Focus

One thing that I am working on is developing a series of field trips out to local producers. I have found a list of local producers from across the country and we have a good number fairly close by. We will start close in and work our way out. This will give us a chance to meet the producers and pick their brains about a farmers market and promoting local agriculture. It will allow us to learn their stories so that we can do a better job of promoting them. It will provide an opportunity for at least a few people to get an intimate view of local production which will turn them into meme pollen. There are already several folks interested in participating in this. I will be promoting it a little more widely. If you have not already done so let me know if you want to be a part of this effort so that I can put you on the email list.

I am assuming that the group that is meeting for Monday happy hours is a working group. That is that everyone involved is willing to be involved at the level of taking on tasks. There are several different arguments that we will be looking at making. I am clear on some of them and less so on others. Those arguments are:
• To the University – for community garden space, sustainable production facility as many other universities have. I’m un clear of what we are looking for here and also what the nature of the argument that needs to be made. I’m also unclear who the argument gets made to. I suspect that, as most things at the university, this hinges on funding. In looking over UCSC stuff, I have to guess that the most likely source of funding is the US government. I suspect that by taking a “save the family farms”, economic approach that we might also be able to wrangle some bucks out of old ags in time. This is all beyond my knowledge base. It seems to me that we need to define exactly what we want and then devise a plan for how to fund it.
• To the city – We want to put together a long term plan for a complex that includes a farmers market, a community garden, an arboretum, and a sustainability center. We need to define this in a way that allows city council people to understand a dollars and cents value, as well a the value from a green perspective. We also need to provide a plan that will allow this to happen over the span of about ten years. We currently have a very receptive City Council and we need to act quickly to take advantage of this.
• Community gardens in Bryan – Cody has started looking into a couple of potential plots for community gardens in his neighborhood. What is involved in starting a community garden? What are the cost involved? How do you get people who are truly willing to work a garden?
• Locovore Ethos – this is the underlying push of all of this. How do we develop a culture that understands and values local agriculture? One of the ways we do this is by having local restaurants, health food store and farmers markets who sell this value. To do that we have to make local foods abundant and easily obtained. If a restaurant is promoting local foods and can’t find anything to sell in January we will loose them. We have to do what we can to promote our local producers, our farmers market, BNF and restaurants. We could be at the forefront of a significant awakening in our community, or we could be pissing in the wind. Which it is, is completely dependent on our level of commitment and creativity.

Please fill in the blanks of what I have left out here.