CHAPTER 4

Note to the Reader

We find ourselves in an excruciating position, you and I. We have awakened in a magnificent and unimaginably beautiful world that is now undergoing its most devastating crisis in the last sixty-six million years—since the dinosaurs became extinct. Worse, we learn that the cause of this unfolding devastation is us—the manner and magnitude in which we have been living on the planet.

Meanwhile, human civilization itself seems to be beginning to unravel. We can see that humanity is on the brink of collapse, possibly extinction, and that we might even undermine the prospects for all future life on earth. Charting the ever-worsening trajectory of these trends can be quite disheartening. It’s an unfathomable situation, and it sometimes drives us to our knees, weeping.

Mysteriously, though, we seem somehow incapable of succumbing to acquiescence or despair, for we know that we are seeing all this and feeling all this for a reason. Purpose lurks behind the scenes.

Surely each of us is culpable in our shared crisis, but there is more that blooms in our awareness these days, something far more unsettling. It is as if each of us grappling with these realizations has been sent here at precisely this moment in history because we bear some gift to deliver, something unique and necessary, something essential. Whether this will remain an unopened package remains to be seen—and the world awaits the outcome.

Meanwhile, we are caught between two worlds—on the one hand, a cloying and dysfunctional world that perhaps most of us never truly felt a part of, and on the other, a new world looming on the horizon that is by turns threatening and exhilarating. Somehow we find ourselves drawn to simultaneously hospice the old and midwife the new—and perhaps even to illuminate the choice between them. For many of us, this is often terribly disorienting.

Ironically, in the face of all this, we somehow find ourselves called to be leaders or organizers or catalysts or communicators or facilitators. Some people seem to look to us because they sense that we see something, perhaps know something—when mostly we just feel. We often respond to this calling reluctantly, hesitatingly, incredulous that it might just somehow come down to us after all.

But there is little choice. We know unequivocally that we have much work to do, and time is growing short. Never mind that we do not know if it is already too late. In these dark moments of a waning era, much depends on our response, our ability to find and cocreate with others who are similarly called—in whatever arena we have been drawn to.

We are evolutionary catalysts. There is a future that longs to be born in us and through us, a future that began in the Initial Flaring Forth nearly fourteen billion years ago, a future that has been steadily unfolding and accelerating right through to this day. We bear the seeds of that future within us. Where will we plant ourselves?

Perhaps, as systems scientist Peter Senge suggests, if we can find our place, we will find our purpose.13 This book is about finding our place and delivering our as-yet-unnamed gift in that place—hopefully in time.

How humanity will feed itself in an increasingly uncertain future is perhaps the single most urgent challenge of our time, but it seems that only a handful of people on the planet can currently see this. It’s well known, of course, that hundreds of millions of people go hungry every day; that poverty and food insecurity are inextricably linked; and that, as human population soars toward a projected nine or ten billion people by the middle of the century, the demand for food production will rapidly increase.

Given what we now know, it is undeniable that what is urgently needed is a widespread revolution in the way humanity feeds itself. What is needed is a revolutionary movement to localize the global food supply to the greatest extent possible, starting in our own communities. This book was written to inspire, guide, and empower those individuals who are awakening to these realities and are beginning to face the daunting challenge of localizing our food supply—forging a new and regenerative way for humanity to feed itself.

The truth is that this work is far more difficult than almost anyone is willing to discuss. It’s so easy to get buoyed up by all the great projects bursting into existence everywhere, from CSAs to farm-to-school programs. And they do indeed give us hope. But when we allow ourselves to look at the scale of what has actually been achieved so far (Vermont at only 7 percent food localization is a particularly stunning example—and they lead the nation), it’s clear that our efforts are minuscule in the face of the immensity and inertia of the industrial food system.

What’s more, as we will see, the global situation is far worse than we’ve apprehended. We’ve naively overridden our inner knowing to the point that we’ve accepted the claims of marketers and propagandists. There is no way to avoid the reality that converging global crises are rapidly becoming calamities. We’re in for a rough ride on this planet, and there is likely no way to avoid catastrophic population reduction in the next few decades. There will be no soft landing.

Nevertheless, the work we are doing is crucial—even if the likelihood of failure is high.

