Relocalizing Eden
March 10th, 2008 by Jim JustDan Armstrong has posted a great piece at his Mud City Press site (also at Energy Bulletin) titled “Relocalizing Eden.”
He waxes eloquent about the Willamette Valley:
“The bioregion defined by the Willamette River watershed is one of the most bountiful in the United States. The Willamette Valley is a hundred mile long, two-million acre stretch of prime cropland bordered by a dense, eco-rich coniferous forest. The climate is mild; wet in the winter, dry in the summer. It is excellent for raising livestock and farming, with soil particularly suited for many types of grasses and legumes. There is tremendous flexibility in what can be grown and the way that the various field crops can be rotated for the health of the land.
“Home to a variety of fish and other wildlife, the Willamette River basin is essentially a garden valley, Oregon’s own little piece of Eden.”
He points out that the region has the capacity to feed itself – and fifty years ago, it largely did. But this agricultural picture has been turned inside out. The centralization and globalization of food distribution means that now, nearly everything we eat comes from some place else – most often far away.
This graph in his article is stunning.
More than half of this prime Oregon farmland is being used to grow grass seed – a non-edible luxury item – instead of food.
Armstrong points out that we have lost more than agricultural production in the Willamette Valley. We’ve also lost the capacity to process or distribute what is grown. This means:
“At a very basic level, we are losing the ability to feed ourselves. Again, this is nonsense if not suicide.“
The solution? Relocalization:
“Thus the solution, and the target of food related relocalization efforts in the valley, is changing how and what farmers grow–specifically transitioning to organic techniques and converting grass seed acreage to wheat or other grains and legumes, rebuilding food industry infrastructure, and creating more markets to link buyers, growers, and distributors.”
Armstrong isn’t a relocalization extremist:
“It should be noted that a fully local food economy is not the goal. That would be impossible. But local food buying whether by individuals, food markets, restaurants, or processors needs to be stimulated beyond today’s five percent range to something more like twenty-five or thirty percent. This level of relocalized economic involvement could engender the kind of balance and stability that is needed to bring a modicum of food security to the populace and also a degree of sustainability to Willamette Valley agriculture.”