The Kansas City Food Circle promotes organic local foods
by Ben Kjelshus, Green Party of Kansas City

†

The Kansas City Food Circle, founded in 1994 by the Kansas City Greens, links eaters with organic local food producers. It is one of the leading organizations promoting organic local foods in the heartland. Our 2008 KC Food Circle Directory lists 56 local food producers, four organic farmers markets, and 16 restaurants where Food Circle farmers supply locally produced foods. New projects include: promoting local food buying clubs (with one already established), two annual farmers exhibitions, and the 100 mile diet.†

The success of the Kansas City Food Circle is encouraging, and so is the nation-wide steady growth of organic local food production in recent years. Nevertheless, there is the stark reality of peak oil and the troubling prediction that global oil demand will exceed supply within four years. This forebodes escalating energy and food prices, and a precarious future for our food system. There is a crucial need to take decisive and strategic action to prepare for difficult times ahead.

The Green Movement is presented with a challenge – and an opportunity – to play a vital role in transforming our food system from our current vulnerable, fossil-fuel-based, corporate-controlled food system to a sustainable, regionally based, largely self-reliant food system. Greens, with their key value of future focus and their recognition of holistic systems, are well suited to be catalysts for change. The many problems in our society we see as connected and interrelated; consequently the solutions are also connected and interrelated.†

Ben Kjelshus

Two visionary Greens, Nancy Lee Bentley and David Yarrow, were involved in the formulation of the Food Circle, and the Kansas City Greens, we believe, were the first to apply the Food Circle concept.†

So Greens, let’s accept the challenge. Take decisive action and start Food Circles in your areas!

How to Start a Food Circle

There are two ways to start a Food Circle. One way is to start from “scratch” and the other is to begin under the auspices of an existing organization. The two approaches are not very different. In the first approach you start where you are, with the people you associate and work with, and with people who have similar interests as yours. It’s best not to start with a meeting. Instead, talk with several people you would like to work with, one on one, about the food system issue and about planning steps. Get their thinking and share your ideas. Talk about Food Circles and what they can do. Discuss who might be involved. These initial contacts might become the organizing committee. Your committee should include a person with organizing experience. The organizing committee should also do some planning before bringing people together in a larger group, especially about what decisions have to be made and how to make them. (A good resource is Si Kahnís Organizing, A Guide for Grassroots Leader, NASW Press, 1981.)

In starting a Food Circle under the auspices of an existing Green organization, work with fellow members who would be willing to serve on the project’s organizing committee. It is advisable to bring persons willing to serve on the organizing committee (and others interested in creating a sustainable good system) in touch with the sponsoring organization at an early stage. One way to locate farmers and growers is to visit with them at farmers markets and roadside stands and find out their interests (no vendors, please.) Also check out the agricultural section of newspaper ads.

The First Meeting

In preparing the list of invitees for the larger meeting, keep in mind the Food Circle approach of linking the many sectors of the food system — eaters, farmers, small-scale growers, small-scale retailers, nutritionists and others such as sympathetic university extension agents and community activists. Remember, a Food Circle is more than a means to provide fresh, wholesome food. It is a link among the many sectors of the food system with the goal of taking back control and responsibility for our food system.

Meetings should come early in the organizing effort. For a meeting to be successful it should:

1. Communicate information.
2. Result in at least one decision.
3. Agree on who is willing to do what. (Everyone leaving the meeting should have some task or tasks to do.)
4. Build a sense of accomplishment and community among those attending.

Developing a Strategy

Working strategies need to be an important part of the new organization. A beginning project could be to promote a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) project, such as subscription buying. This is an informal partnership between farmer and eater in which eaters support local organic farms and receive a weekly supply of fresh, good tasting produce during the growing season.

Once set up, Food Circles have considerable opportunities to take on projects and actions to advance a sustainable food system – such as starting a directory of regional organic food producers, starting organic farmers markets, and setting up local organic food buying clubs. Greens can be at the center of the movement to build sustainable, largely self-reliant, regional food systems.

For more information go to: www.KCFoodCircle.org or contact Ben Kjelshus at bkjelshus@sbcglobal.net.†

A book review by David McCorquodale
Green Party of Delaware

The Fourth Wave, this book by Canadian Mark Henderson is an effort to envision how an environmental revolution would change mankind and suggest initial steps to make such a change possible. Proceeding from the premise that just as the information age has changed the way human beings interact as described by Alvin Toffler in The Third Wave, so too will the environmental revolution change mankind by putting ìa stop to the chronic and wanton destruction of the planet and to the reckless wasting and plundering of non-renewable resources.î

Subtitled The key recommendation for this transformation is to create a different type of taxation system by eliminating consumption taxes and drastically reducing income taxes on the average working person and, instead, putting in place an environmental taxation system (ETS). This system would levy taxes based on the environmental impact or scarcity of three classes of substances: metals, toxic compounds, and fossil fuels. Similarly, taxes would be levied on packaging.

ETS would create much more disposable income for individuals, but products would cost much more, depending on the environmental impact of the product. In the beginning, the amount of tax raised by the new system would equal the old taxation system. But individuals and businesses would rapidly begin to change their consumption patterns to reduce costs and would begin to consume in a more sustainable pattern.

The key recommendation for this transformation is to create a different type of taxation system.

The author points to several possible positive developments from such a system. The taxation bureaucracy would be simplified, with costs levied at the basic level and passed on up the chain of manufacturing to the consumer, instead of levying taxes at every point in the chain. Markets for recycling and renewables would dramatically expand, as limited resources are deemed valuable, instead of viewed as trash. ìThe ETS would rely on government for general directions and on the market for complex decisions,î without burdening businesses with reams of paperwork to comply with environmental regulations as happens currently. The logic of the system would lead business enterprises into doing what is right for the planet because it is also the profitable way to proceed.

The book, which is presented as the first of a series by publisher Waves of the Future, leaves some issues unaddressed. While nuclear power is derived from toxic metals, the author did not specifically address the issue, which many politicians, in the thrall of the energy companies, have pushed as an intermediate solution to dependence on foreign oil.† The author’s model is based on Canada, which is both a less complex economic model and more progressive already than the United States.

Perhaps the thorniest unmentioned problem is the question of how to put the ETS into law when politicians are beholden to corporations whose business model is based on waste. In a country where over half of the federal budget goes to ìdefenseî, including wasteful armaments production, and every state gets handouts to keep the addiction going, how do we start the process of weaning the economy from wasteful production?

The author acknowledges the ETS system is not the final answer because it does not assume a reduction in consumption, which would mean unemployment, and which would be politically unpopular. But it would make the products we buy greener. If population continues to increase, even the ETS may not be enough. But it would be an intermediate step that could start humanity on the road to a greener future. Greens who wish to convince others that they can to lead society toward sustainability should become familiar with these ideas.