Local Food, Non GMO, Organic, Secure

Local food

West Ventura Growing Circles

Local food supports local economies and helps build a strong supportive community.

There are many aspects to developing local food:

Planting gardens in folks yards

Organizing community gardens

Setting up food shares where folks swap extra produce

Saving and swapping seeds, and plants

Setting up a garden mentor system – local master gardeners

Setting up a time bank to organize sharing skills and labor

Helping set up CSAs – subscription veggies

Set up buying clubs and food coops

Supporting local farmers to grow what we want and get a good price for it

Developing a food hub

Starting Transition Town process

Buy local food

Ventura West Side Garden Project

Imagine a neighborhood where everyone has a garden, a few fruit trees, and a couple chickens or rabbits. Abundant fresh, wholesome, food is shared, traded and sold. Kids are proud of the kale that they grow and eagerly eat it. You hear song bird choruses, but no lawn mowers or leaf blowers. Neighbors relate how their health is much better since they are not eating processed food. There is a vibrance and vitality with many under-employed folks now earn money putting in gardens in other areas.

I propose that a group of us install food gardens in yards of 25 families in a couple block area on Ventura West Side. Work would be logged in a time bank. Garden mentors will give these gardeners advice to ensure that they will get abundant harvests. Gardeners will be encouraged to use, share and sell the produce. This would be pilot project to possibly extend to other areas.

In physics, scientists working on a unified field theory that will tie everything together. In ag we are developing a food theory of everything , how we feed ourselves intimately touches every aspect of society. When we understand and honor that, ag will flourish. - Brian Halweil, “Can organic farming feed us all?”

What can we be sure of? We can count on the food growing at our feet in our yard, in our neighborhood; we can grow a food system that is healthy, ecologically sustainable, fair for all. We can build a community that supports us all.

As gardeners we know that if we put a seed in the ground and give it conditions to grow, we get an abundance of produce. We can build a community based on this abundance, and develop an "economy of gift" as Alan Chadwick put it. With talk of cutbacks, recession, layoffs, and deficit it is a good time to speak of plentitude and too much zucchini.

What to call it?

From the SF Bay Area there was a project called Growing Circles

http://www.globalcommunity.org/vhd/growcirc.pdf

Examples

A 7 min video showing process of creating a garden in someone’s yard, by Dulanie Ellis

http://www.walkyourtalk.tv/Grow-Food-Party-Crew

Ron Finley guerilla gardner in LA

http://www.ted.com/talks/ron_finley_a_guerilla_gardener_in_south_central_la.html

http://lagreengrounds.org/

Will Allen on Tavis Smiley

http://video.pbs.org/video/2234960813/

http://vimeo.com/15997939

Urban Farming Guys, Phoenix, Az

http://theurbanfarmingguys.com/

Local Resources and contacts

Growing Circles

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Ventura-Growing-Circles

Green Art People, Green Action Group

https://www.facebook.com/green.a.people?fref=ts

Ventura Chicken Group

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Ventucky-Chicken

Ventura Organic Design

<vtaorgdesign@gmail.com>

Ventura Coop

https://www.facebook.com/VenturaCoop

http://venturacoop.org http://venturacoop.blogspot.com/

Ocean Friendly Gardens - Surfrider Foundation

http://www.surfrider.org/programs/entry/ocean-friendly-gardens

http://www.cityofventura.net/water/ofg

Restore

http://restoreventura.com - coming soon, devolves to Restore Stockton

community gardens

http://healthyventuracounty.org/healthy-eating/community-gardens/

Ongoing label GMO activities

Comment period on Frankenfish GMO salmon that is about to be released by USDA.
GMOinside.org – revolving boycott – boycott one food such as Cheerios a month to try to reduce the market share. Develop local supply of organic masa for tortillas and tamales

See us on Facebook

Ron Whitehurst, Rincon-Vitova Insectaries, Label GMO Ventura

805-746-5368 ron@rinconvitova.com

Transition Town - moving toward a sustainable, resilient community

organizing people - Transition US

http://www.transitionus.org

The transition process has the ability to pull together diverse members of a community to work on projects to make that city more livable. The goals are to make the city less dependent on fossil fuels, grow more food locally, and build experience with grass roots democracy. With impending super storms, flood, drought, food shortages, increased gas price, economic collapse, bank problems, inflation, etc... we need support from a resilient community. Read The Transition Companion Making Your Community More Resilient in Uncertain Times, by Rob Hopkins or his later book The Power of Just Doing Stuff

The earlier Transition Handbook: from oil dependency to local resilience by Rob Hopkins is available online with a study course.

Holocracy rule by constitution - evolution from consensus
http://holacracy.org/

interesting videos

Nick Osborne Effective Meetings overview

time banks

Redesigning business for resilience

living room conversation

change groups

myth of sustainability Ian McPherson

making shift from initiating to new group

***************************************

Transition Santa Barbara