The Local Food Revolution
How Humanity Will Feed Itself in Uncertain Times
-
- $14.99
-
- $14.99
Publisher Description
Demonstrating that humanity faces an imminent and prolonged global food crisis, Michael Brownlee issues a clarion call and manifesto for a revolutionary movement to localize the global food supply. He lays out a practical guide for those who hope to navigate the challenging process of shaping the local or regional food system, providing a roadmap for embarking on the process of righting the profoundly unsustainable and already-failing global industrialized food system. Written to inform, inspire, and empower anyone—farmers or ranchers, community gardeners, aspiring food entrepreneurs, supply chain venturers, commercial food buyers, restaurateurs, investors, community food activists, non-profit agencies, policy makers, or local government leaders—who hopes to be a catalyst for change, this book provides a blueprint for economic action, with specific suggestions that make the process more conscious and deliberate.
Brownlee, cofounder of the nonprofit Local Food Shift Group, maps out the underlying process of food localization and outlines the route that communities, regions, and foodsheds often follow in their efforts to take control of food production and distribution. By sharing the strategies that have proven successful, he charts a practical path forward while indicating approaches that otherwise might be invisible and unexplored. Stories and interviews illustrate how food localization is happening on the ground and in the field. Essays and thought-pieces explore some of the challenging ethical, moral, economic, and social dilemmas and thresholds that might arise as the local food shift develops. For anyone who wants to understand, in concrete terms, the unique challenges and extraordinary opportunities that present themselves as we address one of the most urgent issues of our time, The Local Food Revolution is an indispensable resource.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Brownlee, cofounder of the nonprofit Local Food Shift Group, emerges as an "evolutionary catalyst": an organizer and visionary seeking to address the global food crisis by empowering local communities to achieve "self-reliance in energy, food, and economy." He shows that the global industrial food system, profoundly enmeshed in transnational corporate profiteering and dependent on a dwindling supply of fossil fuels, "has itself become the greatest threat to humanity's being able to feed itself," undermining communities' ability to provide for their citizens while also polluting the environment and weakening local economies. As the security of the world's food sources is bound inextricably with the precarious fate of the climate, the uncertain state of global energy, and vanishing natural resources including soil and water, Brownlee issues a passionate summons to "relocalize" before it is too late. Rooted in his own story of working to reestablish the "foodshed" of Boulder, Colo., Brownlee's handbook for community-level relocalization offers practical strategies for restoring economic and food sovereignty alongside multidisciplinary research, anecdotes, and seeds of wisdom from thinkers across many fields. Anyone interested in wresting back control over our food supply and confronting the "Long Emergency" of our global food and energy crisis will want to join Brownlee's revolution.
