

  Ten miles was ridiculous. Measuring from Times Square, you’d get a bit west of the Jersey Turnpike, south to Coney Island, east to Bayside, Queens, and north to the Bronx and Yonkers. When my mother was born y
ou’d find farmland in that circle. Not now. Even with the advent of gardens and chicken coops on rooftops—and CSA gardens in the city limits—these are barely pinholes of hope. But when you look at that USDA four-hundred-mile range, hope seems less like a dream and more like reality. As the crow flies, you could get to Detroit or Raleigh or Quebec from Manhattan, with thousands of acres of beautiful farmland in every direction.

  Food 2020

  I decided to start testing this notion of “local everywhere” by investigating my own Whidbey Island food system, then fanning out to the hundred-mile six-county region. What is growing, in terms of food but also innovations, within this circle? How can I, a lowly eater, contribute to creating a dense, rich food web here?

  Fortunately, a Transition Whidbey action group had produced a comprehensive food system report several years earlier (see box below).

  MAPPING YOUR SYSTEM

  If you want to change a system, you have to start with where you are. In systems thinking, you need to measure “stocks” (what you have) and “flows” (what passes through your system, and the route it takes). If you want to lose weight, you get on the scale to see where you are, moderate or measure what you eat, get on the scale again, adjust diet and exercise, and eventually lose the intended weight . . . or not.

  Same with a food system. You can say, “We want more local food in our stores,” but until you understand the system, your work will be piecemeal, improvisational, and may not produce the change you seek.

  On Whidbey our Transition group produced a food system report. They began the report saying, “A food systems ‘map’ is more than a visual list of who is growing what and where. It is a description of the larger loop of food production, harvesting, processing, distribution, and consumption that involves us all. It is a tool useful for increasing our awareness of the components of our food system (including its gaps and overlaps), better positioning us to engage in making the system increasingly resilient and sustainable.”

  Drawing on reports, government data, and other sources, they documented

  • the top state, regional, and local food crops

  • the various organizations promoting local food

  • our ag resources: land zoned for agriculture, soil qualities, forests, seashore

  • wild-food harvest: hunting, fishing, foraging

  • the number of large and small farms

  • farmland acres by crop

  Analyzing the data, they identified gaps:

  • While Island County generates more than $335,000 in livestock revenue, we have no meat-processing capability.

  • While we generate more than $2 million in sales of fruits and vegetables, much flows off the island into the commodity markets. We have few commercial kitchens.

  • While we have several farmers’ markets, direct sales cost the farmers time off the farm. We have little local food in the markets.

  • While more and more eaters want local food, until a farmer can guarantee a market or menu a consistent ample supply of standard, the buyers don’t have time to manage relationships with many farmers and don’t want to lose customers because standard fare is not available.

  • Another supply-chain gap is the time, gas, and risk for farmers to become local delivery people.

  But, they said, none of these gaps and challenges is insurmountable. It is possible!

  Food system asset mapping can start with simple satisfaction surveys and go on to more complex focus groups and data-mining efforts to get a clear snapshot of the state of the systems.

  An online community food satisfaction survey can be sent out widely. You can ask:

  • How satisfied are you with the availability of local food in this community?

  • How satisfied are you with the quantity of local food?

  • How satisfied are you with the quality of local food?

  • How much more are you willing to pay for local food over industrial food?

  • What’s in the way of you buying and using local food?

  — Price

  — Availability

  — Don’t know how to cook it

  — Not convenient to buy it

  — Not used to it in my menus

  — Don’t like it

  — Other

  • What local food would you like more of, all things being equal?

  • If you buy local food, where do you go to buy it?

  More and more communities are far more systematic in their approach.