We may have already failed, in terms of metrics. What we are attempting may turn out to be utterly impossible. But such is the realm of the evolutionary catalyst. I recall a famous quote (sometimes attributed to Winston Churchill) from an earlier global struggle: “Leadership is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.” So it is for us. We may completely fail a thousand times before we ever experience a systemic success. And yet we know that this is precisely how evolution works, relentlessly seeking to emerge through countless transitional entities. We ourselves are such transitional entities, and we must be willing to be used for this purpose. We serve something greater than what can be measured or even visible in this lifetime.

Do these seem harsh words? I hope not, for they are offered with deep compassion for the individuals who take them into their being. Do these seem the words of someone depressed or one who has experienced inordinate failure? While I can confirm that I have occasionally felt that way, those feelings are generally fleeting, and I am repeatedly brought back to center, with an all-encompassing perspective that reminds me that I am an integral part of the flow of evolution itself. Evolution is an unstoppable force.

One of my local heroes is Dana Miller, the founder of Transition Denver and a dynamic and successful organization called Grow Local Colorado. When we first met her several years ago, she was a former airline stewardess enjoying her retirement. Then she went to a conference in Denver called Earthworks Expo, where she heard Richard Heinberg and me give back-to-back presentations. As she tells it, she was so shaken that she went home and cried for three days. Then she got to work. She is now an extraordinary leader in preparing Denver for what’s coming. Dana is an evolutionary catalyst. And our involvement in her activation is as mysterious to me as it is to her. So it often is with evolutionary catalysts.

The primary consideration for planning this book is a single question: what do local food revolutionaries need?

• We need context, concise but comprehensive perspective that connects the dots and makes sense out of a complex global situation. We need to understand the advent of the global food system and its catastrophic impacts on human society and the entire biosphere, because seeing the present systemically is crucial to creating the future. And as environmental activist and Buddhist scholar Joanna Macy says, seeing the deeper pattern that connects many different problems is crucial if we are to move beyond piecemeal reactions and create far-reaching transformation.

• We need meaning, confirmation that the nagging sense we feel of being drawn to this issue is real and rightful and important, a revelation that we are, in fact, evolutionary catalysts with a significant contribution to make.

• We need hope, to be able to see that a revolutionary and evolutionary process is unfolding in unexpected ways. We need to see that the local food revolution is indeed emerging and that it is far bigger and is moving far more quickly than almost all of us had realized. We need to feel that localizing the global food supply is both necessary and possible—even inevitable.

• We need inspiration, examples of what is possible, other catalysts who are innovating and creating pathways that we can follow.

• We need a vision of the revolutionary impact that food localization can have, and we need a sense that this is perhaps the most important social cause on the planet today, an opportunity to contribute meaningfully and strategically at the most crucial moment in human evolution. We need to see what’s possible. We need to learn how to simultaneously hold inspirational visions of a positive future and the uncomfortable truth about current reality.

• We need a detailed map of the process by which food localization can be accomplished, along with guidance in implementing that process.

• We need a pattern language for food localization, a way to visualize and talk about the deeper patterns of present reality and the emerging future, which will open the way to learning how to think together in the process.

• We need guidance in collaborative, cocreative, co-learning group process. The work will require passion and patience, for we will be moving together toward aims that have deep meaning for us and opening ourselves to ideas that may seem foreign and even threatening. And it requires the courage to act without having all the answers, moving beyond the usual approach of figuring out the answer and then implementing it. The collaborative process is, above all, a learning process, which calls us to venture into difficult and uncharted territory with openness and humility, continually discovering the pathways forward.

• We need motivation to develop necessary skills, especially in seeing and thinking systemically, cultivating the ability to see systems and creative process as natural and essential complements to one another.

• We need the clarity and discernment to tap into what we truly want and what is truly needed. In other words, we need to cultivate the discipline of being evolutionary catalysts.

• We need confidence in our own power and purpose; and with this confidence, we need courage and determination.

• We need a way to begin right where we are, the beginnings of a plan that emerges from the core of our being.

• We need choices that we can make immediately, actions we can take now, as well as others we can work our way up to.

