Manifesto
Join the movement to create a living foodshed in our region
The Southern Blue Ridge region has a long history of supporting a food-based culture ~ graced with a rich diversity of unique wildlife, plant and aquatic species in these ancient mountains, forests and rivers. We honor the ancestral stewards of these extraordinary lands ~ whose wisdom, love and sweat have nourished the soil here for many generations.
We invite you into this powerful evolutionary movement, to take an active role in shaping a thriving regional foodshed ~ one that ensures the well-being of all life in our region for many generations to come.
We believe this is not only possible, it is inevitable.
Now is the time. This is the place.
We call for a restoration of the sacred nature of food as fundamental to our region, together remembering how to live in right relationship and reciprocity with Earth and each other.
We call upon farmers, ranchers and food entrepreneurs – large and small, new and old – to join this regional food movement. We ask you to see yourselves as social entrepreneurs, to become drivers of systemic change, to seize the opportunities that food localization presents, to innovate the new systems and processes that will be needed, and to forge high standards for local food production, as well as high systemic standards of fairness, equity, sustainability and stewardship, ethics and accountability, cooperation and collaboration, and food sovereignty.
We call upon chefs, restaurateurs, caterers, and food retailers – who are in a position to influence more eaters than almost anyone – to source a substantial percentage of your ingredients from local growers and value-added producers.
We call upon conventional food producers, manufacturers, and service providers to diversify your operations by beginning to meet some of the growing demand for local food.
We call upon eaters to participate in this historic movement, which will help turn our troubled world right-side up. We invite you to shift your eating, cooking, and food purchasing patterns, to become homegrown food producers, and to shift some of your money into the local food economy. We invite you to abandon the story that you are a consumer and begin to take up your role as engaged food citizens.
We call upon local citizens to activate your economic power and to move a small portion of your money into the emerging local food system.
We call upon institutional food buyers – schools, hospitals, corporate cafeterias, airports, convention centers, etc. – to commit to devoting a significant portion of your purchasing budget to local food.
We call upon faith communities to join together in supporting the local food revolution.
We call upon local government leaders, policy makers, community activists, and nonprofit agencies to raise awareness, to mobilize public support, to focus priorities, and to help remove barriers.
We call upon holders of significant financial wealth – individual investors, successful entrepreneurs, philanthropic foundations, capital investment firms, hedge funds, banks, credit unions and large corporations – to devote a portion of your capital to helping build the regional food system.
We call upon experts of all disciplines ~ experienced legal counsel, entrepreneurs, business and agricultural consultants ~ to lend your expertise and support.
We call for artists, musicians, journalists, creative writers, media producers, bloggers to investigate, capture, and celebrate the local food movement, bringing it to center stage where it belongs.
We invite you to join the movement.
This manifesto was adapted from excerpts in The Local Food Revolution: How Humanity Will Feed Itself in Uncertain Times ~
an incredibly inspiring and informative book by our late friend and evolutionary catalyst Michael Brownlee.