CHAPTER 3

The Coming Revolution

Wendell Berry has written that eating is an agricultural act. I would also say that eating is a political act, but in the way the ancient Greeks used the word “political”—not just to mean having to do with voting in an election, but to mean “of, or pertaining to, all our interactions with other people”—from the family to the school, to the neighborhood, the nation, and the world. Every single choice we make about food matters, at every level. The right choice saves the world. Paul Cezanne said: “The day is coming when a single carrot, freshly observed, will set off a revolution.” So let us all make our food decisions in that spirit: let us observe that carrot afresh, and make our choice.

—ALICE WATERS, “A DELICIOUS REVOLUTION”

SYRIA: A PROPHETIC PARABLE

The trouble that has been festering in Syria, now spreading throughout the world, began with a badly managed drought and a subsequent food crisis. We’ll see this scenario played out again and again in the coming years.

The story is instructive. The worst drought in Syrian history devastates that country from 2006 to 2010. Farmers, desperate for water, begin to sink tens of thousands of new wells into shrinking aquifers. Soon the water table drops so low their pumps can no longer lift water to the surface. Production plummets; food prices skyrocket.

In many areas of the Syrian countryside, all agriculture ceases. In other areas, crop failures reach 75 percent. As much as 85 percent of livestock die of thirst or hunger. Hundreds of thousands of farmers give up and flee to the cities, followed by millions of other rural inhabitants, who have been reduced to extreme poverty. Now climate refugees, they soon find themselves competing for scarce food, water, and jobs with an exploding foreign refugee population, including about 1.5 million people pouring in from Iraq.

Inevitably, hostilities erupt among those desperately competing just to survive. Urgent appeals to the United Nations and United States for aid go mostly unanswered.

And then the Syrian government makes the situation far worse. Lured by the high price of wheat on the world market, Assad decides to sell the country’s grain reserves. This raises short-term cash, but in the following year, Syria has almost nothing to export. Beginning in 2008 and for the rest of the drought years, Syria has to import wheat to have any hope of keeping its citizens alive.

This situation creates a tinderbox, and the flashpoint comes on March 15, 2011, when a small group of people gathers in the town of Daraa to protest the Assad government’s failure to help them. Assad ruthlessly cracks down on them as subversives. Riots then break out all over the country, which Assad attempts to quell with military force—but the effort fails, as the protesters are bolstered by outside help coming into the country.

This is just the beginning of the Arab Spring. The government quickly loses control of more than 30 percent of the country’s rural areas and roughly half of its population.

As of today, perhaps half a million people have been killed in the fighting in Syria. Nearly eight million have been displaced from their homes, and an additional five million people have fled the country. Vast amounts of infrastructure have been destroyed, along with entire cities, like Aleppo. It’s a growing disaster, a tragedy with global consequences. We call it the Syrian Civil War, but it is arguably a consequence of global warming.

As highly respected senior foreign policy analyst William R. Polk writes, “If all that doesn’t sound like a premonition of many more crises to come, I don’t know what does.”

For the last few years, I’ve been saying that what is called for is a revolution—a local food revolution. I’m not speaking of a rebellion or a revolt or violent extremism. I’m not speaking of taking to the streets in protest, smashing supermarket windows, blockading fast-food restaurants, setting fire to monocultured fields of GMO crops, laying our bodies down in front of an army of advancing combines during harvest, or hijacking and dumping truckloads of industrial food.

I’m not speaking of what in the 1960s was the rallying cry for many, coming out of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, in the words of Mario Savio: “There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part, you can’t even passively take part, and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop!”6

That’s not where we’re going—although at times we may be tempted.

What is needed is something far deeper and more fundamental and more effective and more generative and re-generative than all that.

Something is coming.

In the 1960s, Robert F. Kennedy said something prophetic that has haunted me for many years: “A revolution is coming—a revolution which will be peaceful if we are wise enough; compassionate if we care enough; successful if we are fortunate enough—but a revolution which is coming whether we will it or not. We can affect its character, we cannot alter its inevitability.”7

A revolution is indeed coming, long overdue. And those of us working toward food localization are on the front lines of that revolution. Like it or not, we are revolutionaries.

