Food in the City: Eugene’s Food & Agriculture Top 8
If you happened to miss the Food & Agriculture public forum November 5th, you’re in the right place. We are aware of the many voices in the community that were not heard at this event and want you to tell us what you think about the list of actions discussed. If you attended, read on to jog your memory and stimulate further thoughts. The public forum was only the beginning–continue the conversation with us and others in the community.
Food & Agriculture Public Forum Summary
Roughly 80 people gathered in EWEB’s community meeting room to help inform the
A workgroup discusses potential actions to guide Eugene's food system through climate change and peak oil
Food & Agriculture piece of Eugene’s first Community Climate and Energy Action Plan. There was a tremendous amount of energy in the room and we gathered some very positive results.
After a short introduction by plan coordinator Matt McRae, Sustainability Commission member Joshua Skov gave participants a sense of how food fits into the greater climate and energy picture–the greenhouse gases emitted along the food pipeline, the opportunities (not just the risks) of a volatile energy future, the importance of educating ourselves. The take-away message? We can’t always trust our intuition about what has the biggest impact on climate. See his presentation here.
Sarah Mazze of the Climate Leadership Initiative then took participants from context to call-to-action with some stark reminders of just how urgent our situation is now. It won’t be long before we find ourselves charged with feeding ourselves in a hotter, dryer, stormier world to which our crops may or may not be suited. Building resilience is key, and central to this action plan (see Mazze’s full presentation for more details).
This resilience-building is already underway. Good Company’s Kelly Hoell took us through some of the local projects already working to strengthen Eugene’s local food system and reduce our vulnerability to climate change and peak oil. We have a lot of work to do, but there is also an incredible amount of energy in our community already directed at this task on which to build.
Participants then reviewed the list of actions culled from Climate Action and Peak Oil plans from across the country. A quick poll allowed the group to voice their priorities, and a tally of votes revealed eight top priority actions:
1) Increase home – grown and locally sourced food in the city.
2) Identify and implement City and County strategies to encourage local food production, storage, processing, and distribution.
3) Rebuild local and regional food storage, distribution and processing facilities
4) Increase accessibility of materials necessary for residential and neighborhood-scale food production
5) Strengthen current farmland protections at local and state levels
6) Transition to more sustainable, diverse and ecologically sound farming methods
7) Support and Promote educational programs about food
8)Support efforts to increase food crop diversity
Prior to the public meeting, a group of 10 local specialists on Food and Agriculture issues, working from the same list, also identified their priorities. While slightly different, there was some overlap. Their “short list” includes:
1) Strengthen current farmland protections at local and state levels.
2) Transition to more sustainable, diverse and ecologically sound farming methods
3) Rebuild local and regional food storage, distribution and processing facilities
4) Develop a regional emergency food distribution plan
5) Support efforts to increase food crop diversity
6) Increase home-grown, sustainably grown, and locally sourced food in the city
7) Implement a “Buy Local First” food purchasing policy for public institutions – schools, hospitals, prisons, city and county governments
For the rest of the night, participants gathered together in workgroups to address several of the actions above–how to implement them, who might take a leading role (and who already is), and what opportunities and barriers might exist. Many also began or joined new workgroups to discuss actions of their choice, a move that generated incredibly useful information.
The purpose of these public events is not to gather like-minded people together in a room to agree on a predetermined course of action. To say this would be to deny our community’s rich diversity and the enormous creative potential that comes from seeing a problem through many different lenses. The purpose is to draw on this creative potential and see what our community can really accomplish when faced with a problem that affects every single one of us. In this regard, the Food & Agriculture discussion was a success.
We encourage you to continue your involvement past this summary by giving us your thoughts and feedback in one of our online surveys, joining the conversation on our blog, and by attending our next public forum on Land Use & Transportation, to be held Tuesday, December 1st, in EWEB’s community meeting room at 500 East 4th Avenue in Eugene. If you’d like more information about sustainable land use and transportation options, visit our Resources page. Hope to see you there!