Early January 2025: Year-end news on climate change and biodiversity is piling up on my desk again—the Arctic switching from being a carbon sink to a carbon source, 2024 being the hottest year on record by many accounts, and so many species in peril. Then the LA fires shocking the world, and it isn’t even January 20^th yet! New Years is a time of reflection and recommitment, but where to start with this year’s news?

But then, Jimmy Carter’s passing—sad, but strangely uplifting as his commitment and persistence gained renewed attention. And, on the other side of my desk is the pile of reports on rewilding here and around the world—protecting wild areas, reintroducing species, and the less dramatic but critical everyday work of strengthening ecosystems of all sorts, including our food producing lands and their surroundings—our foodsheds. There is even growing acceptance that rebuilding healthy biodiversity and ecosystems is one of the most powerful ways of building climate resilience.

Possibilism and Positivism—excited about the possibilities: Almost exactly eight years ago, I wrote of how the concept of “possibilism” is easier to talk about than the perplexing idea of “hope” with so many layers of complexity. That there are possible solutions to many perplexing current problems, however small the possibilities might be, gives me what I would call “informed hope.” That I am able to work toward those possibilities makes me feel fortunate and leaves me with no excuse to give up in any way—but that is a daily struggle of course. That struggle entails deliberately giving more attention to the possibilities of success than of failure, but without ignoring the odds. In other words, one can choose to be excited about the possibilities of success in spite of the odds—a glass-half-full proposition. Fortunately, there are many inspiring examples of people whose lives are guided by such a view—reminders that I need daily.

Rewilding of the world around us is a wonderful example of the big wild ideas that we have suggested recently—ideas that spring from possibilism and dreaming of what could be. Rewilding just might bring a refreshing and profound systems change in how we see our place in nature, and how we must pursue fairness to all living things, the planet, and the future. From reintroducing keystone species, to protecting wild spaces, to restoring working landscapes to be dependent on natural processes more than human technology, rewilding spans the spectrum from obvious, no-brainer measures to some that challenge us profoundly. Rewilding is central to my dreams of our Greater San Juan Mountain Ecosystem that we call our regional foodshed and our home.

Rewilding dreams: A highpoint of my week is the Friday arrival of the Rewilding Institute’s newsletter with inspiring success stories to balance out the challenging ones. We have suggested dreaming to allow one to more freely explore what could be, and we are encouraged to push the envelope on the possibilities, but the rewilding movement fortunately has some very concrete successes that justify this dreaming and inspire us to action. Salmon returning to the Klamath after dam removal, lynx returning to our own San Juan Mountains, bison being given enough land and freedom to return to grassland ecosystems as a keystone species, beaver on the landscape as natural engineers, rewilding of long-degraded lands in Scotland by their own John Muir Institute. Inspiration abounds and validates our dreams!

From “dewilding” to rewilding—what does rewilding have to do with food? It can easily be argued that agriculture has been responsible for much of the “dewilding” of our world over human history. The fact that 96% of the mammalian biomass in the world is of humans and their livestock—leaving only 4% wild—is mind boggling! Few would seriously wish that the agricultural revolution never happened and that we remained as hunter-gatherers, but many of us wonder about diminishing returns, long-term sustainability, and our quality of life as industrial agriculture’s footprint ever widens and deepens. Likewise, while it might be tempting, few would wish that our industrial agriculture system would crash and lessen the impacts on nature, but many of us hope for a (non-violent) revolution or systems change—sooner rather than later—in the way we grow our food. So, it seems that rewilding should be a core strategy to reinvigorate and strengthen the resilience—and fairness to all—of our landscapes, ecosystems, and in particular, our food systems and foodsheds.

Organic as rewilding: Sunday mornings bring to my kitchen table Real Organic’s Sunday Letters which time and time again reinvigorate my drive to seek deeper sustainability though local food and healthy local foodsheds. It’s humbling to say that I still need—after 40-plus years of such work—these frequent nudges to try even harder to make local food a bigger part of my diet and to resolve to work even harder to influence the policies that make that so difficult. Real Organic’s mission to keep organics focused on soil and its health is a powerful rewilding effort aimed at respecting, nurturing, and depending upon the often-mysterious natural biological processes within the soil that feeds us. They admirably promote and support many such ranchers and farmers in certification and marketing as well as pushing policy reform to keep organic true to its roots—in the soil especially.

Wild Farming, Ranching, and Gardening: Each month, the Wild Farm Alliance’s newsletter brims with practical advice and examples of rewilding the farm. WFA defines “wild farming” very simply and eloquently as “farming in a way that supports and benefits from wild nature.” We at HCFS were inspired many years ago to call our school garden efforts “Wild School Gardens.” To emphasize the importance of ranching in our area of the Southwest and of gardening in engaging the public in this effort, we speak of Wild Farming, Ranching, and Gardening. WFA’s amazing stories of such efforts across the US in their beautiful Farming with the Wild coffee-table book continue to inspire me, as do the projects they have across the country. I keep those stories in mind as I wonder what Wild Farming, Ranching, and Gardening could look like in our Four Corners and Greater San Juan Mountain region.

