our city and the larger region that supports it
has much to do with how we respond to this
and a couple other important questions: 1)
“What is the impact of the majority of our
food coming from way over there?” 2) “Is
this strategy getting people fed?” 3) “What is
in store for us if we can learn to substitute
food that is owned, grown and processed
closer to home for what we now import?”
For my perspective on the State of the City I
bring these questions. As a citizen, these are
important economic questions; questions of
democracy. As a religious leader, they are
sacred questions: questions of distributive
justice, of how we steward the abundant gifts
of place we are given, of love in how we nur-
ture the essential relationships of neighborli-
ness even in the way we buy and sell, ques-
tions of common good.
How are we answering these in today’s
world, and how in Eugene and its surrounds?
It’s an exciting time in the world of localizing
food systems. In virtually every place, we are
reinventing ways to meet more of our local
food needs from local sources. In 1975 there
were 300 farmer’s markets in this country.
Now there are more than 3,000. We don’t
have to look beyond our county to see how
these are enriching our communities. From
Detroit to Walterville there are community
gardens springing up in thousands of vacant
lots and school garden projects teaching stu-
dents about growth, health and entrepreneur-
ship. In 1985, there was one farm in the U.S.
practicing Community Supported Agriculture
(CSA). Now there are over 1,000.
And I’m proud to see Eugene faith com-
munities stepping up. We are beginning our
7th season of the project called “That’s My
Farmer.” We are 17 faith communities sup-
porting 14 local farms who practice CSA.
In CSA, families become members of
farms, paying $300 to $500 at the begin-
ning of the season to get a box of fresh pro-
duce each week June-October. Money up
front means community sharing economic
risk with farmers who don’t have to go into
debt to farm. In April, more than 300 peo-
ple gathered to meet the farmers and inau-
gurate our season. From ticket sales we
raised $2,500 to subsidize CSA deliveries
to low-income families. We have nearly
300 families among the faith communities
joining farms. This will keep as much as
$160,000 circulating in the local economy
that otherwise would quickly leave town
through the globally sourced, absentee-
owned food economy.
$160,000 of course is a microdrop in the
global food income bucket. So before I get
ahead of myself let me acknowledge that we
are living in a treacherous time for food and
economics, and it affects us here like any
other community in this day of globalization.
In a sentence, we are “raising all the world’s
food in a declining number of places, plant-
ed with a dwindling number of crop vari-
eties, controlled by a shrinking number of
companies.” Economists say when four or
fewer firms control 40 percent or more of
any market, the real competition upon which
our democracy depends ceases to exist in the
marketplace. Well, the same few transnation-
al corporations control upwards of 60 to 80
percent of most food markets. Cargill and
Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) now con-
trol 80 percent of the global grain trade,
making them proud owners of 60 percent of
the world’s food because 75 percent of the
food consumed on this planet is grain.
Phillip Morris is the biggest food company
in the U.S., getting a dime of every dollar we
spend for food. Wal-Mart is the biggest food
retailer on the planet.
The tool of economic domination is ver-
tical integration. Single corporations or clus-
ters own our food systems from “gene to
table.” For instance, in covenant with each
other, Cargill and Monsanto can own every
step of production from the patents on the
genes of the plants and animals we eat to the
prime shelf space on the supermarket shelf
and all the input, banking, transportation,
processing and marketing transactions
between. In order to reclaim an agriculture
that supports community, we must bring
ownership of the produce and these transac-
tions home.
Winter planting at Full Circle
Jan Spencer’s demontration home on River Road
Global Trends
By Jan Spencer
River Road area
neighborhood activist
C
urrent events have always fascinated
me. They are history in the making
and can teach
us a great deal. In
2005 we witnessed a
record-breaking hurri-
cane season, increas-
ingly erratic energy
costs, accumulating
national debt and trade
deficit and the darker
side of our national
leadership.
Further afield, China and India’s growing
economic importance in world affairs is
another big story. Widening populist move-
ments, particularly in South America, reveal
a deepening resistence to U.S.-led free trade
initiatives. Iraq is more than we bargained
for, while Muslim jihadistas show extraordi-
nary determination to oppose Western
encroachment on thier turf. What are the
common denominators to these stories?
What are the trends?
Here is a short analysis. Human
impacts on planet Earth are mounting at an
accelerating rate. Too many humans are
making too many demands on what planet
Earth can provide, leading to climate
change, resource depletion, political insta-
bilities, eroding civil liberties and runaway
military budgets.
Sustainability has become a frequently
used word, revealing a growing recognition
that human demands on Earth as we know
them cannot be maintained.
With only 5 percent of the world’s popu-
lation, the U.S. consumes some 25 percent of
the world’s resources. The U.S. now imports
more than 60 percent of its oil while it is near
the top in global per capita output of green-
house gases. By nearly every measure of
product, energy and resource consumption,
the U.S. leads the world.
If one were to assess the American econ-
omy, one could conclude that a huge chunk
of that consumption takes place in suburbia:
the cars, the roads, the malls, the household
products and the oversized houses. U.S. mil-
itary doctrine is quite clear as to the purpose
of our armed forces. They are to coerce and
force, if necessary, access to the resources
American affluence requires. Our vice presi-
dent is on record as stating, “The American
way of life is non-negotiable.” Suburbia
depends on the U.S. military for its contin-
ued existence, one of a variety of tools the
Bush administration and previous admistra-
tions have used to keep the cheap oil econo-
my moving.
This is a hard nut to crack but neces-
sary to understand. American affluence,
led by the need for cheap oil, is a first tier
reason why the world is not at peace, the
environment is severely degraded, the cli-
mate is out of whack and we are in a
resource war in Iraq.
A term I have recently come across is
“the psychology of previous investment.”
What it means is that we keep doing what we
have always done by inertia and reflex, even
as evidence mounts that we urgently need to
make near 180 degree different choices in
how we take care of our human needs. In a
sense, we have made ourselves hostage to
our own vanity, continuing to believe build-
ing more roads, more sprawl and filling
more mini warehouses with excess stuff is
the reason for living.
(See photos and graphics at
www.eugenepermacultureguild.org)
JANUARY 12, 2006 13