Linda Stanley

Interesting Definitions of local sustainability

http://www.localsustainability.net/educate/definitions/

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linda@johnstanley.com.au thought you would be interested in this article from TIME.com:


Foodies Can Eclipse and Save the Green Movement
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2049255,00.html?artId=2049255?contType=article?chn=sciHealth

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Making farmers cool again - Deep agriculture - lecture by Michael Pollan - interesting stuff

Making farmers cool again
Farming has become an occupation and cultural force of the past. Michael Pollan’s talk promoted the premise - and hope - that farming can become an occupation and force of the future. In the past century American farmers were given the assignment to produce lots of calories cheaply, and they did. They became the most productive humans on earth. A single farmer in Iowa could feed 150 of his neighbors. That is a true modern miracle. “American farmers are incredibly inventive, innovative, and accomplished. They can do whatever we ask them, we just need to give them a new set of requirements.”

The benefit of a reformed food system, besides better food, better environment and less climate shock, is better health and the savings of trillions of dollars. Four out of five chronic diseases are diet-related. Three quarters of medical spending goes to preventable chronic disease. Pollan says we cannot have a healthy population, without a healthy diet. The news is that we are learning that we cannot have a healthy diet without a healthy agriculture. And right now, farming is sick.

Pollan outlined what this recovery for American farmers and food producers should be. First a post-modern food system should be “resolarized.” Right now it takes 10 calories of fossil fuel to manufacture 1 calorie of food on average, and 55 calories to produce 1 calorie of beef. If any industry should be solar-based it should be food, which was the “original solar economy.” Instead, right now “we are eating oil.” Cheap oil and farm policies subsidize the 5 main crops (and only those crops), upon which the rest of our cheap food system is based. These main crops are planted as monocultures, which require cheap pesticides and fertilizers and produce wastes that are all problems in themselves. Pollan’s solution is not to dismantle the food system but to redirect it. Because of the long-term planning and learning that stewarding land requires, he believes subsidies of some type are essential for agriculture. Agriculture, he stated, should not be a freemarket. By picking the proper incentives we can re-localize, re-solarize, and revive the healing power of balanced farms and wholesome gardens.

Governments should reward farmers for diversifying away from monocultures. Pollan gave a few examples of where this has worked at scale. They should be rewarded for growing cover crops with the benefit of reducing erosion. Rewarded for returning animals to the mix. Rewarded for the amount of carbon they sequester in soil. Rewarded for halting urban sprawl by keeping farmland intact. In fact farmland should find a similar status as wetlands; developers and communities get “credit” for retaining farmland. Farmers should be rewarded for localize food provision. If only 2% of government contracts for food (as in school lunch programs, or government-run hospitals) required that the food be produced within 100 miles, it would transform the food system.

How might such change happen? Only if consumers and citizens demand it. One thing that might help is if web cams and images of the actual feed lot, or slaughterhouse, were required to be available for food that flowed through it. Imagine getting a carton of milk that showed not a metaphorical alpine meadow, but the real cages of the real dirty cows that produced that liter of milk. Or put a second calories count on labels, this one showing how many calories of energy it takes to deliver the item to you.

The major problem with his vision? He says there are simply not enough farmers. Only 1 million now feed the US and other people of the world. Many more people, many more college educated people, many more innovators and entrepreneurs, and many more backyard gardeners need to produce this new food system. Start in educational programs, such as one promoted by Alice Waters, where kids learn to grow food, cook, and eat smarter. “Make lunch an academic subject.” Follow the lead of Michelle Obama and make turning lawns into organic gardens fashionable, respectable.

Make farms and farmers cool again.-- by Kevin Kelly
 

http://www.longnow.org/seminars/02009/may/05/deep-agriculture/

The above is from Deep agriculture - lecture by Michael Pollan
 

From the Heart -1

I am passionate, passionate about saving our environment for
future generations, passionate about ensuring the survival of local food
sources and passionate about ensuring the food my family eats is absolutely
healthy.

