AFTERWORD

Inhabiting Our Foodshed

We need to think carefully about what’s really at stake with the local food revolution. It’s important to realize that corporate control of our food supply means loss of food freedom, food security, and food sovereignty. This is an assault on our very humanity.

Corporate agriculture says we need to feed the world. But we’re not going to feed the world. The people of the world are going to learn to feed themselves.

It seems that there is a lot of controversy about local food these days, especially among so-called experts. This is likely to increase.

We should be seeking guidance not from experts, but from the wisest elders of our human tribe (some of them referenced in this book), those who have deeper connections to what is sacred, deeper connections to life itself—those who can see beyond the urgencies of the moment to behold the broad sweep of evolution itself. From the perspective of the elders—though many seem to remain silent—from a moral and ethical and evolutionary and spiritual perspective, it is obvious that we must end the destructiveness and unfairness of our food supply. It is as obvious as the fact that we must now quickly end our carbon emissions into the atmosphere.

It does not matter how costly it is to do this in the short term, how much lost economic opportunity this causes multinational corporations or conventional agriculture, or how much pain results from making such drastic changes. The choice is clear: we have no choice but to make these kinds of course corrections—or we will ruin life on this planet. It’s that simple—and that complex, that difficult. This is our moral and ethical and spiritual dilemma.

It’s going to be a long struggle, and we need to be clear inside ourselves about what really needs to happen over the long term. There’s a decision and a commitment that each of us will have to make about our food.

What’s ultimately at stake here is nothing less than human dignity and freedom. Once we understand this, we have no choice but to do everything we can to reclaim our food sovereignty. The contamination of the biosphere and of our food supply must stop, no matter how long it takes, no matter the cost. And it will take a long time, for we are just beginning to mobilize.

Here in Colorado, we are shaping the future of our foodshed—and it is shaping us. We invite you to join us in this effort by catalyzing the local food shift in your community! Rebuilding and localizing our regional foodsheds is a massive process. The community itself is in control of the process. We’re acting primarily as a catalyst for collaboration and as a provider of information, insight, and inspiration—and capital.

In truth, this is a revolutionary experiment. And as Transition movement founder Rob Hopkins says in his cheerful disclaimer, we really don’t know if it is going to work. But we do know that if we wait for the government or big industry, it’ll be too little, too late. And if we just act as individuals, it will surely be too little. But if we act together, as communities, it might be just enough, just in time.

One of the great pillars in the local food revolution, Joel Salatin, was once asked in an interview, “If you had a microphone that could reach the heart and soul of everyone living on this planet, what would you say?” His answer is illuminating.

You and I have the distinct blessing and responsibility of being able to participate in earth’s redemption. I know the story of civilization following a path of human pillaging, destruction, and rape. Let’s declare that chapter done. I repent for all my ancestors have destroyed. Let’s resolve to regenerate, to give restitution. This new path is not up to someone else; not up to those guys over there. Quit pointing fingers and look in the mirror. What can I do, what can you do, today, to rectify the evil we’ve wrought? … Our privilege to participate is a choice we exercise. And that’s the most important exercise of all.173

Finally, back in March of 1965, in Montgomery, Alabama, Martin Luther King Jr. said that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” In that same spirit, I would offer this as my prayer and plea.

May we align ourselves with that long evolutionary arc of the moral, sacred universe and end the reign of those who would control our food supply, those who would control the very forces of nature, those who would control what is most precious and sacred in our seeds, soils, and souls.

May we restore soils and souls and hearts and minds, and may we reverse this dreadful course that threatens to dominate our humanity and undermine our freedom.

May we truly be people of the earth, connected with land and water and sky and the natural cycles of life, connected with the seasons, connected with each other and connected with the greater community of life, connected with the sun and the moon and the planets and the stars and the galaxies, and may we be connected with that sacred evolutionary spark that dwells within each of us.

Together, we are the local food revolution.