Every day, we eat.

One common human activity every day worldwide is to find food and eat. This universal daily ritual is sacred. It is essential. It binds us to nature and the soil. It is the root of culture.

The fundamental function of any human society is to produce, distribute and consume food. Feeding people every day after day is the foundation of family, ceremony, culture, and economy. Foods and feasts are integral to every family, community and religious ceremony.

Food production alone is the primary impact humans have on the environment, beginning with clearing forests and tilling land for fields to grow crops. In community economics, more money changes hands every day for food than any other commodity. In America, energy to produce and distribute food consumes 19% of our supply—more than for national defense and military.

Food in the 21st Century

How will we put fertility in our soils and feed our communities when the cost of oil crosses $100 a barrel? Now is the time to prepare an answer.

More deeply, food quality creates blood quality. Since food is the key to health and wellness (and to sickness and disease), we can link health and medical care to the food system—food and drug—dual consequences of our collective farming and feeding rituals.

In recent decades, America's community food systems underwent disintegration and disconnection, driven by fossil fuel-powered machinery, synthetic agrichemical technology, global commodity trading, "get big or get out" policies, USDA research priorities, interstate trucking, and international air freight. Today, local community food networks are nearly non-existent, and food comes through multi-national pipelines.

L.I.F.E.: Locally Integrated Food Economy

As we enter this new era of climate change, peak oil and ecological instability, farming and food systems must adapt to new conditions and adopt new technologies. Currently, steadily growing regional and organic food markets are accelerating change to sustainable farming practices and philosophies.

Beyond Organic

BE LIKE THE GRASSES

Even if we choose to do nothing in the face of the impending global ecological calamity, change is assured on a geological scale. Rapid shifts in human technology and society must be made in a short time—in one or two generations. This sudden evolutionary adaptation is unprecedented in human history, and is driven by undeniable geological scale forces.

We have on our side one great force, the power of Creation, with good care, with kindly use, to heal Herself. —Wendell Berry The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture

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The Earth Renewal and Restoration Alliance — www.championtrees.org — updated 6/28/2006