• We need connection with other evolutionary catalysts.

• We need access to informational and inspirational resources, along with tools, processes and programs we can implement in our communities. As Buckminster Fuller said, “If you want to teach people a new way of thinking, don’t bother to teach them. Instead, give them a tool, the use of which will lead to new ways of thinking.”

• We need an experiential sense that we are part of something revolutionary, that we belong to this, that this represents who we truly are.

• We need wisdom from those who have gone before, from elders of the tribe of evolutionary catalysts.

These are the things that The Local Food Revolution attempts to offer. What is pointed to here can’t fit between the covers, so please consider this book a doorway to an expanded universe, a doorway to deep engagement.

Peter Senge says that problem solving is about making what you don’t want go away and that creating involves bringing something you care about into reality. If this is true, then what is catalyzing? We could say that catalyzing is an evolutionary strategy that calls for serving and aligning with what is attempting to emerge in us and through us—both what is needed and what is truly wanted.

The heart of this book, part six, “Field Notes for the Emergence of a Foodshed,” is a very preliminary exploration of the process by which a regional foodshed comes into being. Learning to see food localization as an emergent process of healing and regeneration liberates us from the crushing enormity of what we face. It is easy to feel overwhelmed when we come to grips with the magnitude of the challenge of localizing our food supply and beginning to reverse the trajectory of decades of domination by the global food system.

In seeing the underlying structure of this localization process—which mirrors emergent processes in nature—we can learn to identify where we are, regionally, and to begin to chart pathways through the complexities of the work, anticipating what will be needed in the future. We learn there is a kind of seasonality to all this, just as there is an appropriate time for soil building, for planting, for cultivating, for harvesting, and for celebrating.

This section of the book is inspired in no small measure by the breakthrough work of renowned architect Christopher Alexander, whose book A Pattern Language has, for nearly forty years, been a classic for designers and builders of many different disciplines, particularly for practitioners and teachers of permaculture. This foundational text led to our beginning to map a kind of pattern language for food localization. But Alexander’s magnum opus, a recent four-volume series, The Nature of Order, more completely informs the deeper nature of our work, as we explore how humans can collaboratively shape systems and structures that generate wholeness and aliveness. We apply these principles to the creation of a localized foodshed.

We see that the awakening of a foodshed is an event of great historical and planetary significance. We discover that food localization can be seen as the evolution of the universe itself at work in us and through us. In these troubled times, there is perhaps no arena of life where the potential for human evolution—and restoration and regeneration—is more timely or holds more meaning and potential.

I would even say that localizing our food supply is right at the leading edge of human evolution. In one sense, it is a battleground, a matter of survival. But in another sense, it’s an opportunity for the human community to rise to an occasion that can only be considered an evolutionary crossroads.

The essence of all these patterns is relationship, relationships of a particular quality. What is emerging through the process is a network of relationships that forms the underlying structure of an emerging foodshed. Everything that happens toward the building of the local foodshed is in service of these relationships. And the structure of everything that is created along the way is to catalyze and facilitate and nurture these relationships. This is how community is rewoven into a society where it has been absent for so long that we can scarcely recognize it.

Perhaps the reason that local food work is so attractive and so satisfying is that it is really about recovering our very humanity and all else that has been lost with the rise of industrial civilization.

We’re a long way from achieving a significant degree of food localization in Colorado. But we’re on the path. Things are moving, and I’m astonished at what’s emerging in our midst. It is my hope that what we’re doing here can become something of a whole-systems demonstration project, which can serve as a model for a food revolution in communities and foodsheds everywhere.

We don’t know, however, if food localization will happen in our area quickly enough or at significant enough scale to avert disaster. We just don’t know. It’s something of a Hail Mary pass. We’re moving as quickly as we can, paying attention as best we can, and catalyzing the emergence of food localization in every way we can.

It’s such an adventure, such a joy to be involved in this effort. And it’s by far the most difficult and challenging thing we’ve ever done in our lives. But it’s happening. We are part of it, deeply implicated. It’s a privilege to give our lives in this way.

And we look forward to working with you. You, together with us and many others, are the foundation of emerging localized foodsheds. Together, we are igniting the revolution in how our society feeds itself.