LESSONS FROM THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

Largely inspired by Woody Tasch’s extraordinary essay of September 2014, “Commons Nth: Common Sense for a Post Wall Street World,”8 I eagerly began reexploring the history of the American Revolution.

Tasch’s essay, in the form of a modern pamphlet, began with these intriguing words: “When Thomas Paine’s Common Sense went viral and sparked the American Revolution—more than a century before the first virus was discovered and two centuries before the term ‘viral’ would cause a gleam in the first blogger’s eye—it set us upon a course of national discovery that produced historic benefits galore but ultimately left us short of that elusive goal: common sense.”

In my inquiry, I learned that at the end of 1775—even though there was great tension and increasing violence between the British Empire and the American colonies—there was little discussion of independence in the colonies or in the Continental Congress. Apparently it was not considered a viable option. Almost all negotiation and debate was focused on somehow achieving reconciliation with the Crown.

But in January of 1776, Thomas Paine published Common Sense, a forty-six-page pamphlet calling for a complete break with Britain—independence. It was revolutionary thinking, and this publication indeed ignited a revolution. To begin, Paine published 120,000 copies of Common Sense in Philadelphia, which sold for two shillings each. By the time the Declaration of Independence was signed in July, more than half a million copies had been distributed—sold—throughout the thirteen colonies. That one essay changed the entire mood and direction and focus of the people; it rallied them together to birth an independent nation.

In those days, there was a great deal of public discourse going on in coffee houses and pubs. People came together in those very public places and vigorously debated the revolutionary ideas put forth in Common Sense. Others read the pamphlet to those who could not read for themselves. General George Washington even ordered copies distributed and read to his struggling troops in the field.

Common Sense galvanized a revolution and changed everything. A publication can do that.

As it happens, my roots are actually in the newspaper business. I grew up in Yuma, in northeastern Colorado, and went to work for our county’s weekly newspaper, the Yuma Pioneer, when I was in the sixth grade—to the dismay of my parents. I worked there until after I graduated from high school. Later, I went to the University of Colorado in Boulder to study journalism—at a time when the journalism school had lost its accreditation (it now no longer exists). This was in the tumultuous late 1960s, and I worked for the Colorado Daily on campus as a photographer and copy editor. I eventually became a photojournalist, later a writer, and have been involved in publishing in many ways over the years, including helping to start a daily newspaper in New York City (which still exists today, though in another city). I think I can say that in my life I have learned something about the power of the independent press—and the power of catalytic or transformational communication, especially with my multimedia work for fast-growth corporations, particularly Apple.

EVOLUTIONARY REFLECTIONS

The evolutionary significance and impact of the American Revolution went far beyond the establishing of a new and independent nation. More deeply, it represented human freedom and sovereignty emerging on our planet—or at least attempting to emerge. That was the underlying evolutionary impulse, and it is still seeking its full expression today (we certainly aren’t there yet).

Similarly, the local food revolution is part of something much larger and very widespread—the beginnings of an evolutionary transition on this planet. But it’s still far below the radar of the media, academia, economists, developers, or planners.

For instance, when individuals pull all their money out of Wall Street, and when institutions divest completely from petroleum-based investments, that’s revolutionary.

This evolutionary transition, on the other hand, is difficult to see (unless you’re specifically looking for it), because our attention is constantly being diverted and even overwhelmed by the massive problems and converging crises we face—including the sixth mass extinction of species, the threat of environmental collapse, economic collapse, and even human population collapse.

The much-needed revolution in the way humanity feeds itself is a spontaneous uprising, already well under way, kindled by people who are discovering not only that the current global industrial food system is profoundly unsustainable and increasingly unstable but also that a truly regenerative solution is within our reach—the localization of our food supply. This is one of the most positive and inspiring and hopeful developments on the planet today.

