Last week, the meeting of the University of Wisconsin's board meeting for the Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems (CIAS) was all about sustainability. How to preserve the land, preserve farm income and put consumers in touch with a greater variety of fresh, local food. And I was glad to meet people who are already thinking about this hard, because changing our food system is going to be a first order priority when it comes time to prepare for the coming energy crunch, as James Howard Kunstler explains here:
2. We have to produce food differently. The Monsanto/Cargill model of industrial agribusiness is heading toward its Waterloo. As oil and gas deplete, we will be left with sterile soils and farming organized at an unworkable scale. Many lives will depend on our ability to fix this. Farming will soon return much closer to the center of American economic life. It will necessarily have to be done more locally, at a smaller-and-finer scale, and will require more human labor. ... Not to mention the fact that the knowledge and skill for doing these things has to be painstakingly retrieved from the dumpster of history. Get busy. ...
