Transcript Sustainable Local Food Systems: Best Practices

NSLW Conference
Sustainable Local Food Systems:
Best Practices
Andrew Jameton
College of Public Health, UNMC
City Sprouts
December 11, 2008
Outline: Local Food Systems
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Plusses & Minuses
Climate Change as Reason
Food outlets & distribution
Production models
Starting a community garden
Associated businesses
Misc local information and sources
Annie Greenhouse, Educational Ramifications of Gardening
City Sprouts Gardening Volunteer
City Sprouts Flower Boy
Five Domains
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Environmental (natural and man-built)
Socio-cultural (history, conditions, and contexts)
Technological (appropriate, sustainable)
Economics (the production of goods and services
within a sustainable context, and the financial
resources to support the production, trade,
operations, and maintenance)
• Public Policy (government, or public
rules/regulations)
Five (Maybe Six) Domains
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Environmental (natural and man-built)
Socio-cultural (history, conditions, and contexts)
Technological (appropriate, sustainable)
Economics (the production of goods and services
within a sustainable context, and the financial
resources to support the production, trade, operations,
and maintenance)
• Public Policy (government, or public rules/regulations)
• Health, public health, sustainable health,
intergenerational health, environmental health
Locavore Demand
• There is growing consumer demand for local,
healthy, high quality food
• The obesity epidemic has stimulated a wide
range of private, public, and individual efforts
to improve diet
• Links between diet and exercise are being
promoted and explored
Bottom Line
• There are many viable inner-city, local, community and
urban agriculture projects all over the United States.
• There are many reliable and informed sources available on
starting and managing such projects.
• There also exists a wide variety of reports on the
relationships of agriculture to environmental preservation
and climate change.
• Preserving health through diet and exercise is a key theme
of these enterprises, although sustaining community,
justice, and micro-economics are also important themes.
• Although expanding, such projects have so far only
displaced a small percentage of more industrial,
commercial, food intake.
Plusses
• Integrated approach (therefore, efficient)
• Freshness (but, frozen can be fresher than stored local)
• Energy and material conservation (storage, packaging,
freezing)
• Composting harbors atmospheric carbon
• Healthiness of food (selection, psychological satisfaction)
• Improved control, “Food Security”
• Community projects, empowerment, neighborhoods
• Small business
• Link with exercise
• Science, agriculture, cooking, and dietary education
Minuses
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More of the same?
Not necessarily organic
Note necessarily safe: Leaded soil
Grains need wide area
Meat (rabbits, chickens) highly regulated; have
risks
• Theft
• Instability of community projects
Climate Change as Reason
• General agricultural impacts:
– Loss of agricultural land
– Changes in water patterns, especially drying,
desertification
– Loss of economic prosperity in affected areas
• Migration
– Instability, food insecurity
– Agricultural, gardening, and food preparation skills
Food Outlets & Distribution
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Farmers Markets
Restaurants
Whole Foods
Front yards
Churches
At the garden
“Consignment” shops
Trucks
Food banks
WIC Program, Food Stamps
Production Models
• Personal use
• Personal and neighbor use
• Schools, Churches, Neighborhoods
– “Every child should have the experience of eating
something he or she has grown from seed.”
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CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture)
“Truck gardens”
“Victory gardens”
Edge farms (for larger growing areas)
Starting a Community Garden
• A champion
• Acquiring land (buying, renting, donations, land trust),
sunny, flat, clean, accessible
• Water, rainwater, gray water, city water, neighbor water
• Soil amendments, mulching, composting
• Plowing
• Tools, Safe storage area
• Fencing, signage
• Community events, ceremonies, dinners
• Educational program
• Insurance, 501c3, incorporation, business plan, naming,
gardening policies, community outreach
Associated Businesses
• Breeding for local growing / seed saving
• Greenhousing, sprouting, potting
• Composting, mulches
– Organic sources?
• The food truck
• Value added projects
• Urban animal husbandry
Nebraska
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Nebraska Sustainable Agriculture Society
Center for Rural Affairs
NCR SARE
Nebraska Food Cooperative
College of Agriculture (& the Extension)
Shadowbrook Farm (CSA, Lincoln)
Bloom’s Organics
Community Crops (Lincoln)
Useful Reports
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USDA. The effects of climate change on agriculture, land resources, water : Resources, and biodiversity in the United States, Final Report, Synthesis
and Assessment Product 4.3
Managing Editor: Margaret Walsh ; Lead Authors: Peter Backlund, Anthony Janetos, and David Schimel
May, 2008
Available at: http://www.climatescience.gov/Library/sap/sap4-3/final-report/default.htm
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Urban Agriculture Committee of the Community Food Security Coalition: Urban Agriculture and Community Food Security in the United States:
Farming from the City Center To the Urban Fringe
Principal Author: Katherine H. Brown; Editor: Peter Mann; Contributors: Martin Bailkey, Alison Meares-Cohen, Joe Nasr, Jac Smit, Terri Buchanan
February, 2002
Available at: http://www.foodsecurity.org/urbanag.html
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Leopold Instiitute: New Perspectives on Food Security
November 12-14, 2004 Conference Proceedings, Glynwood Center, NY
Leopold Institute Web Site: http://www.leopold.iastate.edu/
Available at: www.leopold.iastate.edu/pubs/other/files/food_security.pdf
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FAO, Interdepartmental Working Group on Climate Change and the Stockholm Environment Institute: Climate Change and Food Security A
Framework Document
October 2007
Available at:
www.fao.org/clim/docs/CDROM/docs/Food%20Security/key%20mes...20revised%20-%20Zurek.pdf
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Good Search Terms:
+"best practices" +"food security" +sustainability +environment +health +Nebraska
My Contact Information
• Andrew Jameton
– UNMC College of Public Health
– 402-559-4680
– [email protected]
• City Sprouts
– www.omahasprouts.org
– City Sprouts Director Kate Card, 402-502-5902,
[email protected]
– City Sprouts, PO Box 31593, Omaha, NE 68131-0593