Fundamentally, localizing our food supply is at the center of an effort to bring healing to our troubled world, to begin to reverse the widespread destruction caused by the industrial growth society. Food localization is so revolutionary because it’s regenerative. It gets right to the heart of what needs to shift in our society and quietly goes to work.

And since food is what catalyzed human civilization in the first place, it’s appropriate that the effort to reverse the damage our civilization has caused should also begin with food. It is the very foundation of human society. This makes localizing our food supply the most important and most urgent social cause of our time. And it’s also one of the greatest stories of our time.

Here in Colorado, we have the great privilege to witness and even be a part of the awakening of a regional foodshed and the emergence of a true local food culture. That’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, perhaps once in a generation, maybe even once in a civilization!

When we hear the many stories of what’s happening throughout the area, we are deeply moved—even though we are keenly aware that it’s all in the early stages. In development. Under construction. It’s emerging. And it’s deeply inspiring to see.

But at the same time, we are often saddened, because it seems that so few people are aware of all this and what it means, even those who are directly involved. I have become persuaded that if we all knew more about what is emerging within our awakening foodsheds, we would be moved to come together with each other, learn from each other, inspire each other, and support each other. We would forge bonds of collaboration and deep connection that would ensure that this local food revolution would grow and prevail over the evil that has gripped our food supply and the very heart of our society.

It’s also true that when we see what we’re up against, what the odds are, it can seem completely overwhelming, even impossible. We’re only at the very beginning of this revolution. And the revolution could fail.

PERIL AND PROMISE

This is an extraordinary moment in the history of this planet, a time of great peril and of great promise. And in this moment, many of us find ourselves being called in unexpected ways.

I sense that the conditions in this country right now are similar to what they were in early 1776, and that an enormous number of people are nearly ready to declare—en masse—our independence from the Unholy Alliance of Big Ag, Big Food, and Big Pharma that is responsible for creating the global industrial food system that is devastating the environment, destroying human health, and undermining our local economies. We understand that reconciliation with the Unholy Alliance—fixing the system—is not an option, and that revolution is our only viable and responsible pathway forward.

But here’s what has never really been said before and must be said now:

In this local food revolution, we are not attempting to change or fix the global industrial food system. We’re simply putting all our efforts into building our own food system, our own regional foodsheds.

We do not need to rise up against the Unholy Alliance. We’re not declaring war; we’re simply walking away. We are building something new, which they cannot understand and will never successfully co-opt—because it’s authentic, home grown, and local. And it’s exactly what people are hungry for.

We’re resigning as “consumers,” opting out of their system. We’re leaving the field. In the past, we may have unconsciously been food slaves, but no longer. We are freeing ourselves, decolonizing. We are declaring our independence from the global industrial food system.

And this is what the Unholy Alliance fears most, for it represents how they are most vulnerable. They are losing control over our food supply, losing control over us. What a beautiful revolution!

This local food revolution is the front line of the struggle to preserve human freedom and sovereignty. It is here that we have the opportunity to begin reversing the profound damage that has been done to our planet and to ourselves since the Industrial Revolution began.

We could even say that food is at the heart of the struggle between the forces of goodness and evil on the planet. It’s no wonder that localizing our food supply and reclaiming our food sovereignty and security are so damned difficult! There is great resistance to these efforts and even great opposition—some of it overt, but mostly covert, unspoken. Many of us working in this arena feel this opposition every day.

But this is not a war. It’s a revolution, the beginnings of a great turning over. No one is telling us to do this. We simply know in our hearts that this must happen, no matter how difficult it might be, no matter how long it might take.

We understand that this is possibly a Sisyphean task, and that the odds are profoundly stacked against us. We know that the damage unleashed by the global food system is just beginning to become visible and that its consequences will accelerate and will be with us for a very long time. Climate change is forever. The environment will not go back to what it once was. The world will never be as it once was. And we, as a people, will never be the same.

