The Local Food Revolution: How Humanity Will Feed Itself in Uncertain Times

Brownlee, cofounder of the nonprofit Local Food Shift Group, emerges as an “evolutionary catalyst”: an organizer and visionary seeking to address the global food crisis by empowering local communities to achieve “self-reliance in energy, food, and economy.” He shows that the global industrial food system, profoundly enmeshed in transnational corporate profiteering and dependent on a dwindling supply of fossil fuels, “has itself become the greatest threat to humanity’s being able to feed itself,” undermining communities’ ability to provide for their citizens while also polluting the environment and weakening local economies. As the security of the world’s food sources is bound inextricably with the precarious fate of the climate, the uncertain state of global energy, and vanishing natural resources including soil and water, Brownlee issues a passionate summons to “relocalize” before it is too late. Rooted in his own story of working to reestablish the “foodshed” of Boulder, Colo., Brownlee’s handbook for community-level relocalization offers practical strategies for restoring economic and food sovereignty alongside multidisciplinary research, anecdotes, and seeds of wisdom from thinkers across many fields. Anyone interested in wresting back control over our food supply and confronting the “Long Emergency” of our global food and energy crisis will want to join Brownlee’s revolution. [em](Oct.) [/em]