I do not buy food from supermarkets because I, like many
consumers today, don’t trust them. 
Supermarkets often store food in cold storage for up to nine months and
then bring it out and tell their shoppers it is fresh. It isn’t fresh. It has no flavour and the vitamin content of
the food has been massively reduced during its months of storage. The fruit and vegetables are old, stale and
tasteless. In the past i have purchased
fruit from supermarkets that 24 hours after purchase had turned brown with
rot. I won’t buy supermarket produce any
more. As far as I am concerned
supermarkets tell me lies when they try to convince me their produce is fresh. They don’t care about my family’s health,
they only care about making a profit. I
care about my familys health.

The challenge is where can I buy fresh, tasty fruit and
vegetables that are packed with the nutrition that nature intended?

Our business has been helping farmers, farm shops and
farmers markets around the world with marketing and management advice on how to
get more of their produce to more of their customers. We have been advising on the best layout of
the store, or market, the most effective marketing techniques to create
awareness of their produce or business and how they can build marketing
strategies to delight their customers.

So the obvious solution to my dilemma on where to buy fresh
local food was to create a farmers market in our local community. That market was created out of a passion for saving
local farmers and getting fresh local food direct to our local community. 
The market has been running now for over 12 months, so we have
personally experienced the issues facing farmers, stallholders, market managers
and shoppers.

Through our business, John Stanley Associates, my husband
John has been speaking at farmers markets conferences for many years. Over the past few months we have attended
farmers’ market conferences in Canada, USA and the United Kingdom. Two weeks ago we went on a study tour of
British farm shops prior to a farm conference.

I was devastated! 
Many of the farm shops who implied to their customers that they were
selling produce from the farm, or at least local food, were selling biscuits
from Italy, dates from Tunisia, cheese from Colombo, oranges (which obviously don’t
grow in Britain) and other non-local, even imported products.

This week we are working with North American farm shops and
farm markets. I found the same
thing. Farm shops saying to their
customers they sell local produce and there was imported produce, even Chinese
produce on the shelves.

At the American conference trade show, there was companies
there selling jars of pickles, chutneys and preserves that they would put the
farm shop label on. I was
disgusted. They were selling the idea of
deceiving consumers into thinking that the farm shops had made the pickles and
chutneys and preserves themselves.

As a consumer in a farm shop I would take one look at the
range and turn around and walk out. How
can they call themselves farm shops? 
They were lying to their shoppers. 
In my opinion they have lost their way and are no more trustworthy now
than the supermarkets that I have been personally boycotting for most of my
life.

Since we resigned from the management committee of our own
local farmers’ market, there has been having debates about changing the rules so
that they can bring in resellers, not farmers, into the market.

If farm shops and farm markets are going to sell food
products that are not honestly from local farmers or producers, who can
shoppers trust in the future? 
Supermarkets deceive consumers about their produce being fresh, now farm
shops and farmers markets are deceiving consumers about their produce
being local. 

Why should consumers shop where the retailer endeavours to
deceive them? Where can shoppers buy
truly local, freshly picked produce from retailers who can actually be trusted
to be supplying what they say they do?

It is no wonder that shoppers are turning more and more to online
shopping. If shoppers are not able to find retailers
that they can trust, frequently get less than wonderful customer service and
are not provided with an amazing shopping experience, then why bother going to
a shop at all? If consumers can search out products online
that will suit their needs and have them delivered to their doorstep then it
seems to me that is the way of the future.
Linda Stanley (Post Graduate Diploma in Business-
Electronic Commerce) set up the Friends of Piesse Brook Inc. conservation group
to remove invasive species from the Kalamunda National Park, successfully
campaigned to have Kalamunda shire become a GM Free zone, set up and directed
for the first 12 months the Kalamunda Farmers Market. Linda works with her husband John in their
business John Stanley Associates (www.johnstanley.com.au)
assisting small businesses to increase their markets and grow their profits.
You can read her blog at www.lindastanley.com.au