Localization

I'm ready for localization to be the word on everyone's lips.

I've tired of the constant analysis of globalization.

Of the analysis that global is 'in'.

I am ready for people to start buying, and participating and focusing on the local, their local, their lo-cal call to action.

Localization will be the wave of the future. From farmers markets and CSAs to Slow Money reinvestments in communities.

When I googled Localization today, Wikipedia told me the word was associated with high tech, with the locality of figments of cyberspace. Hubs of imagined spacial dimensions.

I laughed.

I imagine a world where cyberspace will not be as important as physical locations. Locations of personal interaction, of commerce, of relationship.

I imagine one day, localization be in.

UCD Students Stand Up: Immokalee and Arizona

Students at UCD have have been standing up to racism and slavery of late holding multiple rallies over the last week. Students gathered to demonstrate on campus regarding both the recent passage of legislation in Arizona condoning racial profiling of immigrants, as well as an ongoing labor dispute in Immokolee, Florida, where tomato pickers have joined forces with college campus nationally to urge corporations to pay one cent more per pound for their tomatoes, passing that additional cent directly to the worker.

It was good to see so many UC Davis students out this week, organizing and speaking out in support of social justice.

True Community Supported Agriculture

I'm currently part of a group of researchers here at UCD that's doing a study on CSAs, Community Supported Agriculture programs on farms here in the Central Valley of California. CSAs, for those of you unfamiliar with the concept, are subscription contracts between community members and farmers, basically consumers pay up front for goods (which can be produce, meat, eggs, dairy, processed farm goods) and the farmer, or CSA manager grows or procures that product and gives the consumer a weekly or bi-monthy portion of that product for a season. Now, as I'm learning doing this research, there are a lot of ways to run a CSA. Large and small, communities and farms are redefining the meaning of the traditional CSA.

As I've been driving to and fro in the Valley, hearing the trials and tribulations of farmer after farmer, I've been thinking-- what would true community support for agriculture look like. I'm not talking about the CSA- which, don't get me wrong, is revolutionary, definitely an exceptional way to turn traditional capitalist relationships of consumers and producers on it's head -- I'm talking beyond the CSA. What can whole communities- not just well meaning individuals in a community-- but entire municipalities, states, and dare I say- the feds, do to support agriculture.

Much of this thinking has been prompted by my Masters program in Community Development, witnessing the tangible ways that communities choose to support education, housing, healthcare-- why not agriculture? Again and again I speak to farmers who are struggling, who, despite their creativity, wit, and sheer physical force feel like they are fighting a loosing battle. In the midst of the most expansive time in the public history of alternative food systems, they feel unsupported.

I don't pretend to have the answer yet. My thinking lately has been towards securing land tenure for farms, renewing the Williamson Act (at least in California), increasing market access for beginning farmers, and increasing the willingness of the public to pay the true cost of food-- but I know there must be other more pragmatic ways that communities can truly support agriculture.