But we also know that the process of regenerating the conditions conducive to what we know life can be begins right here, at the front lines of the local food revolution. This is where the healing begins. This is where we draw the line and declare that we’re taking back our food supply. This is where we draw the line and say no to the global industrial food system. This where we draw the line and say that we are planting the seeds of our own living foodshed and that we will cultivate and nurture them until they become so deeply rooted that no one will ever be able to steal our food supply from us again. We shall become food sovereigns, secure in the knowledge that, as a people, we are able to meet our own essential food needs locally. This is freedom. And it begins right here, right now.

We’ve often heard it said that the local food revolution is a small part of something much bigger. I’d like us to consider that the stakes are actually much higher than that, higher than we’ve ever imagined. Perhaps the local food revolution is actually the beginning of something much larger, the beginning of a deep revolution in human civilization, coming at a moment of an evolutionary bottleneck on this planet. And isn’t it about time?

Our modern human civilization—which, in many ways, is crashing—began, ironically, with the birth of agriculture around 10,000 BCE. For many of us working in local food, this has been troubling, causing some to wonder if agriculture itself is the culprit. How could that be?

Daniel Quinn, the legendary author of Ishmael,9 reports that humans had actually been practicing a sustainable form of agriculture for perhaps hundreds of thousands of years before this time. The form of agriculture that became prevalent around 10,000 BCE is what he calls “totalitarian agriculture,” in which humans so dominate a particular region of land that it is capable of producing food only for humans, subordinating and displacing all other forms of life. The problem, says Quinn, is that such agricultural practices make it possible for more people to live in an area than the land can sustainably support, leading to rapid population growth and the birth of cities and creating the dynamics that inevitably lead to periodic famines.

But now, empowered by the extraordinary technological advancements of the Industrial Revolution and the information age, this kind of agriculture is the largest and most destructive industry on the planet, bringing us to Peak Everything and to the brink of global disaster and irreversible entropy.

Many scientists now argue that humanity’s impact has grown to a planetary scale, to the point of beginning a new geological epoch, which most are calling the Anthropocene. Although there is some disagreement about precisely when it began, it brings to a close the Holocene epoch (the promising beginning of which was marked by the end of the last major ice age, some 11,700 years ago).

Historian and theologian Thomas Berry has poignantly noted “the radical discontinuity between the human and the non-human.”10 He sees this disconnect as the central pathology that has characterized human existence since the advent of agriculture. The cumulative effect over the last twelve thousand years—particularly the last three hundred—has even brought to an end the Cenozoic era, the long period of slow planetary recovery from the last mass extinction of species, including the dinosaurs, sixty-six million years ago.

This convergence of human forces has brought us to an evolutionary bottleneck, to the point where we’re now facing a new mass extinction of species. We ourselves have caused it, and the survival of humanity itself is threatened. During this tumultuous Anthropocene epoch, human population will likely be significantly reduced, perhaps to preindustrial levels. Economic growth will cease. Agriculture will go through a radical transformation. We will have to adapt to the devastating impacts of climate change and environmental destruction. Collapse will become a very real possibility—ecosystem collapse, climate collapse, economic collapse, and population collapse.

If all this sounds like a hopeless scenario, take heart. One of the great environmental heroes of our time, Tim DeChristopher, helps provide some perspective here.

There is no hope in avoiding collapse. If you look at the worst-case scenarios for climate change, those pretty much mean the collapse of our industrial civilization. But that doesn’t mean the end of everything. It means that we’re going to be living through the most rapid and intense period of change that humanity has ever faced. And that’s certainly not hopeless. It means we’re going to have to build another world in the ashes of this one. And it could very easily be a better world. I have a lot of hope in my generation’s ability to build a better world in the ashes of this one. And I have very little doubt that we’ll have to. The nice thing about this is that this culture hasn’t led to happiness anyway, it hasn’t satisfied our human needs. So there’s a lot of room for improvement.11

In this local food revolution, we are not working to bring about change. Change is coming, whether we want it or not—profound change. Food localization is essentially about preparing ourselves and our communities for the unstoppable changes of the winter of the Anthropocene. More deeply, it’s about creating the conditions that will ensure a spring on the other side.

