According to the Worldwatch Institute, the value of global trade in food has tripled since 1961, and the tonnage of food shipped between nations has grown fourfold, while population has only doubled. In North America food typically travels between 1,500 and 2,500 miles from farm to plate, as much as 25 percent farther than in 1980. Cheap oil, subsidies, corporate consolidation and technical innovations have tipped the balance in favour of large scale production agriculture. Many people argue that there is no alternative for our rapidly expanding global population.
What happens when this shifts?
In Canada, a new non-profit certification program called Local Food Plus (LFP) is now helping shoppers separate sustainably grown apples, canned tomatoes, eggs, milk and meat from mass-produced, processed imports. According to Rod MacRae (agricultural consultant and Professor at the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University), Local Food Plus is dedicated to rebuilding local, sustainable, supply chains from farmer to consumer. This is done by introducing farmers who produce locally grown, sustainable foods to the food processors, supermarkets and food service companies operating at universities and in cities.
More here.
I co-sign the first comment made at worldchanging Les;
A LOT of work will need to go into figuring out precisely how to provide folks with the specific cost savings/quality increase modulus required to get them to modify their habits.
Depending on the locality in which I lived, I believe I would seek to determine whether the local water services department was doing anything toward the development and proliferation of bio-retention swells as a means of controlling water runoff and wastewater management. What you plant on a swell could be worldchanging, but as with all of these efforts, the devil will need to be confronted in these details.
Did I read something at your spot that talked about new ways to deal with
water runoff? If so, shoot me the link? If not let me know and I’ll look for
it. I saw it somewhere very recently….
Sounds like a Mahndisa joint to me…, but my point is that bioretention swales will require investment, care, and upkeep and due to the fact that they're on city property at the front of most people's yards, there may well be a way for an enterprising and green thumb having individual to kill a WHOLE LOT of birds with one stone by helping a municipality to solve its runoff problem, maintaining an urban greenspace to specifications, and bringing in some edible crops.
It's certainly an area I intend to explore aggressively, I'm having coffee with a landscape architect privvy to my efforts on monday morning to discuss this in greater detail.