L is for Local

Last fall, at the beginning of my second year of homeschooling my kids and several months into my dairy cow's first lactation, I took a 9-week online course through Acumen Academy, a nonprofit dedicated to the development of "social entrepreneurs."  I had *so much time on my hands* (can you taste the irony?), I thought, sure, why not?  What's one more thing?  In the wee hours of the morning, I would get up and do the course assignments, before any kiddos got out of bed and before morning farm chores beckoned. Maybe – just maybe – it was a little nuts to take this on, but in reality it was a lifeline for me, an opportunity to really examine why I felt, and feel, so drawn to questions of food integrity and food security (which are almost the same thing, in the end) in and for my community.

Acumen offers a wide range of courses, many of which are led by prominent cultural and social scouts, such as Elizabeth Gilbert, Krista Tippett, and Adam Grant, just to name a few of my favorites.  The courses range in content from the nitty gritty of securing funding and doing sound data analysis to more "big picture" offerings in storytelling and mission development.

I took the course entitled "The Path of Moral Leadership: Hard-edged Skills to Start Building a Better World," which was led by Acumen's founder, Jacqueline Novogratz, and which took a deep dive into the principles and practices she discusses in her book, Manifesto for a Moral Revolution.  It was a useful exercise that culminated in participants' drafting our own manifestos, to give voice to the visions we had come to see more clearly over the span of the course.

What follows is my manifesto from the course, which I offer here as my best articulation to date of why Local is the first guiding principle of "LEADER⁵SHIP for a More Beautiful World." 

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Declaration of Food In(ter)dependence

A Manifesto for Local Food Revolution

Food is love.  Love is where my people are.  My people are in this place.  In this place, I feed my people, and I am fed; I love, and I am loved.  Therefore, I love this place.  My people and I, we love this place.

Together, we seek to heal this place, to heal ourselves, to receive the healing – and health – this place offers us, in love.

Together, we practice turning away from the ways of not loving this place, from the ways of control, of extraction, of exploitation, of narrow "answers" and quick "fixes" that create problems for others to contend with, often at the remove of several generations.  These are not the ways of abundance but of scarcity.  These are the ways of fear and not of love. 

Together, we seek to learn from this place, to learn the ways of the Creator by examining Creation and following its patterns wisely.  For its patterns tend to make food in abundance, which is to say, love in abundance.  We thus seek to be co-laborers in the ongoing unfolding of Creation, through quiet attention leading to our collaboration with its loving work.  We seek to learn the masterful craftsmanship of this place, as apprentices in the arts of abundance.  Using our best judgment as often as we can muster it, we look to nature as a principal guide, as a sound measure of the rightness of our actions, defining human flourishing in terms of harmony with Creation – and thus with the Creator – and not as something to be wrested from Creation by force.  We do not mistake ourselves for masters over this place, but practice knowing ourselves as its students, stewards, and servants.

Together, we practice acting in good faith and always first assuming the same about each other, reminding ourselves that what we have in common matters far more than the things we think we disagree about.  We know we will not always know the right or best path, or that we may sometimes fail to choose it even when we do.  We know we will sometimes be blind to ways that affirm life better than our current ways, and that we may, at times, stubbornly cling to our blinders to avoid acknowledging or examining such alternate ways.  But we seek the humility to turn to the right as best and as often as we can make it out, to do better as we know better.

Together, we seek to deepen our ties to each other, to foster a robust and generative interdependence among ourselves, here in this place, by reducing, with steady determination, our default dependence on distant forces, powers, people, and systems to supply the very basics of our sustenance.   We do not reject out of hand the benefits of commerce, cooperation, and cultural exchange with far-flung people and organizations, be they governments, corporations, or otherwise; indeed, we acknowledge and affirm the good that has and can come from complex economic development.  But we also know it is difficult, if not impossible, to forge and maintain enduring personal relationships – which are the basis of a genuine and life-giving accountability – across significant physical, social, and economic distances.  Further, we are mindful of the ways in which excessive reliance on distant forces can obscure, or block entirely, our perception of harms perpetrated on other people and places in the service of our unexamined desires, thus severing our sense of responsibility for the consequences of our actions in the world.  We are likewise mindful of how such excessive reliance can foster a certain creeping helplessness in ourselves and those around us, diminishing, often significantly, our capacity to practice care for ourselves, our families, our land and animals, as well as our neighbors and others here in our more immediate circle.  So we are keenly aware that a profound misalignment of our lives with the patterns of Creation may be signaled when we cannot so much as feed ourselves without resorting to sources and forces outside our local network of mutually accountable, personal relationships.

Together, therefore, we celebrate each step, however small, toward alignment with Creation's patterns, toward reweaving – or perhaps truly weaving for the first time – the ties that bind us together in this place and with this place.  We encourage and support each other in all efforts to learn (or re-learn) the skills, crafts, knowledge, and ways of moving our bodies and interacting with each other in the world that honor Creation's templates and build our capacity to work in concert with them.  In short, we commit to accompany each other on this journey into responsibility, into mature neighborliness, into abundance, into love.

Food is love.  Love is where my people are.  My people are in this place.  In this place, I feed my people, and I am fed; I love, and I am loved.  Therefore, I love this place.  Together, we love this place.