What is the Future of Local Food? Community Workshop

Climate change and peak oil mean big changes, not just in our economy, but also in the way we get our food. The best way to tackle huge challenges like this is to get together and tap the collective genius of our community. That is the purpose of this free Transition Santa Cruz workshop, which is designed for maximum fun as well as benefit.

Come for the whole day (10 to 4) in order to participate most fully. A delicious, homemade organic lunch is available for $10 with an RSVP (please go to the website at transitionsc.org.)

Community members are invited to set the agenda themselves in an "Open Space" day of small group conversations on the topic of the future of food in Santa Cruz. Open Space Technology is a format developed over the past 20 years in corporate, non-profit, and community settings to enable groups of any size to take on important, complex issues with input from all. It works by providing a schedule of small group meetings, but no agenda. The participants fill in the schedule by proposing topics (in this case about local food supply) according to their interests. (More information at http://www.openspaceworld.org/.)

The need for locally produced food sources is becoming more and more pronounced everywhere as the globalized economy loses its stability. As the price of oil resumes its inevitable upward climb, we are going to see higher and higher prices of food grown with fossil fuels and shipped from far away. Mark Lipson of Organic Farms Research Foundation adds, "Large parts of our everyday food supply, even in Santa Cruz, are fragile and unstable....The greater Santa Cruz County foodshed is still very far from self-sufficient, but it could realistically be largely so."

Transition Santa Cruz was started by a small group of concerned citizens last summer as part of an international network of "Transition Initiatives," begun several years ago in England. These initiatives aim to foster "resilience," the ability of a community to thrive despite major challenges such as climate disruptions and the loss of fossil fuels as usable energy sources. For more information, see the website at http://transitionsc.org.