If we manage to successfully negotiate the dangerous transition of the Anthropocene, we may eventually find ourselves in what Thomas Berry and mathematical cosmologist Brian Swimme have called the Ecozoic epoch, during which humanity will live in a mutually enhancing relationship with the earth and the earth community. This would be a period of planetary healing and regeneration, a time of recovery from the damage inflicted by our industrial growth society, a return to honoring the sacredness of life. Then, perhaps, the profound evolutionary potential of the human species—which has been mostly obscured—can at last begin to become evident. That sounds like spring to me.

But what could lead us into the Ecozoic epoch? Virtually all of our great social change movements—the environmental movement, the climate movement, the social justice movement—are all sadly ineffective and in decline, essentially energetically bankrupt.

Micah White, the cocreator of Occupy Wall Street—arguably the largest global protest movement in human history—now declares that even protest is broken and that what must now arise is a revolution inspired by the Divine, a deep revolution. The local food revolution could ignite just that.

Perhaps the local food revolution could have a catalytic impact on other movements, far beyond what we usually consider.

WHAT IS BEING ASKED OF US

This local food revolution is not ideological; it’s not metaphorical; and it’s certainly not just a lifestyle movement. This is real. This matters, and it’s happening right now.

The local food revolution opens a doorway—maybe not the only doorway, but one of the most inviting and wide open these days—and heralds the deep revolution that is soon upon us. The local food revolution is a center of aliveness in the midst of a dying civilization. It provides more than hope; it is a revelation of the deeper meaning and purpose and presence that lie ahead, emerging mysteriously out of a convergence of seed, soil, soul, and stars. Nothing could be more organic. Nothing could be more grounded. Nothing could be more connected. Nothing could be more important. Nothing could be more urgent.

This awareness is precisely what many in the local food movement are awakening to, but almost no one speaks of it—not yet. Many of us already know it at a deep inner level, but we have not allowed ourselves to think it explicitly, let alone to give it voice. But I am certain that we all feel it.

A real revolution is a rare thing. It asks something of us, and it will not be possible for any of us to remain neutral. It’s no accident that those who signed the Declaration of Independence pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. And for many of them, the personal cost was enormous.

Real revolutions are not based on economics, politics, or ideologies. Fundamentally, they are driven by moral, ethical, and even spiritual values. Real revolutions are called into being. And the truth is that we in the local food revolution are being mobilized by something greater than ourselves. It is perhaps the greatest calling in human history, a calling that radically reorganizes our intentions, our priorities, and our actions.

In a time of revolution, we are called, challenged to respond. And then we decide whether we can support the fundamental aims and values of the revolution and whether we will become revolutionaries ourselves—that is, whether we will allow ourselves to become so aligned with the deeper evolutionary thrust of the revolution that we seek not to control it but to contribute to it, to support it, to give to it, to be connected with it in heart, mind, body, and soul. And to make whatever commitments, promises, and even sacrifices that are necessary.

THE SACRED AT THE CENTER

An activism that is not purified by profound spiritual and psychological self-awareness and rooted in divine truth, wisdom, and compassion will only perpetuate the problem it is trying to solve, however righteous its intentions. When, however, the deepest and most grounded spiritual vision is married to a practical and pragmatic drive to transform all existing political, economic and social institutions, a holy force—the power of wisdom and love in action—is born. This force I define as Sacred Activism.

—ANDREW HARVEY, THE HOPE: A GUIDE TO SACRED ACTIVISM

We will never restore the ability of America’s agriculture to meet the needs of people, its ultimate source of effectiveness and efficiency, until we restore its respect for life. We can never restore its respect for life until we restore its soul. Within the crisis in American agriculture is the opportunity to reclaim its spiritual roots.

