If the county is able to more holistically account for the value streams generated by local farms, it will become easier to justify commitment of staff and funds to support the goals of successfully transitioning, protecting, and sustaining the progress made on local farms for future generations . Tax revenues from vacation rentals, for example, could be channeled in some percentage towards supporting farmland transitions and expanded farmworker housing, as these agricultural activities directly feed back into the tourism Industry.Adopting policies that explicitly recognize and address the need for health care, retirement funds, and basic social services among farmworker and farmer communities would further strengthen the ability of farming to present a viable, sustainable, equitable career opportunity for young and aspiring farmers. When farmers are reliant on personal wealth or off farm jobs for benefits and financial security, the attraction and viability of farming as a career pathway is compromised. Referring back to the language of the 2011 “Growing our Future” report, state and local policies are needed to “foster farm businesses and support a thriving local farm economy.” This need not be a pure market, profit-driven economy, rolling tables grow but rather an economy that exchanges goods and services of both monetary and non-monetary value .
Finally, policy initiatives at the county and state level could help create fulfilling, living wage jobs in agroecology through facilitating the relocalization of food production, processing, distribution, marketing, and education. Jobs such as 1) developing and installing appropriate technology for small farms, including on-farm energy generation, 2) preparing and distributing value-added products , 3) processing small scale grain and dry bean harvests, 4) operating an inter-island food hub, 5) processing woody debris to produce both biochar and energy, 5) tracking climate impacts and threats to agriculture at the county level, and 6) operating a climate-resilient farmer training program would help strengthen local purchasing power and keep wealth circulating within the local economy.Lopez Island, and other islands in the Pacific Northwest region, are facing a pivotal moment in their pathways towards building sustainable, equitable, and resilient local food systems. Challenges are threatening progress to date, from climate change to soaring land values, to the aging farmer population without a clear pool of beginning farmers to take their place. In order to maintain progress, more investment and action is required in the policy, education, and economic arenas to level the playing field for small-scale farmers from a variety of race/class backgrounds and pave the way for socially and environmentally regenerative farmland transfers.
As shown in Figure 10, many elements must be in place for building desired food systems. Lopez currently hosts a strong contingent of knowledgeable farmers, local food organizations, local university partners, and consumers prioritizing local food, while state and county agriculture policies and next generation farmer education are works in progress. A “model” of county agriculture governance and work towards sustainable farming on Lopez must ultimately challenge the economic roots of the dominant food system, the private property paradigm, and business-as-usual in terms of food pricing and affordability– prices for food are too high to allow equitable access among lower income brackets, yet can’t easily be reduced due to concerns of adequately compensating farmers. Therefore, addressing root causes of poverty and raising purchasing power for food among low income households is essential to restoring justice and equity in the food system. Labor considerations, living wage job availability, and affordable farmland are all challenges linked to the current political economic context. With farmers earning net negative incomes annually and struggling to access health care, these realities demand policy and political attention, reversing the trends of the “neoliberal state” placing the burden of action on individuals and directly impacted communities with limited ability to successfully confront existing corporate influence over systems of political power and food policy. Direct confrontation with existing power structures requires alliances between farmers, consumers, and policymakers.
It is time to move beyond an ethic of “rugged individualism” and towards a regenerative, agroecological, and cooperative resource management ethic. In a time of food and climate crisis, important moral, ethical, and environmental questions are raised about the current hegemony of private property ownership and a “do-it yourself” mentality; there is a need for collective action and management of the planet’s natural resources as a “commons,” along the lines of Ostrom’s all to action . Conservation organizations, public land trusts, and others in the public and non-profit sphere are called upon to step into the solution space, recognizing synergistic opportunities between ecological conservation goals and sustainable food system needs. By harnessing existing resources and institutions operating on behalf of the “public good,” food system goals can be met holistically, rather than focusing exclusively on one system element at a time . Society’s ability to address food system change can be enhanced by moving outside of the private and for profit sectors . Furthermore, important opportunities exist in the realm of collaboration, cooperation, and collective ownership of resources in the Lopez Island food system: the Food Hub project, the expansion and coordination of Lopez Island Family Resources Center activities to provide food to low-income families, and opportunities for cooperative farm management are not yet fully realized, but are among the most promising options for continued progress towards an equitable and resilient local food system. There are also promising signs of both organic and conventional farmers recognizing opportunities to come together and share information along the lines of regenerative agriculture practices, which can advance shared goals of soil preservation and enhanced crop productivity. Each of these collaboration opportunities requires some opposition to the speculative real estate market and second home industry, which if left unchecked might otherwise remove prime farmland from productive use10. Summarizing the work that needs to be done to secure transitions to local food systems, Judy Feldman of the Organic Farm School states, “ultimately, we need new farmers, and the question is, how to inspire more bright young people to go into growing food for us? Farming has always been complex and is growing more so due to climate change. There are complex issues in the mix: politics, regulations, food safety concerns, farmland loss. We need the best and the brightest” . Echoing this climate farming link, lecturer and farmer Eli Wheat of U.W. states, “small-scale farms can become an active part of solving the climate change problem—capturing carbon that would otherwise be stored in the atmosphere in the form of organic matter and storing it in the reserves of soil” . Here, education becomes important: farmer training programs targeting both young adults, and older individuals transitioning into farming are in need of development to encourage the “best and the brightest” to take on the challenges of building a climate resilient and equitable food system. From a business perspective, starting a farm is similar to starting any small business: high failure rates, steep learning curves, and a leap of faith initially, that can ultimately pay off for those who are creative and determined enough. However, the cards are stacked against small operations in today’s national political economy. There is a need to redesign policy and infrastructure to enable small farms to exist and increase their odds of success: “all of the infrastructure that used to support a diverse systems of food production has slowly disappeared in favor of larger structures presumed to be more efficient” . Small scale infrastructure such as grain processing machines, mills, dry bean processing facilities, and other technologies used to be present in the San Juan Islands and must return as food systems relocalize and optimize for multiple values rather than yields and profits alone. Small farms offer many forms of value that large farms are often not able to, 4×8 botanicare tray and if these values are to be held in communities, policies must shift to allow and encourage more small farms to exist.
