Brookside Farm - Growing Food, Growing Energy
Willits and the problem of slow knowledge
By Kurt Cobb
This is the first of four parts in a series on Willits, California, one of the first communities in the United States to respond to peak oil.
All eyes in the peak oil movement are on Willits, a small town of about 5,000 in northern California's Mendocino County. Willits became an experiment station of sorts for peak oil preparedness when Ph.D. botanist Jason Bradford left the University of California-Davis in 2004, moved his family to Willits, and began preparations for an imminent, irreversible decline in world oil production.
As Bradford relates, he started by showing the film, The End of Suburbia, to his new fellow residents. The documentary traces the history of suburban development in North America and suggests that the collapse of the suburban way of life is inevitable during the coming permanent oil shortage. The local newspaper covered the events, often with front-page stories, documenting the standing room only crowds. Bradford said he had great hopes that the growing enthusiasm for peak oil preparedness generated by the events would lead to quick, decisive action by the community and its officials.
He and others formed a group called Willits Economic Localization (WELL) to pursue relocalization, a key strategy for adapting to a lower energy world. The strategy calls for sourcing as many of life's necessities as possible locally. This reduces the enormous energy costs of transporting goods and helps to provide the security that goes with self-sufficiency, especially in food.
But after three years, Willits, while still a clear leader in peak oil preparedness, has not achieved nearly the progress envisioned by Bradford and other organizers. While their sense of urgency still remains, they have begun to realize that municipal governments move at what seems like a glacial pace and that public awareness is not the same as public understanding.
The Children’s Studio School Garden in DC
Those of us who are passionate about local foods tend to use point-by-point logical arguments to persuade our friends and families to support local farmers and food producers: freshness, taste, ethics, environmental considerations, economics, and so on. Children, however, most likely won’t care as much about these reasons, though they’ll appreciate food that tastes good (unless they’re in a picky phase). So how do you get them interested in local food?
As people have discovered through projects like the Edible Schoolyard, involving students in growing, harvesting, and cooking food is the key. School gardens are beginning to crop up in cities, offering even young students the chance to dig in the dirt, plant seeds and seedlings, and learn how food is grown.
