The items discussed in this post are more or less derived from Patricia Allen's book: Together at the Table. Allen makes many great points concerning local agriculture and social movments. In particular, I enjoyed her distinction between sustainable agriculture and community food security. Both of these movements, have seen sucess in the public and private arena. And I agree with Allen that both are necessary to making local agriculture work. Bryan/College Station needs a community resource center that embraces the ideals of food security and provides markets for sustainable agriculture. We must encourage the growth of sustainable agriculture by area farmers and providing resources to further the knowledge base of sustainable agriculture both on the part of the producer and consumer.
If both, Food Security and Sustainable Agriculture are pursued in such a fashion we will find a resurgence in not only the quality of food produced but a new placed emphasis on the importance of developing a positive food culture. This culture will lead to keeping money in the community, money to support local farmers, a more environmentally friendly community, and ultimately a strengethening of the community in manifold ways.
Allen, speaks specificially to agriculture, but she also hits on the import of social movements wedding themselves with one another. "If social movements are to be more than ephemeral, they must become part of the fabric that organizes and mediate social relationships...(52)" It is tantamount to the success of local agriculture in BCS to wed itself with supporting bicycle partipation, the success of bikes is directly related to success of community gardening, and so on and so forth. We must create mechanisms for linking persons and projects that work to build community.
Our community has failed on two accounts; either the groups (the movement portion) themselves become focused striclty on their individual projects and or ideology seperates and then ultimately severs local collaboration (individual/social relationships.) If we can find a way to mitigate this scenario we will all be better off.
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And so Christian Moore coined the term Food Independence. This is a great term because it can be applied both in a community context and in a personal context. Our efforts to this point have largely been to generating a source of fresh locally grown food in our local market. Even as we have spoken about community gardens, it has been to supply dining halls and market stalls. But as we think about food independence we should also be including resources for the grow your own crowd. Whether in one's back yard or at a community garden, we should be focused on resources for this, the most green of all agriculture. These remain victory gardens. Almost never are comparisons to the Natzies warranted. While a different brand of self serving ugly disregard for humanity, Monsanto's world wide campaign against the will of people to feed themselves is at least at a similar scale.
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