FARMS & FOOD

Climate change confronts us with a big challenge: how do we make our cities more resilient, so that we are not cut off from essential services when extreme weather strikes? Right now most of the goods and services we receive travel great distances. We rely on unflooded freeways, highways clear of landslides, working airports and railroads to ship food, fuel and consumer goods. Recent heavy weather in the Pacific Northwest washed out highways and even shut down an Interstate freeway. Many rural communities—and even urban areas—were cut off from each other, and the world, for days.

Creating resilient cities means being able to rely on nearby resources. Where a city gets its food and how the food is grown, determines not only its ability to be self-sufficient but also the size of its carbon footprint. Conventional agribusiness is the source of significant greenhouse gas emissions, from the gasoline used to run farm equipment to the huge amounts of methane emanating from the manure lagoons of feedlots. But the surrounding countryside around Portland is still dotted with many small farms. Not only does it take less fuel to get food from these farms to consumers’ plates, these farmers, unlike large agribusiness, don’t practice carbon-intensive methods to grow food and raise animals. Many of these farmers are relatively young but there are still some old timers practicing traditional sustainable methods of raising crops and livestock. And they are sharing their experience and wisdom with their young counterparts.

Big Table Farm, in Gaston, Oregon, is about an hours' drive from Portland. Co-owners Clare Carver and Brian Marcy raise pasture poultry, pigs, cows and egg-laying chickens. They also are growing a large garden. They are working towards a managed, intensive grazing system that builds soil, sequesters carbon and fosters a polyculture of diversity.

Clare Carver in front of her garden, that is fertilized by her chickens.

Joel Salatin owns Polyface Farm in the Shenandoah Valley of Southwestern Virginia. On this multigeneraional family farm, he pioneers many sustainable farming innovations, raising livestock in ways that approximate nature's templates for how animals behave in the wild. One of his basic tenets is that plants and animals should be provided a habitat that allows them to express their physiological distinctiveness. He also believes that food should be produced and eaten locally. Polyface Farms does not sell food outside its bioregion. He believes that eating locally renews our connection to the cycles of nature and the joy of eating seasonally. It also reacquaints us with our home kitchens.

A great place to grow up.

Friends of Family Farmers is an Oregon-based non-profit that advocates for small family farmers in Oregon. They lobby the state legislature for more small farm-friendly agricultural regulations while at the same time educating the public about the hazards of large agribusiness operations. While there are many small family farms throughout Oregon, the state is also home to the largest confined animal feed operation (CAFO) west of the Mississippi: Three Mile Canyon Dairy, about 120 miles east of Portland.

Helping local farmers connect with local eaters can be a challenge in our global economy. One of the best sources of local food are farmers markets, which are springing up all over the country. There are over 100 markets around Oregon, including 40 markets in the Portland area. Farmers' markets give consumers and farmers an opportunity to meet face to face. Consumers learn how their food is grown (as well as who is growing it). For farmers it's an opportunity to get direct feedback from their customers.