The essay is titled, 'Food and Community. A future intertwined.'
I recently met (by phone) a couple of the authors.
This is a good summary of the economic value and security that regional foods can bring to communities...
“This is because a healthy community will be a relatively self-sufficient one. A community's complete dependency on outsiders for its mere survival weakens it. The most fundamental requirement for survival is food. Hence, how and where food is grown is foundational to an economics for community”
"Without a doubt, the centralized industrial food system has achieved amazing productivity and technological advances over the last half century. But along the way, the creation of short-term shareholder wealth has been decoupled from community health, environmental sustainability, and justice, and community self-reliance has been sacrificed to the pursuit of specialization, efficiency, and scale economies."
"We believe that the current food revolution is a hopeful harbinger of some remarkable community-level changes in our food and food system to come over the next twenty-five years—changes that are essential to diversify and restore balance and resilience to our dangerously lopsided current system."
"We believe we are in the midst of a community-rooted food renaissance—the rebirth of food that travels a short and known route from field to plate and accomplishes these things:
• It supports local farmers and farm workers with dignity.
• It keeps dollars circulating within the local economy and creates a ripple of jobs throughout the community.
• It is a genuine expression of local identity and heritage, not a cosmetically engineered imitation.
• It celebrates and enriches cultural and genetic diversity that fits the season and the local environment rather than fighting against them.
• It increases the self-sufficiency of families and the resilience of the community for generations to come.
• It expresses love and care for ourselves, our neighbors, and our planet."
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Thanks to the authors for a great summary of this historic opportunity to fix things.
Food and Community. A future intertwined.
National Civic Review, March 2014
Renee Guilbault, Larry Yee and Karen Schmidt
This is a good summary of the economic value and security that regional foods can bring to communities...
“This is because a healthy community will be a relatively self-sufficient one. A community's complete dependency on outsiders for its mere survival weakens it. The most fundamental requirement for survival is food. Hence, how and where food is grown is foundational to an economics for community”
"Without a doubt, the centralized industrial food system has achieved amazing productivity and technological advances over the last half century. But along the way, the creation of short-term shareholder wealth has been decoupled from community health, environmental sustainability, and justice, and community self-reliance has been sacrificed to the pursuit of specialization, efficiency, and scale economies."
"We believe that the current food revolution is a hopeful harbinger of some remarkable community-level changes in our food and food system to come over the next twenty-five years—changes that are essential to diversify and restore balance and resilience to our dangerously lopsided current system."
"We believe we are in the midst of a community-rooted food renaissance—the rebirth of food that travels a short and known route from field to plate and accomplishes these things:
• It supports local farmers and farm workers with dignity.
• It keeps dollars circulating within the local economy and creates a ripple of jobs throughout the community.
• It is a genuine expression of local identity and heritage, not a cosmetically engineered imitation.
• It celebrates and enriches cultural and genetic diversity that fits the season and the local environment rather than fighting against them.
• It increases the self-sufficiency of families and the resilience of the community for generations to come.
• It expresses love and care for ourselves, our neighbors, and our planet."
###
Thanks to the authors for a great summary of this historic opportunity to fix things.
Food and Community. A future intertwined.
National Civic Review, March 2014
Renee Guilbault, Larry Yee and Karen Schmidt
