CHAPTER 21

Toward a Pattern Language for Food Localization

We find out that we already know how to make buildings live, but that the power has been frozen in us: that we have it, but are afraid to use it: that we are crippled by our fears; and crippled by the methods and the images which we use to overcome these fears. And what happens finally, is that we learn to overcome our fears, and reach that portion of our selves which knows exactly how to make a building live, instinctively. But we learn too, that this capacity in us is not accessible, until we first go through the discipline which teaches us to let go of our fears.

—CHRISTOPHER ALEXANDER, THE TIMELESS WAY OF BUILDING

If we study the patterns that characterize the industrial food system, we see that they are fundamentally rooted in violence, disharmony, exploitation, and privilege for the few—but mostly violence, in a great variety of forms.

These are not the patterns of relationship that we find in nature, and they are not the patterns through which evolution can move. They are not the patterns of emergence, but of force. Oddly, almost no one speaks of this, though many of us are aware of how deeply destructive the system is.

But there is a part of us that remembers the patterns of life that are characteristic of a truly local food system. This is an ancient memory that goes back long before the advent of the age of totalitarian agriculture. This memory is embedded in our very genetic code (which, it could be said, agrochemical companies now seek to alter).

Somewhere along the way, we became disconnected from our food roots. We became disconnected from the soil, disconnected from the land, disconnected from the cycles of the seasons and moon and stars, and disconnected from each other. This disconnection is now visible as a huge and festering wound in our culture, but for the most part, we choose not to look at it. When we do allow ourselves to look, it is shockingly apparent, and it is horrifying.

It’s good to look, now and then, just to remind ourselves that we’re standing on the edge of a fearsome cliff, and that there are forces that seem to be pushing us with all their might into that yawning chasm, toward oblivion. There is, after all, much momentum behind these forces, growing exponentially, as they have been, since the industrial revolution and reaching their zenith in our lifetime.

We can and must rediscover and reconnect with those fundamental patterns of life that are characteristic of a regional foodshed. Indeed, the heart of this book represents some of the first halting steps toward a pattern language for food localization, for the awakening or emergence of a foodshed.

I can point to all this only in the briefest way here, but let me share with you a few thoughts from Christopher Alexander himself (in The Timeless Way of Building), which give us an entry into this rich understanding. Alexander speaks of patterns in buildings, gardens, or cities, but his words are equally true for foodsheds. Just let this wash over you, like poetry, as he speaks of “the quality without a name.”

The specific patterns out of which a building or a town is made may be alive or dead. To the extent they are alive, they let our inner forces loose, and set us free; but when they are dead, they keep us locked in inner conflict.

The more living patterns there are in a place—a room, a building, or a town—the more it comes to life as an entirety, the more it glows, the more it has that self-maintaining fire which is the quality without a name.

And when a building has this fire, then it becomes a part of nature. Like ocean waves, or blades of grass, its parts are governed by the endless play of repetition and variety, created in the presence of the fact that all things pass. This is the quality itself.131

To reach this timeless quality without a name requires building “a living pattern language as a gate.”

To work our way toward a shared and living language once again, we must first learn how to discover patterns which are deep, and capable of generating life.

We may then gradually improve these patterns which we share, by testing them against experience: we can determine, very simply, whether these patterns make our surroundings live, or not, by recognizing how they make us feel.132

Emerging patterns eventually interconnect to form a living whole.

No pattern is an isolated entity. Each pattern can exist in the world, only to the extent that is supported by other patterns: the larger patterns in which it is embedded, the patterns of the same size that surround it, and the smaller patterns which are embedded in it.

This is a fundamental view of the world. It says that when you build a thing you cannot merely build that thing in isolation, but must also repair the world around it, and within it, so that the larger world at that one place becomes more coherent, and more whole; and the thing which you make takes its place in the web of nature, as you make it.133

With Alexander’s insight, we can see that a pattern language for food localization could be about discovering the inherent patterns that bring aliveness, wholeness, and healing to our foodsheds—and our communities. This is an extremely potent development. I would suggest that this is the same impulse underlying permaculture.

It’s been hard to find the ways to speak about this. But we’re discovering just how extraordinary Alexander’s contribution really is.

Let us consider what kind of process might be needed to let a community become gradually whole.

In nature, the inner laws which make a growing whole are, of course, profound and intricate.…

What happens in the city, happens to us. If the process fails to produce wholeness, we suffer right away. So, somehow, we must overcome our ignorance, and learn to understand the city as a product of a huge network of processes, and learn just what features might make the cooperation of these processes produce a whole.

We must therefore learn to understand the laws which produce wholeness in the city.…

The process is a single process because it has only one aim: quite simply, to produce wholeness, everywhere.…134

Now, all this may seem rather mystical, even spiritual. Well, actually, it is, for what Alexander is pointing to is that wholeness, connectedness, aliveness, and sacredness are part of one seamless evolutionary process. As Alexander says, this is “a process which brings order out of nothing but ourselves; it cannot be attained, but it will happen of its own accord, if we will only let it.… The more we learn to use this method, the more we find that what it does is not so much to teach us processes we did not know before, but rather opens up a process in us, which was part of us already.… It is not an external method, which can be imposed on things. It is instead a process which lies deep in us: and only needs to be released.”135

I remember Christopher Alexander saying that aliveness and wholeness begin with something small. If it’s authentic, truly alive, it spreads or unfolds—often in mysterious ways. It’s eerily contagious, and it’s uncontrollable. This is not something to be “organized.” Instead, it grows. It emerges. This is as true for a foodshed as it is for a complex organism.

