Rebuilding Local Food Systems From the Grassroots Up

Abstract

The restructuring of the world food system under corporate control since the Second World War has resulted in a crisis with environmental, economic, and social dimensions. The symptoms of the crisis include loss of farmland and fan oers (and in the United States, especially minority farmers), impoverishment of rural economies and the decline of small towns, shrinking of the farmer's share of the food dollar, erosion of the soil, pollution of air and water with synthetic pesticides and farm run-off, the spread of monoculture and the correspondent decline of biodiversity—the litany of problems goes on and on. In the absence of a unified organizational response, a wide variety of individuals and groups have tackled different aspects of these problems and proposed solutions.

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