Getting serious about rewilding—now: Our Getting Serious Now campaign is aimed at being sure that the most important and fundamental changes needed for deeper sustainability, resilience, and fairness are being addressed and that we are responding to the urgency of the climate and biodiversity crises—and in our case, starting with food and foodsheds. What better time than now to explore and learn about the health of our foodsheds, dream of what they could be, and use rewilding as an inspiring and powerful tool to make our foodsheds and surrounding ecosystems as productive, resilient, and fair as they can be.

Civility: Fascinating times, to say the least, as the election dust settles. Whatever your views, however you voted, change is underway for all of us. The soul searching of various groups seems a positive sign, and there is hope—if we apply ourselves—that we can settle into a more reflective and meaningful conversation of how we best move forward. Fundamental differences in viewpoints abound, but if we look carefully, we might just find that we are far more alike than not in the broad strokes of what we want now and for the future of our children and the planet. Recognizing those similarities is a critical step toward having a much greater tone of civility in these conversations, which will take a determined effort on all sides, but well worth the effort.

Civil Society: A news commentator recently brought up the role, in our effort to move forward, of civil society—a term which often refers to actions of society other than those of government or business. Many people are frustrated by the ineffectiveness of Congress—largely due to politicians’ self interest and the inordinate influence of money from corporations and wealthy donors—to bring about the reforms and improvements that they want. So, not to abandon federal policy in any way, it seems that we should also look to civil society—the general public, nonprofits, neighborhood groups, and the like—to help bring about needed changes. We would be wise to enlist the aid of local governments in this work since they often can be so much more responsive to the local public than more distant seats of power.

Local Food as Common Ground: What better task for civil society than growing, buying, sharing, and eating healthy local food. The rural-urban, red-blue, coastal-heartland divides seem to touch nearly all aspects of our lives lately. Yet, just as persistent vestiges of dining room manners and proper digestion both call for a measure of civility in conversations over food, conversations about local food can readily tap into our shared values. Everyone has an interest in access to good food and a stake in a productive and healthy food system for our children and our collective future on this planet. Within agriculture, producers often differ with one another and with consumers over ways of growing food, but our experience in community planning sessions over the years has been that focusing on local food is one of the very best ways to start a productive and civil discussion.

Setting a Green Table: Our Setting a Green Table blueprint for local food systems is based on the wild idea that local food efforts can bring people together in striving for a healthy, resilient, sustainable future. We use the “green table” metaphor for the obvious sustainability focus of our work, and for us here in Southwest Colorado to highlight the impressive ancient farming heritage of our own Mesa Verde region (Spanish for green table) and those people’s own struggles with sustainability.

Economic sustainability is furthered by local food keeping money circulating within the community with fair prices for growers. Having access to affordable local and healthy food for all community members starts to address social sustainability. Environmental sustainability looks toward a future with healthy local foodsheds with rich biodiversity and a reasonable climate. As we look to the future, perhaps we can set such a “green table” by enjoying healthy local food, with everyone welcome at the table, and giving thanks for what we have while looking beyond ourselves to the needs of others, the planet, and our future—with civil and friendly conversation about the work ahead. As Alice Waters would likely say, this is a most delicious way to solve some of our biggest problems!

Back-of-the-envelope calculations have always intrigued me and do have a storied history. I can’t actually recall doing this during an animated and passionate conversation in a restaurant—as in the movies—but I do love doing such ballpark calculations. Described as something between a guess and a rigorous calculation, their utility is to allow the proposal or exploration of an idea or solution to be fleshed out without getting bogged down in the details.

Dreaming: We have recently been advocating the dreaming of what our food system and foodshed could be as a first step in using food as a tool in pursuing greater sustainability. There is certainly a time for rigorous analysis, and there are great people out there with the skills and the patience to do this work, but for the rest of us, playing with some very simple data about a community’s local food system can help frame the broad issues and reveal the scope of the possibilities ahead.

Estimating expenditures: In order to draw attention to the opportunity to bolster the local economy by using more local food, over the past 20 years I have periodically dug out some statistics to allow an estimation of how much our county’s residents are spending on food. As a very rough calculation, I applied the average food buying habits of Western US residents to our population.

$200 million!! My latest calculation is $195 million dollars, or roughly $200 million spent per year by county residents at home and away from home. The data shows that of that $200M, at least $40M is animal products and $26M is fruits and veggies—key items that we do grow here. There is a lot of fine print involved, but the main message is that we have a great opportunity to divert some significant portion of that to our local producers and our local economy rather than elsewhere.

How much spent locally? My guess, based on input from related studies and colleagues, is that most communities currently spend perhaps 2% of that locally (which we will define as local and then regional)—a very hard number to define and pin down. That seems regrettably low to me, but on the other hand, reflects the magnitude of the opportunity facing us and allows us to put some numbers to our dreams:

• For our county of 50,000 people, perhaps 2% of $200M or $4M is spent locally now.
• What if we sourced 10% locally—that would be $20M. Not bad.
• What if half of that was purchased directly from farmers and ranchers—$10M.
• What if that $10M was provided by 20 producers—that’s $500,000 revenue each.
• Or, provided by 100 producers—$100,000 for each producer—again, not bad!