The challenge for those of us involved in food localization is to be able to see such pockets of aliveness and wholeness in our emerging foodshed and in our communities and to protect them, to lovingly shine the light of day on them, to cultivate them, to catalyze their replication—and then to see what’s possible and needed next. This is how foodsheds and communities are healed and ultimately made whole. We’re learning that we cannot make food localization happen. But we can surely be a catalyst for this emergence. All it takes is seeing what is possible—and beginning right where we are. It is difficult, but necessary. Who among us holds this vision of a localized foodshed?

People will ask, “But if you don’t make things happen, how do you accomplish these things?” They want recipes, programs, and policies. Often they just want someone to tell them what to do. The truth is (if we’re following the path of the evolutionary catalyst) that we don’t do these things. We are simply the vehicles—consciously, willingly—through which the foodshed emerges.

Farmers don’t really grow their plants or animals; they love their crops and animals into harmonious, productive existence. They don’t give them life, for they already have life. They nurture the life that already exists in them. They cultivate the conditions that are conducive to life. This is the key. Farmers provide, as needed, nutrients, water, access to sunlight, protection from weather, and so forth. They live in service to their plants and animals, to the soil (which is an entire ecology of living beings), and to the land. They also live in service to those who rely on them to supply the freshest, most nutritious, and most sustainably produced local food available.

No one can tell us how to localize a foodshed. But we can, as a matter of service, intentionally be a part of the process. And if we have this intention and follow the process, ultimately we will understand how to do it, because we will have already done it—somehow. We will have lived it. As Alexander suggests, “It will happen of its own accord, if we will only let it.”

There is something much deeper at work in all this than our will. This is challenging for those of us who are good at identifying problems or seeing what is in the way of, say, the emergence of a unified foodshed. We want to change these things, to make them better, or to remove obstacles or difficult people. But that’s not how a foodshed emerges.

The patterns identified here in the process are signs or indicators of emergence, confluences of forces through which evolution unfolds. We can recognize them, intend them, support them, align with them, and celebrate them. But we don’t make them happen.

Unfortunately, making things happen seems to always have the disturbing result of deepening the patterns of dysfunction and destruction (and often violence) that have so firmly gripped our society and our food system.

Catalyzing the local food shift is subversive. Localizing a region’s food supply is to participate in a profound and much larger shift that is unfolding on our planet, the emergence of our species into a vastly greater community of life.

Because the local food infrastructure has been destroyed by industrial agriculture, it’s not enough to motivate eaters. Nearly everyone will have to be reeducated about food and our local situation. Everyone needs to understand that our food supply is almost completely controlled by agribusiness—and that it’s destroying our health, our local economies, and our environment.

Food is one of the primary ways we connect with life, with nature, with the land, and even with the human community. And when we understand that our food comes from thousands of miles away, is highly processed, is contaminated with chemicals and pesticides and herbicides and antibiotics, and is genetically modified to the point that our bodies have difficulty recognizing it as food, then we can see that such food plays a crucial role in daily disconnecting us from life, from nature, from the land, and from our brothers and sisters.

Food—dare we say it?—is sacred. And for those of us who are involved in localizing our food supply, we must place this realization right at the center of our work—or we ourselves, no matter how lofty our intentions, will only contribute to the commoditization of food and our disconnection from life.

Localization is not merely the earth’s immune system kicking in. It is not merely a response to converging global crises. It is a process of emergence by which evolution itself is unfolding. This is why those we call evolutionary catalysts are attracted to various aspects of localization. This is an evolutionary front line. We are servants of what it is that wants to emerge in ourselves and in our communities. Localization is the evolution of the universe—on a local level.

The local food revolution, as we’re articulating it, is not ideological (as in localism); it’s practical and pragmatic. What’s more, it’s also a powerful gateway to meaningfully addressing other ecological and social issues that otherwise appear intractable, including global warming.

Food localization is not necessarily a mystical experience, per se, but simply the evolution of the universe itself at work in us and through us. I would suggest that the awakening of a foodshed is an evolutionary event of great historical and planetary significance. I can think of no arena of life in these troubled times where the potential for human evolution—and restoration and regeneration—is more timely or holds more meaning and potential. In one sense, it’s 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 the patterns presented here is relationship, relationships of a particular quality. What is emerging is a web 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. The structure of everything that is created along the way catalyzes and facilitates and nurtures these relationships. This is how community is rewoven in a society where it has been absent for so long that we have forgotten what it is and can scarcely recognize it.

We’re really looking at patterns of relationships.

Perhaps the reason that local food work is so attractive and engaging—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.

Now, if you know that localizing your food supply is going to be essential for your community—your local population, however you define it—what do you do? There are some things about the process that are going to be similar anywhere we try it. Food localization is a process—and it’s learnable, replicable, flexible, adaptable, and systemic—and hopefully even contagious.

The process of localizing a regional food supply unfolds in identifiable stages—the gradual shift from a region’s reliance on the global food system to the establishment (and even dominance) of a fully integrated regional foodshed. This is a process of building, in the sense of Christopher Alexander’s Timeless Way of Building. It is an emergent process, and it cannot be made to happen. We can only take the journey.

Perhaps it’s good to frame it in terms of a journey, recognizing fully where we are at the beginning and recognizing that we cannot predict how long it might take, what it might cost, and what will be required of us along the way. It will likely be a process spanning generations.

We are the initiators and early adopters of this process. We are evolutionary catalysts, foodshed catalysts.