Throughstone #7: #Foodsystems

#Foodsystems wasn’t the secret code that led me to this world. Heck, hashtags weren’t even invented back then. # meant pounds, not something you’re trying to trendify. 

The code words back “in the 1900’s,” as my teenage daughter depicts my era, were “alternative,” ”organic,” and “eco” agriculture— and maybe  among some with European tendencies, “biodynamic agriculture.” 

As a result, our conversations often stopped at the farm gate. Reality was what happened on the farm. Occasionally, we’d jump to markets, hopping past the middle of the food system—aggregation, processing, storage, distribution, and marketing. We might veer into discussions of the supply chain, but we really didn’t talk about “food systems.” “Systems thinking” wasn’t really a thing, although nascent ecologists were beginning to push us beyond linear logic that didn’t take natural cycles and feedback loops into account. 

Here in Vermont, some wonky few among us take great pride in knowing that “systems thinking” was first advanced in academic circles by Donella Meadows, who retreated from her privileged Ivory Tower perch at MIT to tease out the intricacies of what it takes to build a functioning community food system, now known as Cobb Hill in Hartland, Vermont.

Forces conspired, and Vermonters began to reject the simplicity of supply chains to parse out how we could hack the complexity of the  food system to leverage change that benefits everyone, from seed producer to farmer to processor to ful(ly)filled eater. Fifteen years later, here we are trying to hack the regional food system.

For more on Donella Meadows’ life and work, including her foundational contributions to systems thinking, “right livelihoods,” and Limits to Growth:   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donella_Meadows

For more on Vermont Farm to Plate’s cutting edge approaches to finding leverage points for positive change: https://www.vtfarmtoplate.com/