Dreaming of what could be: This brings up a series of additional questions to dream about:

• How much more of our food could we grow in our gardens—home, community, and school?—a less tangible, but very real economic opportunity.
• What if we committed as a community to always paying fair prices to producers?
• What if local policies made local growing, processing, and marketing a priority?
• What if we, by habit, looked for our food locally first, then regionally, and then with attention to the impact on others and the earth when sourcing from afar?

How? The “how” of doing all this starts to move beyond the dream stage, but knowing where we want to go is the essential first step and should take some critical, compassionate, but wide-ranging thinking before we get down into the weeds of making it so.

See the details for La Plata County here.

To explore this data for your own area, see our DYI Foodability pdf

4 Sept 2023, Durango, CO—Labor Day, and the ceremonial end of summer. Yesterday’s high of 76F was the coolest high since the heat arrived in mid-June. What a hot, dry summer it has been here, and our garden shows it with mixed results even with good irrigation from the very snowy winter. But we were not alone—with global temperatures hitting all-time records, smoke persisting across the US and Canada, hot-tub ocean temperatures, coral bleaching, hurricanes doing crazy things in spite of an El Nino, drastic Antarctic sea ice declines, droughts and floods around the globe, and of greatest note, almost an inch of rain at Burning Man! “Unprecedented” is becoming overused in weather news and in need of synonyms.

Remembering the Summer of ’23—No, not another Taylor Sheridan series, but a season we would do well to remember. We have an amazing ability to forget, both as individuals and as a society, as we carry on with business as usual. Winter will be here soon, and it will be less easy to make the connection in the public’s mind between CO2 emissions and extreme winter weather. This past summer is a teachable moment handed us to take good advantage of.

Tipping Points are very useful in considering where we are and where we are going, but are pretty darn hard to definitively pin down until after they occur. In spite of this, the concept of a tipping point is useful as an image that the public can understand. Since they are, in Webster’s words, points “beyond which a significant and often unstoppable effect or change takes place,” we would do well to pay close attention to the warnings from climate scientists of tipping points that we are approaching or may have even already passed. The potential irreversibility inherent in passing tipping points should not lead to despair and paralysis, but a determination to keep things from getting worse—we still have so much we can do to prevent further harm to the climate, ourselves, and the planet.

Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), El Nino/La Nina, Omega Blocks, and more—so much to learn! We can let the climate news pass us by as something we just can’t understand and therefore can’t do anything about, or we can become a bit more climate literate and active. Googling a reputable source can help, and I find that following ex-hurricane hunter Jeff Masters’ Eye on the Storm blog on Yale climate Connections gives an excellent real-time explanation of extreme weather and climate events.

Climate Shift Map—Talking about extreme weather as linked to climate change is essential if we are to develop the public will to take decisive action on climate. Starting up a serious conversation can be hard sometimes, but having good facts to add to the inevitable conversations about daily weather can help. Besides Master’s blog above, another such source is the daily Climate Shift Map from Climate Central. Hovering your mouse over your region on the map will show you how the forecasted high or low compares (using a 1-to-5 “CSI” index as in the diagram above) to what it would be without climate change. So, when the water cooler comment is about how hot it is today—you could add that “actually, today’s high is four times more likely now than before climate change kicked in.” The awe at your knowledge will be palpable, and you may be making some real progress.

Smoke, the great equalizer—This summer’s smoke wasn’t confined to the usual fire-prone areas of the West. Somewhat reminiscent of the Dust Bowl sending clouds of dust across much of the country, this smoke, as a symptom of climate change, was hard to ignore anyplace in the U.S.—including Washington, DC. We can hope that some good may come of that. In some ways, this is an answer to “Where can we move to escape climate change?” While the smoke showed relatively equal treatment geographically, it did not socially. So many people with limited resources are without air conditioning or other air filtration and other ways of protecting their health, so the socio-economic disparities of climate change impacts were highlighted again.

The Lloyd’s World Food Supply Scenario revisited—Another socio-economic impact of the worsening climate is being felt in food supply, in some local areas and globally. Back in 2016, we wrote about how Lloyds of London saw “uncomfortably high odds” of major disruptions of food supplies around the globe—but especially when more than one disruption happened at the same time. This should be ringing bells right now as so many parts of the world are having extreme agriculture-disrupting weather events, over extended periods, and exacerbated by geopolitical events such as the war in Ukraine. How much longer can we wait to address the vulnerabilities of our global food system, including the need to increase local food production for local consumption?

Any positive tipping points in sight?—The mere mention of tipping points may be unsettling as the uncertainty is heightened by the prospect of irreversibility. Obviously, however, things can tip toward the good—tipping toward renewables, fossil fuels left in the ground, and the like. Could the Summer of ’23 be when a sufficient critical mass of people became convinced that the climate crisis is real and became committed to taking action in their own lives and committed to their civic duty to push for wise policy reforms and wise politicians? Could it be the time when we moved past the divisiveness that is crippling our democratic process and moved together in tackling climate as common ground? That would be a wonderful tipping point to have behind us.