Task Force for New England LIFE
building our sustainable regional food systems now
Locally Integrated Food Economy

first draft, one-page concept paper

The Task Force for New England LIFE is a grassroots initiative to mobilize concerned citizens in our communities in a regionwide effort to feed ourselves in the 21st century—a century already swept into climate change, peak oil, ideological extremism, and war. At a time when few leaders are thinking ahead of this curve, citizens themselves must take action to prepare for inevitable and immanent changes. Yet, while many citizens recognize our peril and the urgent need for changes, the situation is so immense and complex, few have a vision and responsibility large enough to address our challenges.

For 30 years, NOFA has planted seeds for a regional food system all across New England, and into New York and New Jersey. Those seeds have grown into strong, community-connected networks of growers, producers, distributors, suppliers, customers, and support services that demonstrate the methods and social structures of a new kind of food system. It is now time to enhance and accelerate the evolution of those networks into full scale, integrated, sustainable, regional food systems.

LIFE is acronym for Locally Integrated Food Economy. LIFE is rebuilding our regional food systems from the bottom up as inter-connected, self-sustaining community farming and food system infrastructures. LIFE will assure our region’s capability to feed our communities and families in the next decades of change and challenge.

New England LIFE will pursue five specific initiatives:

1) Farmland Conservation: Farming’s first need is land. To protect and steward this most precious resource is a highest priority, and previous efforts fell short of the mark. Regional Farmland Trust Funds must be established to acquire key farmlands and sustainably manage these resources as public demonstrations of effective ecological stewardship.

2) Sustainable Soil Fertility: Sustainable soil management steadily increases fertility. A prime pressing challenge is to renew our agricultural soils and sustain their fertility and productivity before oil reaches $100 a barrel. Natural materials and methods are available to enhance soil fertility with sea products, stone dusts, composted organic wastes, microbial treatments, new and traditional management practices.

3) Youth Vocational Training: After soil, our most precious resource is growers—people with knowledge, commitment and experience to grow food. To feed New England in this new century will need tremendously more farmers, farm businesses and farm families. Young people must be recruited into farm careers, given effective training in sustainable agriculture, supported to acquire land, equipment and other resources to begin farming, and assured fair access to regional markets.

4) Farm-to-Market Infrastructure: Elaborate infrastructures of organizations, corporations, trucking, warehouses, processing plants, public policies, and more must be designed, built and connected to deliver locally-grown food to regional markets. Small farm cooperatives increase capabilities to wash, process, package, store, and truck farm products to urban markets. Networks of warehouses and trucking must handle and move farm products to market. Barriers to regional marketing of local foods must be reduced.

5) Customer Education to Regional, Seasonal Foods: Consumers, restaurants and food services need guidance to become aware of new food choices, and to change their culinary choices and menu selections to incorporate and emphasize regional, seasonal foods. Education and health care institutions are keys to deliver this new food awareness and dietary style.

New England LIFE is much bigger than NOFA. Many other partners and players in the regional food system must become engaged in this initiative. However, as growers and producers, NOFA has a special duty to call regional food communities together to begin this initiative. And we must begin in earnest, because global ecological changes will be urgent for our next generation.

For more information: David Yarrow: dyarrow@nycap.rr.com

Jim Hansen Testifies in Federal Court on the Climate Ramifications of Business as Usual

Court document (pdf file), U.S. District Court for Vermont, August 14, 2006

http://www.giss.nasa.gov/~dcain/recent_papers_proofs/vermont_14aug20061_...

This remarkable in-depth testimony is clear, informative, and frightening. The visuals (Figures 1-48) are particularly helpful. Hansen was testifying on behalf of the State of Vermont, in defense of a state law, which limits green house gas (GHG) emissions, starting with the 2009 model year. Car dealers and their trade associations challenged the right of states (California and Rhode Island were included in this action) to impose stricter GHG regulations than the federal ones. A CCC supporter sent us this important document, with the following excerpts in his email.

“(57) If humanity follows a Business-as-Usual course with global warming of at least 2-3°C, we should anticipate the likelihood of an eventual sea level rise of 25 meters ± 10 meters. It is not possible to say just how long it would take for sea level to change, as ice sheet disintegration begins slowly until feedbacks are strong enough to evoke a highly non-linear cataclysmic response. Global warming of 2-3°C would cause larger polar warmings, leaving both Greenland and West Antarctica dripping in summer melt-water. It is my opinion that 2-3°C global warming would likely cause a sea level rise of at least ~6 m within a century. Although ice sheet inertia may prohibit large change for a few decades, it is plausible that rapid change would begin this century under the Business-as- Usual climate forcing scenario. The Earth’s history reveals numerous cases in which sea level increased several meters per century. Although the paleoclimate cases may have involved disintegration of ice sheets at slightly lower latitudes, the driving forces were far weaker than the presumed anthropogenic forcings later this century. With global warming of 2-3°C, the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets would be at least as vulnerable as the paleoclimate ice sheets.

“(58) The expected long-term sea level change due to Business-as-Usual global warming, 25 ± 10 m, may require a few hundred years or more, but it is difficult to assess the response time because of the absence of such a rapid large sustained forcing in the Earth’s history. The blue regions in Figure 26 would be under water with a 25 m rise of sea level. In New York, for example, almost all of Manhattan would be under water. The White House is at an altitude of ~17 m, so it would be under about 8 m of water. (59) Figure 27 shows areas that would be under water for given sea level changes in several regions of the globe. The East Coast of the United States, including many major cities, is particularly vulnerable, and most of Florida would be under water with a 25 meter sea level rise. Most of Bangladesh and large areas in China and India also would be under water. (60) Figure 28 shows the population density for the same regions. As summarized in the table of Figure 29, the population displaced by a 25 meter sea level rise, for the population distribution in 2000, would be about 40 million people on the East Coast of the United States and 6 million on the West Coast. More than 200 million people in China occupy the area that would be under water with a sea level rise of 25 m. In India it would be about 150 million and in Bangladesh more than 100 million. (61) The effects of a rising sea level would not occur gradually, but rather they would be felt mainly at the time of storms. Thus, for practical purposes, sea level rise being spread over one or two centuries would be difficult to deal with. It would imply the likelihood of a need to continually rebuild above transient coastlines.”