Only Reconnect - Agri-culture: Reconnecting People, Land and Nature - page 117

When food is a commodity, there is little to stop over-consumption.
There are no checks and balances to have us worry about the hidden costs
of certain types of food production. Our current food system, despite
considerable performance improvements in recent decades (it is faster,
fitter and more streamlined), is still flawed. It simply is not working to
the advantage of its 6 billion commoners. There is hunger at the tables
of 800 million people. At the same time, there is widespread obesity. This
cannot be right; nevertheless, by our action, it already is accepted. How-
ever, collective action by producers of food, by consumers, and by novel
mixtures of both groups can make a difference. It is possible to create new
forms of relationship, trust and understanding, leading to new cognitive
constructions of food and its cultures of production.
Two concepts are useful in this rethinking - the ideas of bioregions
and foodsheds . Bioregionalism implies the integration of human activities
within ecological limits, and bioregions are seen as diverse areas with many
ecological functions. Bioregionalism can thus be seen as a self-organizing
or autopoie - tic concept that connects social and natural systems at a place
people can call home. Bioregions are real places where people want to live.
They take years to build, emerging from the interactions of people who
are not indifferent to the outcomes. People leave their mark and, in turn,
are shaped by local circumstances and cultures. They shape their worlds.
The term foodshed has been coined to give an area-based grounding to
the production, movement and consumption of food. Foodsheds have
been described by Jack Kloppenberg as 'self-reliant, locally or regionally based
food systems comprised of diversified farms using sustainable practices to supply fresher,
more nutritious food stuffs to small-scale processors and consumers to whom producers
are linked by the bonds of community as well as economy' . 38
The basic aim of regionalized foodsheds is twofold. They shorten the
chain from production to consumption, thereby eliminating some of the
negative transport externalities and helping to build trust between
producers and consumers, and ensuring that more of the food pound gets
back to farmers. They also tend to favour the production of positive
environmental, social and health externalities over negative ones through
the use of sustainable production systems, leading to the accumulation
of renewable assets throughout the food system.
Community-Supported Agriculture
Standing with Tom Spaulding and gazing to one horizon of this Illinois
landscape, all we see is wall-to-wall yellow maize. It is a monocultural
desert, except for this tiny oasis of diversity. We are at Angelic Organics,