  The Center for Whole Communities inspired a dedicated group of citizens and professionals to develop the Whole Measures for Community Food Systems, which is a mapping tool for the following comprehensive factors:

  Justice and Fairness

  • Provides food for all

  • Reveals, challenges, and dismantles injustice in the food system

  • Creates just food system structures and cares for food system workers

  • Ensures that public institutions and local businesses support a just community food system

  Strong Communities

  • Improves equity and responds to community food needs

  • Contributes to healthy neighborhoods

  • Builds diverse and collaborative relationships, trust, and reciprocity

  • Supports civic participation, political empowerment, and local leadership

  Vibrant Farms

  • Supports local, sustainable family farms to thrive and be economically viable

  • Protects and cares for farmers and farmworkers

  • Honors stories of food and farm legacy through community voices

  • Respects farm animals

  Healthy People

  • Provides healthy food for all

  • Ensures the health and well-being of all people, inclusive of race and class

  • Connects people and the food system, from field to fork

  • Connects people and land to promote health and wellness

  Sustainable Ecosystems

  • Sustains and grows a healthy environment

  • Promotes an ecological ethic

  • Enhances biodiversity

  • Promotes agricultural and food distribution practices that mitigate climate change

  Thriving Local Economies

  • Creates local jobs and builds long-term economic vitality within the food system

  • Builds local wealth

  • Promotes sustainable development while strengthening local food systems

  • Includes infrastructure that supports community and environmental health.2

  This led me on a fascinating journey to conversations with old friends and new and to a meeting with more than fifty people involved in the food system on Whidbey. With each conversation I got more clues—and discovered more roadblocks. This next section takes you on this hunt with me—and points to reasonable, actionable hope that, as relational eaters, you and I can steer our ship of food toward flourishing regional food systems.

  Being relational to the core, my first stop on the research train would be to find the local experts. Next stop—since I believe that all serious change begins in conversation among people who care—would be to set up what’s called a “multistakeholder dialogue.” For that I needed my experts to identify the stakeholders, the members of my Whidbey food system—the farmers, ranchers, foodies, gardeners, marketers, activists, purchasing agents, educators, and more.

  Providentially, right about then I sat down with Maryon Attwood, by vocation a potter, by profession working to integrate the Whidbey food system, and by instinct a practical visionary whose key talent is her ability to create systems out of loose networks, to get a hodgepodge of individuals into mutually beneficial alliances.

  When I first met her, Maryon was working for the Northwest Agricul
tural Business Center, a nonprofit seeking to increase profits for agricultural businesses—farmers, distributors, processors, and markets. She helped develop the Whidbey Grown brand to distinguish our local producers in a competitive marketplace. Maryon’s patient systems work impressed me. She later helped get the Greenbank Farm New Farmer Training Center off the ground. This program trains half a dozen young people a year in the whole spectrum of farming skills, from planting to marketing to writing a business plan.

  When I began thinking and writing about the food system, I turned to Maryon to give me the lay of the land, so to speak. We hitched ourselves up on the bar stools at my kitchen counter, wrapped our hands around cups of hot tea, and got to know each other. When I tendered my idea of getting the whole food and farming system in a room for a day for a “Can we feed ourselves?” conversation, Maryon said the magic words: “Let’s do it.” I had a partner in relational hope.

  We put out the call to our networks for help. The perfect planning team assembled effortlessly.

  Judy Feldman at that time ran the Washington State University/Island County 4-H program, though she has since moved on to becoming executive director of the nonprofit Greenbank Farm.

  Karen Lazarus, a professor at Antioch University in Seattle, had cowritten, with Judy, Maryon, and two others, a report, Exploring Island County’s Food System, which became my research bible. They’d started out to do an apparently simple job—identify all the growers on the island and put them on a map for all to see. As they ferreted out farmers, though, they realized these individuals were part of an as yet unmapped food system—the soils, crops, history, and laws as well as the farms, farmers, and crops. If we are to feed ourselves from here, we need to know what actually is here.

  Jean Singer also taught at Antioch and brought two other key pieces to the table. First, she is a professional facilitator (as is Karen). Second, she and her partner, Dyanne, are members of a social group in Maxwelton Valley that evolved into a micro food cooperative, with each member growing different crops to share with the group. They rarely need to go to the store during the growing half of the year.