I'm an advisor, donor, volunteer -- and community member.
For most of my life I've been eating what comes via the grocery chain. Processed food and mostly long-distance food that keeps looking better on the outside with less and less nutrition on the inside. My grandmother was the last in our family with an 'urban garden'. It's taken a lifetime to get it -- we are what we eat. Drive-through convenience isn't worth trading away real food; wellness is grounded in what we eat; not the pills that we pop.
In my grandmother's time there were lots of local farmers capable of delivering great food. Local farms are appearing again. Maybe it's because the way we farm now has destroyed a third of our topsoil. More likely the way we farm and eat now can't be sustained.
I get it: Slow food not fast food; buy local food; support local farming. Get to know food; appreciate those who make it possible to have local food.
Local food doesn't work without committed, economically viable local farmers. Groundswell is the seedbed to grow committed, local, organic small farms again -- farmers who are connected to the people who want and need their food. Groundswell is about learning to farm through successful local farmers and enabling new farmers to succeed. It's also about cooperation, collaboration and connectedness.
Groundswell isn't about high-tech/high return - make a quick buck. It's about creating slow growth, value business. Groundswell is a non-profit -- local food; slow money; It's purpose is enabling an essential component to our future on this earth -- sustainable farming -- viable, local food systems.
And it starts with growing and bringing local farmers back into the local economy; into the local community; into the lives of people.
Check out "Building local food systems and assessing landscape outcomes in Ithaca, NY - It's about what we are doing in Ithaca around local food and Groundswell's role. The video can be found at: www.vimeo.com/9167881 from HabitatSeven.