Changing the Food System

Trail #2 - How the Food System Must Change

Developing the logic of integrating the health imperatives of food, land and people into a practical framework – one aligned to a deeper understanding of the biological systems needed for maintaining a resilient and bio-diverse environment, one which is transferable forward into the future indefinitely.

  1. Resolving our Flawed Cities
  2. Regional Sustainable Feasible
  3. Re-framing for Abundance
  4. Local-scale Food Self-reliance

Previous - Trail #1

Topics from 'Why the Food System Must be Changed'.

  1. Non-sustainable Farming
  2. Soil Damage: CO2 emissions
  3. Can Never Feed Whole World
  4. GMOs - By Hook or By Crook
  5. Degradation of Biodiversity
<strong>Ecological Footprint</strong> ( in GIGA-hectares per city-dweller)… compare food to other categories

2. Regional, Sustainable, Feasible

Issues...

  • WTO rule: nations using Free-Trade Agreements (FTAs) must import at least 5% of their food.

There is a tendency in western environmentalism to equate zero-impact at the personal level to sustainable living. (cf. No Impact Man). But sustainable describes a feedback process: less about living without in personal terms, and more about living with, in regional terms.

To clarify this urbanist nonsense we visit three quite different parts of the world where people still live more or less sustainably in relation to their environment.

  • These are all regional scale systems,
  • Sustainability is acknowledged as key priority,
  • Visionary governance with a cultural underpinning.

Gamo Highlands, Southwestern Ethiopia

The story of the Gamo Highlands, an isolated area of the African Rift Valley which has remained remarkably intact both biologically and culturally.
One of the most densely-populated rural regions of Africa, its people have been farming there sustainably for 10,000 years.
The film compares the western world’s Christian-based ‘exceptionalism’ to the worldview of the Gamo people’s way of life.
Related: Schooling the World


A Thousand Suns, 2009. (27 mins.)
Watch full screen - Post Link

The Country of Bhutan

Bhutan’s Prime Minister Tshering Tobgay shares his country’s mission to put happiness before economic growth and set a world standard for environmental preservation.


This Country isn’t Just Carbon Neutral, 2016 (9 mins.)

The Agricultrual Revolution in Cuba

This short video, made before the recent thaw in US-Cuba relations (2014), peeks into Havana’s urban farms and gardens to see what lessons they have to offer other cities working to move toward sustainable food security.


Havana Homegrown, 2010 (6 mins.)