Food for Maui, food for the world--Grassroots efforts are emerging.

TERRACED RICE FIELDS, BALI, INDONESIA

While this blog has focused primarily on local efforts on Maui and in Hawaii to connect people with the resources they need to help support more local food production, it is also true that such efforts are "cropping" up all over the world. The new issue of National Geographic, titled, Where Food Begins, is fascinating reading on the relationship of soil health to worldwide food production. We have been told recently that our diminishing global fresh water resources are in a state of crisis. The gravity of the soil depletion situation may be less well understood. 

Two great articles are well worth your time, Our Good Earth, and also Dirt Poor. One quote jumped out at me, "Even as humankind is ratchetting up it demand on soil, we are destroying it faster than ever before." One cannot help but think of the local impacts that a century of plantation activity has meant to Hawaii soils-- mono-cropped, poisoned with pesticides, herbicides, nematicides, and mercilessly plowed hundreds of acres at a time, and left to the mercy of the trade winds and the rains carrying it away-- tons and tons of soil deposited into our near shore ocean waters. More than ever, it's time we get to work growing food, not an unhealthy commodity crop that is buoyed by federal price supports, and shipped long distances just to refine it into the end product, processed sugar.

Communities from Maui to Mali are pursuing ways to feed an ever-growing population, while faced with the realities that global commodity transportation may prohibit the easy flow of foods from continent to continent, state to state, and even island to island. Much more of what we eat in the coming months and years will be grown closer to home.

Not everyone has the time or inclination to garden or farm. One exemplary model for local sustainability is that of "Community Supported Agriculture" (CSA). Skilled small farmers raise a number of fruits, vegetables, and other foods, then sell a weekly assortment to a subscriber group of customers, who come to pick up their produce. Farmers get to spend more time on the farm, rather than transporting goods to markets. Food is virtually fresh picked, and the consumer has a personal relationship with their neighbor who is growing their food.

For those not entirely familiar with the CSA concept, here's a Rob Report article I wrote last year on Patrick Moser's Biodynamic Farm. Like many other organic, CSA, and biodynamic growers, Patrick offers work exchange opportunities on his small farm. He is plugged into a worldwide program called Willing Workers On Organic Farms, such workers often referred to as "WWOOFers". 

Peter Durkson, whose Maui Growing Together blog we mentioned a few days ago, just posted the link for all such Maui farmers offering work trade situations to WWOOFers, a list of 28 different locations island-wide. The willing workers get to learn valuable skills, and as a former "migrant" worker on my brother's certified organic farm in SW Wisconsin, I will attest that extra hands can make a huge difference in a small family farm operation.

Finally, to bring the local concepts back to global possibilities, here is a link to a very inspiring six-minute video of a 300 year old food forest in Viet Nam. The narrator's end quote is that, "This is a vision of the past....and the future."

A hui hou, and happy growing!

ROB