Schellacres.com

Economist Graph/ Call For Revolution in Ag in Africa/ Why Just Africa Why Not Everywhere?

The Economist just released a fabulous graph of the world by regions of food exporters and importers:

http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2012/05/daily-chart-17?fsrc=nlw|newe|5-28-2012|1942305|37667986|

It describes the list of usual suspects: Africa imports and North America exports. Then it calls for an ag revolution in Africa.

The news story here is none of this is news. What's news is that  we don't need just a revolution in food and ag in Africa alone, it's time for a global revolution in food and ag that addresses three challenges:

1) In an era of global climate uncertainty, why put all the eggs in the global food industrial food system? Why not have parallel systems?

2) What are we going to do about local grain? Most of the world that lives on the two dollars a day it has to spend on food needs grain that's local--not for dairy, not for eggs, and not for meat or poultry, they need it because grain is what they eat every day (hopefully). They don't call wheat the staff of live for nothing...

3) So, what would a revolution in acknowledgement of basic realities look like? Food prices are here to stay. Increased global demand in grain is here to stay. Grain is the oil of food. We either use it directly or make most of the rest of what we eat from it. Local and organic are here to stay, and so is GMO high tech global food and ag.

As John Naisbitt said, it's high tech, it's high touch, it's global and it's local. And it's all here to stay....Maybe we should talk about how we can cooperate or at least agree to disagree and get on with building the parallel food and ag systems. Because the reality is they are going to be built... in fact, the keels have already been laid.

 

Illinois' 10 Billion Dollar Unmet Local Food Gap? What Should We Do?

The Lake County Patch reported today that based on a Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning's study that Illinois has a 10 billion dollar local food gap:

http://lakezurich.patch.com/articles/a-local-sustainable-food-system-is-worth-billions-of-dollars-experts-say

I think 10 billion dollars in local food sales would be a good thing. So my thoughts would be as follows, I think we in Illinois need to do three things to close this gap:

 1) Create laws and polices that make it possible for local food to live up to the vision of local food as an engine of both local food and prosperity;

 2) Commission a State SWOT (Strengths Weakness Opportunity and Threat) that maps out a path to victory on the local, regional and state level for local food and;

3) Focus State wide engagement on what public and private funding mechanisms need to be created so local food entities of varying sizes have the right capital at the right time for the right sized entity.

 If we don't do this, then I fear we will miss a truly golden opportunity. And if we miss this moment, it's not going to be a magic moment; it is instead going to be, a Forrest Gump moment:

Mrs. Blue: Are you crazy? Or just plain stupid?

Forrest: Stupid is as stupid does, ma'm.

Lord knows a State that was smart enough to invent modern food and ag, and set itself up to have all the major U.S. railways pass through it and establish Chicago as the major food and ag center of the United States is smart enough to use local food an engine of prosperity. But as Forrest might say the proof is in the pudding and  "smart is as smart does."

What do you all think?

Sheila Simon and Kathleen Merrigan--Great Blog on Food Hubs and Local Food

Sheila Simon and Kathleen Merrigan co-authored a fabulous post on Illinois local food and food hubs that has been picked up by the Chicago Huffington Post:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sheila-simon/local-food_b_1518668.html

This is good stuff and must read content imho.

As an additional Illinois note, they mention the Ropps and their dairy/cheese venture in Central Illinois: www.roppcheese.com

When I asked them to speak, the Ropps were kind enough to come to both The Chicago Farmers Farmland Investment Fair http://www.chicagofarmers.org and The Good Food Financing Conference, http://goodfoodfestivals.com/chicago/financing/ and they truly deserve the recognition.

You know when the ABA starts doing webinars on local food and the Huffington Post picks up articles by Lt. Governors and Deputy Secretaries on food hubs that local food is getting some traction.

Green Spring Farm--Free Ebook Offer/ Publishing and Farming, Change Comes.

Who doesn't like free? As one of the folks around with a foot in the publishing and food and ag worlds, I thought I'd mention Spring Green Farm--a book on colonial agriculture is available as a free ebook:

http://www.mediabistro.com/appnewser/green-spring-farm-is-free-ebook-today_b22818

I'm utterly fascinated  by watching developments in the two very different industries of food and publishing that I've come to know well as they deal with dramatic business model shifts. If I wanted to sell vegetables before CSAs, then I needed access to a grocery store so I could put it in front of my customer. If I wanted to sell a book, I needed access to someone with a printing press to put it in front of my reader.

Now I can rent these incredibly expensive capital assets for a short time and move on.... If I've got customers, then they can come to  a CSA drop off point--no grocery store needed.  If I've got readers, I can print on demand with just enough copies and just in time---still need a way  to print a book, but just for a short time and much smaller press run. It's like being able to grow an heirloom grain and rent a new combine to harvest 3 acress....

