[FLPERMACULTURE] Eat-Local Backlash

Sat Aug 25 08:48:54 PDT 2007

Simon did a much better job responding to your questions, Jeff, than I 
could. I can add my personal experience and a couple of observations.

I was part of the "back to the land" movement in the '70s. A lot of folks 
were purists about it and tried to be very self-sustaining by growing their 
own grain (and grinding it), making their own clothes from cloth they made 
from their own fiber, etc. Most of those folks burned out pretty quickly 
and plugged back into the prevailing consumer culture. Sustainability 
approached that way is very human-energy intensive. There are huge 
economies of scale with mechanization that are not likely to go away even 
at much higher energy costs. Human labor will not compete with machines, 
except where labor is both cheap and plentiful. Besides, the work is 
physically demanding. I don't much enjoy wielding a scythe or a flail. In 
our area, there is a lot of fallow land, so access to land is not the 
problem. Grain used to be grown in this valley in my memory, but doing so 
ceased being profitable and so it isn't grown any more. That may very well 
change, and as Simon pointed out, grain is easy to store and transport 
pretty efficiently. We could enhance the efficiency by rebuilding and even 
expanding the rail network we once had.

Vegetables, and to a lesser extent, fruit, make sense as a very local 
product. Farmers markets make sense, but on-site production makes even more 
sense. I make a couple of trips a year to the horse-boarding facility down 
the road about 2 miles for horse manure and avoid thereby going to the 
grocery store most of the year (we do stop by at least once a month while 
in town on Sundays for church). By storing, canning or freezing enough to 
last us the entire year, we avoid a huge energy cost of containers and 
shipping. We carefully considered that freezing is more energy-intensive 
than canning because of the ongoing cost of storage, but the superior 
nutritional value of the frozen product left us unwilling to forego it. Our 
freezers are chest so the cold air stays put when you open them. I expect 
the efficiency of freezers to improve as energy costs rise, but they have 
always been much more efficient than refrigerators. We do have a spare 
refrigerator which is pressed into service (an old manual defrost) when the 
cold storage room stops being cold in the spring.

What was missing for the back-to-the-land movement was the recognition of 
the value of cooperation in achieving sustainability. There is only so much 
any of us can do on our own. The sustainable culture that existed prior to 
cheap energy relied heavily on cooperation, and that cooperation was the 
foundation of community. We need to get back there.

Joel

At 06:58 AM 8/25/07 -0700, you wrote:
>But what about those grains, Joel? They throw a wrench
>into the whole eat local debate. No urban area,
>regardless of how many urban gardens it has, will ever
>have the space to grow enough local grains to meet its
>needs. What to do?
>
> >From what I can tell from the literature,
>permaculturalists have attempted to wrestle with this
>specific problem for awhile now. Some, such as Mark
>Shepherd of Wisconsin, have developed large, complex
>agroforestry systems of fruit and nut trees designed
>to  be an attractive replacement to the rural "corn
>and bean" farms of today. Others, like Dave Jacke,
>have focused more on small, suburban plots.
>
>Guess I'm wondering if anyone has any other take on
>this issue, as the "either/or" way I'm thinking about
>it seems too simplistic. Urban parkways of wheat
>fields? Nutritional substitutions for grains? Take
>down "civilization" to destroy the rural-urban
>dichotomy, as Derrick Jensen would have it?
>
>Best,
>Jeff
>
>
>--- Joel and Sarah Gagnon
><Joel.and.Sarah.Gagnon at lightlink.com> wrote:
>
> > Interesting stuff, Simon, both your move toward
> > eating more locally and the
> > commentary thereon. We grow most of what we eat,
> > with the exception of a
> > few staples that either require more land or more
> > work (or both). Grains we
> > buy in bulk, but as you note, they may not be very
> > local. Greenstar sources
> > its organic rolled oats, for example, from
> > Saskatchewan. Our flour (King
> > Arthur) is milled in Vermont, but who knows where in
> > America the grain came
> > from? You won't find domestic olive oil. We use
> > little enough of it that we
> > don't mind buying it in large containers
> > infrequently. One could substitute
> > canola since the health benefits are at least
> > similar. While we use about
> > 30 pounds of local honey a year, we also use 10-15
> > pounds of sugar because
> > there are places where a more neutral sweetener are
> > wanted (jam).
> >
> > It seems to me, that as energy prices rise, the
> > market cues will change to
> > favor local products. It was the march in the other
> > direction, driven by
> > cheap fuel, that destroyed local production and
> > distribution. It will take
> > time and effort to reestablish local and regional
> > distribution, but if
> > there is one thing that can be said about most
> > Americans, it is that we
> > respond to economic cues.
> >
> > Joel
> >
> > At 08:12 AM 8/23/07 -0400, you wrote:
> > >And for a local Eat-Local Backlash, see:
> > >
> >
> >http://livingindryden.org/2007/08/local_eating_generates_a_bit_o.html
> > >
> > >I addressed the NY Times and a Boston critique of
> > local eating earlier,
> > >at the end of:
> > >
> >
> >http://livingindryden.org/2007/08/starting_eating_local.html
> > >
> > >Food-miles are a great way to explain to people
> > what's wrong with our
> > >food system, but they're a diagnostic tool, not a
> > solution calculator.
> > >Applying a little thought - not hard to do - can
> > push most of these
> > >complaints aside.
> > >
> > >Thanks,
> > >Simon St.Laurent
> > >http://livingindryden.org/eating_locally/
> > >_______________________________________________
> > >fingerlakespermaculture at lists.mutualaid.org
> > listserv
> > >RSS, archives, subscription & listserv information:
> >
> >http://lists.mutualaid.org/mailman/listinfo/fingerlakespermaculture
> > >Support the list host by donating to:
> > http://www.mutualaid.org
> > > _______________________________________________
> > fingerlakespermaculture at lists.mutualaid.org listserv
> > RSS, archives, subscription & listserv information:
> >
>http://lists.mutualaid.org/mailman/listinfo/fingerlakespermaculture
> > Support the list host by donating to:
> > http://www.mutualaid.org
> >
>
>
>
>
>____________________________________________________________________________________
>Boardwalk for $500? In 2007? Ha! Play Monopoly Here and Now (it's updated 
>for today's economy) at Yahoo! Games.
>http://get.games.yahoo.com/proddesc?gamekey=monopolyherenow
>_______________________________________________
>fingerlakespermaculture at lists.mutualaid.org listserv
>RSS, archives, subscription & listserv information:
>http://lists.mutualaid.org/mailman/listinfo/fingerlakespermaculture
>Support the list host by donating to:  http://www.mutualaid.org
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.mutualaid.org/pipermail/fingerlakespermaculture/attachments/20070825/2bea7684/attachment-0001.html 