Local Food Systems Quotes

I have my own orchard, and I also work with the Bloomington Community Orchard, which has been one of the best experiences of my life.

I'm attracted to people who work their little plot of land and cultivate it and cultivate it.

Buying from a local farmer can mean that he makes a two-hour extra truck drive, which can damage the environment more than a bunch of bananas on a boat.

I have fruit trees. Cows for fresh milk, yoghurt. My own wheat. I'm basically self-sufficient.

I think the only real knowledge I had before I went to Iowa was what I learned from 'Food Inc'. But once I got there and developed these extensive relationships with the farmers, I realized that we're basically made of corn.

I came to all the realizations about sustainability and biodiversity because I fell in love with the way food tastes. That was it. And because I was looking for that taste I feel at the doorsteps of the organic, local, sustainable farmers, dairy people and fisherman.

There are blessings in being close to the soil, in raising your own food even if it is only a garden in your yard and a fruit tree or two. Those families will be fortunate who, in the last days, have an adequate supply of food because of their foresight and ability to produce their own.

However, if we leave the industrial machinery and their energy-distribution networks and leave them also all the people who have routine jobs operating the industrial machinery and distributing its products, and we take away from all the industrial countries all their ideologies and all the politicians and political machine workers, people would keep right on eating. Possibly getting on a little better than before.

I think America's food culture is embedded in fast-food culture. And the real question that we have is: How are we going to teach slow-food values in a fast-food world? Of course, it's very, very difficult to do, especially when children have grown up eating fast food and the values that go with that.

My real emphasis is on the farmers who are taking care of the land, the farmers who are really thinking about our nourishment.

My grandmother taught me the seasonality of food. She lived with the rhythms of nature. That's the way we should live. Why do we need raspberries in January flown from Chile?

After I broke my neck, I began thinking more about The Kitchen: How can we come up with some way to make real food more affordable? Food that's locally-grown, if possible, fundamentally nourishing to the body, nourishing to the planet.

I've become really interested in permaculture, simplifying my life and doing everything I can to develop more of a sustainable lifestyle.

I think it's important for children to know where their food comes from and how much work it takes to produce the items we eat in our home.

It is vitally important that we can continue to say, with absolute conviction, that organic farming delivers the highest quality, best-tasting food, produced without artificial chemicals or genetic modification, and with respect for animal welfare and the environment, while helping to maintain the landscape and rural communities.

[Government] regulation is an imperfect substitute for the accountability, and trust, built into a market in which food producers meet the gaze of eaters and vice versa.

The industrial food system ships in high-calorie, low-nutrient, processed food from thousands of miles away. It leaves us disconnected from our food and the people who grow it.

People need to feed themselves, next they need to feed their own communities.

In the five years from 2007 to 2012, we only gained a little over 1,200 farmers. Since we aren't going to stop eating, we have to reverse that trend, or we'll see even more consolidation, more corporate farms, or increasing food imports; none of that is in our interest.

The way you support farmers is by shopping and buying raw ingredients.

Many young and beginning farmers start out in local markets. Some stay there, and some scale up.

Former brownfields, depressed urban areas, and hard-hit rural towns blossom as eco-industrial parks, green enterprise zones, and eco-villages. Farmers' markets, community co-ops, and mobile markets get fresh, organic produce to the people who can't afford to shop at health-food stores.

To put it bluntly, we now need to reverse course. We need more highly skilled small farmers in more places all across America - not as a matter of nostalgia for the agrarian past but as a matter of national security. For nations that lose the ability to substantially feed themselves will find themselves as gravely compromised in their international dealings as nations that depend on foreign sources of oil presently do. But while there are alternatives to oil, there are no alternatives to food.

Adopting big-business practices is one thing, and adopting agribusiness practices that would dilute the meaning of 'organic' is another. On the whole, I think we're doing a pretty good job of preserving the integrity of organic foods.

Food sovereignty... is most of all characterized by it’s conversations around how to end hunger and poverty.