—JOHN IKERD

Part of the purpose of the local food revolution is to restore food to its rightful place in our society. We are moving away from a food system that disconnects us from the land, cuts us off from the natural cycles of life, alienates us from nature, hollows out our communities, and destroys our relationships with each other. The revolution will bring food home again, so that it is grown on farms close to where we live (if not in our own yards) and by people who we know and trust and love, so that it is joyfully prepared, mostly in our own kitchens; gratefully shared with neighbors, friends, and family; received into our lives in ways that nourish body, mind, and soul—so that food once again becomes sacred, sacramental, and central to the life of our communities and, in time, central to the life of our society.

There is another important reason the focus of this revolution is on food, and this perhaps eclipses all the others: food is not a commodity. We could even say that food is sacred. Food is what connects us with life itself. Most people today eat food that is highly processed; shipped from thousands of miles away; adulterated with chemical pesticides, insecticides, and fertilizers; and genetically modified to the point that our bodies can barely recognize it as food. And if we eat such food, we understand that it plays a crucial role in disconnecting us—every day—from life, from nature, from the land, and from our brothers and sisters.

Wendell Berry reminds us that eating is an agricultural act. Others have suggested that eating is a moral or ethical act. Perhaps it’s time for us to consider eating as a sacramental act. For eating to be sacramental (or moral or ethical) requires our honoring awareness of the connection to life itself that food provides, and our honoring awareness of the entire process by which our food is created and comes to our table. This is not about mere physical sustenance or nutrition, but actual connection.

Food is the means whereby the gifts of sun, soil, water, and labor converge and are released into our being to make possible our life in this world. The entire process of growing and preparing and eating food could be regarded as the transubstantiation of the soul and spirit of the universe into the flesh and blood and bone of living beings, whereby all beings—literally and figuratively—become food for other beings. We all eat, and we all are ultimately eaten—if we allow nature to take its course. But we are not merely consumed; we are transmuted, transubstantiated.

We have largely lost touch with this aspect of human life and have become unconscious of the great network of relationships and processes that provides us with food. Most people within the industrial food network have lost their connection with the sacredness of food as well. In that system, only profits are considered nourishing.

Food is sacred. We need to make eating sacramental again and come to regard farming and ranching, along with preparing and cooking food, as nothing less than spiritual practice. And those of us who are involved in localizing our food supply must place this realization at the center of our work—or we ourselves, no matter how lofty our intentions, will likely only contribute to the commoditization of food and our disconnection from life itself.

Wendell Berry insists there is no non-sacred food. For him, there is only sacred food and desecrated food. Desecrated food disconnects, weakens body and mind. Sacred food connects, strengthens body, mind, soul, and spirit.

Increasingly, we all want food that brings us into connection with life, land, and community. Increasingly, we are discovering that food is about trust and relationship. Food, it turns out, is sacred connection.

Carolyn Baker eloquently speaks of this in an essay called “The Sanctity of Food.”

Something in our ancient memory understands that mindlessly manufactured and technologically tortured so-called food constitutes the most profane of substances which are unfit to be ingested in human bodies. The more deeply immersed we are in the sanctity of food and its origins, the more we are likely to be repelled by processed, genetically modified, and chemically laden foods that have been produced by way of massive resource and ecological destruction, and which deliver more of the same to our physiology.… The sacred within us instinctively resonates with the sanctity of food. Therefore, the growing, transporting, distribution, and consumption of food are sacred acts that deserve ritual and reverence from the moment the seed is planted in the earth to the moment we have washed and put away the plate on which our food was served.12

We’re localizing our food supply, birthing a living foodshed, and restoring food to its fundamental sacredness in our society. A living foodshed provides myriad pathways for the sacred to tunnel into physical reality to bring healing, restoration, and regeneration. It is a visible manifestation of the inevitable unfolding of redemption.

This is sacred work. This is the kind of revolution of which we are a part. This is the deeper revolution that we serve.