When you change who can control the capital equipment needed to make the business go, you change the business fundamentally.

 

Kudos to Cari Rincker and my fellow CLE presenters at Counseling the local food movement..

The ABA CLE on Counseling the local food movement was great. I enjoyed meeting my fellow presenters and they did a fabulous job on complex and timely topics:

Dr. Stan Benda, Barrister and Solicitor, Osgoode Hall Law School, Toronto, Ontario, Canada Derrick Braaten, Partner, Baumstark Braaten, Bismarck, ND Jason Foscolo, Principal, Jason Foscolo, LLC, Remsenburg, NY Professor Neil Hamilton, Director of the Agriculture Law Center and Professor, Drake University Law School, Des Moines, IA Professor Erin Hawley, Associate Professor of Law, University of Missouri School of Law, Columbia, MO Leon J. Letter, Principal, Law Offices of Leon J. Letter, PLLC, Flushing, MI Professor Jesse J. Richardson, Jr, Associate Professor in Urban Affairs and Planning, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA Professor Patricia Salkin, Associate Dean, Albany Law School, Albany, NY Cari Rincker (Moderator), Principal, Rincker Law, PLLC, New York, NY.

Kudos again for this very important step for local food. This is an area that simply has to have help from the lawyers to move forward because there has to be regulatory compliance for investors to feel safe.  Who wants to fund a mandate for unknown and uncertain compliance issues?

ABA CLE Counseling the local food movement--right regulation at right time for the right entity

I am so excited about the ABA CLE on Counseling the local food movement because it allows for further discussions about local food and regulation.  If local food is going to grow and live up to its huge potential, it's got to have the right regulation at the right time for the right entities...

This isn't going to be the answer, but it is a huge step toward defining the questions. And that is a huge step toward making a food law and regulation system that works for large scale international industrial food side and local artisan side.. Food is global, food is local, and food and water are the defining issues of this century...

I've posted a news release for folks who are interested in more details:

Download News Release CLE Counseling local food May 2012 Final May4

 

 

ABA CLE on Counseling the local food movement...

I am delighted to be participating in an ABA CLE on Counseling the local food movement. You know when the lawyers start getting interested that local food is here to stay. It's going to be a great bunch of presenters and fabulous content. I can't wait.....

Kudos to Cari Rincker of Rincker law for having the vision and stamina to get this going

Download ABA-Small-Farm-CLE-Flyer1

A Pig In Every Backyard?

I've been thinking about urban farming and livestock. Urban farming seems to be about fish, vegetables and bees. There's a certain logic to that--small space, and theoretically high yields per space. But, why couldn't you do pigs? This UK articles talks about them in Britain, UK Urban Pig Farming

Sure, I get the zoning, nobody wants to live next to a hog farm. But, you could set limits on how many pigs, require a permit, and you could zone cities for farming just like we do for heavy industrial.  You want to do these things in an urban area--fine, here's your zoning, and your zoning looks a lot like heavy industrial.  So, if you want to do farm things on a scale that's noticeable and potentially annoying, then It's ok and you can do it, but we'll put you with the other things that create noise and dust and odor and hold you to your zoning....

Modest Drought Enough To Do The Mayan Civilization In Through Starvation and Disease

Researchers now think a modest drought may have been enough to doom the Mayan civilization. "Rohling emphasized that climate may not have ended the ancient Mayan civilization but rather led to the collapse of the society through unrest and disease." Check out the article Mayan Drought Article

Think about that--- the Maya had one of most sophisticated farming and water storage systems available in their time period, and by and large it was working for them, but they couldn't make it through a mild drought.

I think the lesson is clear--a food system doesn't have to fail quickly, it doesn't have to fail spectacularly, it doesn't have to fail through a war, It just have to fail enough.... And then, like every complex system with lots of moving parts, a food system works until it doesn't.... No water, no crops, no crops, no farmers, no farmers no cities, no cities and in the end, no civilization. Well it could never happen here.. we're too smart, too connected and too lucky, yah, sure right...you bet we are...

 

 

 

Deputy Secretary Merrigan Blogs About The Business Of Local Food

A special thanks to Cari Rincker--New York City's resident agricultural law attorney who sent out a link to Deputy Secretary Merrigan's post to the USDA Blog about the Deputy Secretary's speech at The Chicago Federal Reserve and the business of local Food:

The Business of Local Foods<http://blogs.usda.gov/2012/02/06/the-business-of-local-foods/>

Cross posted from the Huffington Post Food blog<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kathleen-merrigan/local-food-economy-_b_1253052.html>:

Cari is one of the most articulate and passionate advocates for agriculture and the law I know. Check out her blog Cari Rincker's Blog

Thanks for sharing, Counselor....