With developments like the mobile processing unit, commercial kitchen space, and renewed interest in revitalizing a local grain economy, key infrastructure pieces are falling into place, often thanks to large private donations. In order to be transferable, the Lopez model requires further democratization and incentive alignment to allow for such infrastructure improvements in lower resourced regions. Even the relatively well-resourced and well-educated agents of change on Lopez eventually come up against entrenched political economic systems that must be revised and rehabilitated to encourage local and equitable food systems to thrive as a viable alternative to the industrial, globalized food system. Farmers and researchers working together towards goals of local production and climate mitigation often confront challenges that they alone cannot resolve. Increased dialogue and education are needed to bridge between farmer-research identified needs and the policy designs and economic restructuring needed to meet these needs. Education and training for policymakers in critical food systems challenges will be necessary to enact food system changes and “vision statements” adopted by communities through well designed policies that prevent loopholes, minimize negative unintended consequences, and embrace adaptive and evolving strategies as they emerge.: I had originally intended this dissertation chapter on Lopez to illustrate the San Juan Islands as a “model” of county sustainable agriculture governance and impressive progress towards sustainable food production at a community scale, rather than at the individual farm scale as is common elsewhere in regenerative small scale farming. It started off in my mind as a “case of” sustainable, small scale farming with high levels of community support. Farms on Lopez are producing an impressive amount of food through regenerative, climate friendly, nonGMO farming practices. However, progress towards a sustainable and equitable food system falls short of challenging the economic and political power structures underlying the dominant food system. For example, even as lots of farms are practicing regenerative agriculture and marketing directly to consumers through farmer’s markets and CSA models, the farmers themselves are challenged to lead sustainable lifestyles that include making a living wage, accessing health care, finding work life balance and time for personal growth, and passing on their operations to younger farmers. The current model is not yet enabling the enthusiastic young people who serve as sustainable agriculture interns to return and take on careers as farmers. Without challenging systems like individual private property ownership, investor-controlled and profit-driven business models, national food subsidies, basic income, health care, and corporate control over branches of government, promising practices like those coming out of the Lopez farming community will not reach the ultimate goal scaling local food systems nationally that are sustainable and regenerative for farmland and the farmers who work those lands. Alternative examples of cooperatively owned farmland, where several farmers have a stake in the land and operations and can sell out to other like-minded individuals in a collective approach to diversified farming, are needed to provide a more regenerative culture for the farmer, not just the farmland. As Judy Feldman from the Organic Farm School on Whidbey Island puts it, we can’t have regenerative agriculture without regenerative culture. The political-economic and land tenure challenges are the “high-hanging fruit” so to speak that must be dealt with in any effort towards transformative food systems change. This chapter became a “case of” working towards holistic food systems transformation at the local, county scale, embedded within agroecological and critical food systems frames. The intertwined social, political, economic, and ecological nature of food systems transformation is recognized and expressed by the paradigm of agroecology, which is the focus of the following chapter, applied to an urban setting.Urban agriculture has sparked growing civic interest, urban farming projects, and scholarship from academic institutions across the U.S. in the past decade . These span city greening and beautification to improved nutrition, public and mental health, community food security, climate change mitigation, community building, economic development and empowerment . Those highlighting the beneficial environmental and ecological impacts of urban agriculture cite reduced urban heat island effect, improved local air quality, improved storm water quality , increased pollinator populations, and climate mitigation services, such as carbon sequestration . More recently, social-ecological systems scholars point out social-ecological memory developed through collective activities such as allotment gardening that can contribute to a city’s resilience and are vital for governance of urban food systems . Urban agriculture is often celebrated as part of the burgeoning food justice movement aimed at improving food access among low-income communities in urban areas. However, its impact on reducing food insecurity in U.S. cities remains poorly understood . In fact, there are few robust analyses that measure the actual social, economic and health impacts of urban agriculture, or the policy and governance environments and civic engagement frameworks in which UA models are effective in reducing food insecurity.