The mobile slaughterhouse could play a critical role in the burgeoning local food movement. This photo of a “slaughtermobile” is from an article in the Washington Post. The article reports the USDA is paying more attention to small and mid-size farms, encouraging organic and sustainable agriculture, and investing in projects to bring locally grown meat and produce to consumers.

A mobile slaughterhouse, with a team composed of a butcher and a federal meat inspector, travels from farm to farm.

USDA’s efforts to help small farmers are focused within its “Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food” program, which seeks to help make the link between local production and local consumption.

USDA has published a Mobile Slaughter Unit Compliance Guide to help those who want to establish a mobile slaughter unit under Federal inspection and operate in accordance with Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) regulations.

The focus of public and policy debate about the climate change impact of food has mostly been on transport.  “Food miles” has become shorthand for thinking about the climate change impact of food. But food system related emissions  result not only from the transport of food. Emissions also result from the conversion of land for farming, the process of farming itself, the energy used in food processing and retail, and from food waste.

A new report from Britain titled Local food and climate change – the role of community food enterprises looks at all stages of the supply chain. Using a life cycle analysis, the report takes into account emissions impacts at all stages, from agricultural production (and its associated inputs) through to processing, packing, transport, retailing, home storage and preparation, and final disposal. Its conclusion: carefully designed local food networks can reduce greenhouse gas emissions in every part of the food chain.

Farming itself is a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions. Agriculture is a major source of methane, which is many times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide (methane is 25 times more potent than CO2 over a 100 year time horizon but 72 times as potent over 20 years); and nitrous oxide, which is 296 times more powerful. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that agriculture is responsible for 13.5% of emissions worldwide. If the connection between deforestation and agriculture is taken into account, farming’s contribution to causing climate change rises considerably. In Latin America, for example, about 70% of previously forested land in the Amazon is used as pasture, and feed crops cover a large part of the reminder. Deforestation is responsible for just under 18% of emissions around the world.

Greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture arise both from the process of farming itself and from the production of inputs such as fertilizers, fuel for machinery, energy for heating and materials, and animal feed. The process by which fertilizer is produced is both energy intensive (generating carbon dioxide) and results in the production of the powerful greenhouse gas nitrous oxide. Emissions arise from land use change as soils are disturbed, vegetation destroyed and forests cut down. Farming practices are closely intertwined with the use of external inputs. Conserving soil carbon through methods such as conservation agriculture, organic farming, integrated nutrient management, cover cropping, agroforestry and the use of biochar not only reduces emissions from the soil but also conserves soil nutrients and reduces the need for fertilizers.

The emissions impacts of raising livestock, both direct (livestock raised on recently converted land) and indirect (the raising of crops such as soybeans and corn for animal feed) are significant: in Britain, meat and dairy consumption is responsible for 58% of food-related emissions; and globally, livestock are estimated to account for 70% of agricultural land use (30% of the Earth’s land surface) and more than half of the greenhouse gas emissions attributable to agriculture.

In assessing emissions from the food transportation system, how close food is produced to its point of consumption proves to be far from the only factor. Route planning, loading, the timing of deliveries compared with traffic and vehicle efficiency are all factors in road freight emissions. And reducing emissions from transport is not just about reducing the distance that food travels between the supplier and the retailer – transport between the retailer and the customer is even more important. It is no use reducing emissions associated with transporting food from the farm to retail, only for the good work to be undone by longer or more frequent shopping trips by car.

Emissions reductions from more efficient transport can be undone by higher emissions from storage, packaging and processing of food products. The best way to reduce emissions from food processing is to reduce the extent to which food is processed at all. But this takes thought – if processing reduces the need for later cooking or refrigeration, or uses food that would otherwise go to waste, it is unlikely that eliminating processing in favor of fresh produce would reduce overall greenhouse gases. Refrigeration is a big culprit, contributing to climate change both because of the energy used to operate the equipment and because of the impact of refrigerant gases, which are thousands of times more potent than carbon dioxide. And the interactions among refrigeration, packaging, food transport, food product innovations and various socio-economic developments have helped create cultural norms and practices that are highly energy-dependent. For example, take out-of-season consumption of fruits and vegetables. It may be less greenhouse gas-intensive to ship fruit and vegetables from Mexico or South America during the winter than to produce them locally in heated greenhouses. Similarly, emissions associated with storing apples for many months or keeping foods frozen can more than make up for the transport emissions saved by not bringing them from around the world. People have gotten used to having most foods to be available throughout the year. Slashing emissions from our food systems requires that we once again learn to live with seasonal variations.

If greenhouse gas emissions from the food system are to be reduced significantly, we will need to change the balance of the food we eat. A lower impact diet is seasonal, largely based on food that comes from plants, and can include some meat and dairy products grown to high environmental standards. Eating less – in particular, less factory-farmed meat and poultry – would be an effective way to reduce total greenhouse gas emissions.  And, as a bonus, we would be healthier for it.

A few days of blue skies and warm sunshine is all it takes to turn one’s thoughts to spring.

Over the last week of clear weather, temperatures have been cool at night – like in the low twenties – but have been getting up to the low or even mid-sixties during the day. In the greenhouse, minimums are in the low forties, with maximums reaching the low seventies. Time to plant seeds!

Two weeks ago I planted seeds left over from last year: the first batch of lettuces, and herbs – parsley, chervil, cilantro. Those seeds have already sprouted. As soon as the plants are big enough, they’ll be set out in cold frames, where we’re still harvesting lettuces planted last fall.

This weekend, after a seed-buying expedition to Nichols in Albany, it was an orgy of planting. Six types of lettuces: Australian Yellow, Black-Seeded Simpson, Flashy Butter Oak, New Red Fire, Red Velvet, and our old favorite Merlot. Artichokes, to replace any that may not have survived the brutal cold of early December (at least some old plants show signs of new growth, too soon to know how many). Two new varieties of cabbages – Megaton and Stonehead – to expand on last year’s very successful experiment with sauerkraut. Cauliflower: Snow Crown and Cheddar. Lemon cucumbers. Tomatoes: Oregon Spring, Siletz (would have planted Legend, but I proved to have saved an empty seed packet). Peas, snap and sugar pod. Winter squash – Cornell’s Bush Delicata, our favorite (I know, it seems awfully early, but you catch the planting bug . . . ). And flowers! Sunflowers, pansies, violas, nasturtiums, all in several varieties and mixes. All to be set out at the appropriate time.

Even with all this planting, the greenhouse isn’t even near full. No more seed trays in the windowsills in the house!

We got a whole selection of commercial-grade seed trays in various plug sizes from Yarnell’s Red Barn nursery in Stayton – for a mere dollar each. The planting mix we made ourselves, from compost run through our Steinmax chipper-shredder.

Garlic, onions, and shallots have been in the ground since last fall. Oops, forgot the leeks! Put that on the list for the next visit to Nichols, along with Legend tomato seeds and doubtless a few others we’ve overlooked.

Over the weekend we raised the borders of the herb garden and added several inches of compost. Got the raspberries pruned, and dug up a couple of dozen plants to give away to friends.

Now comes the true test of the greenhouse, to see if we can sprout all these seeds with no heat other than from passive solar gain, and no protection from cold other than thermal mass and insulation.

We are in the midst of a time of great uncertainty about the future. Peak oil threatens to disrupt not only global financial systems, but also “the economy” as we have come to think of it as an engine of inevitable growth. Even more serious but perhaps longer term, global warming and climate change threaten to disrupt the 10,000 year period of climate stability that allowed human civilization to emerge and the ecosystems within which all species on Earth – including humans – are enmeshed.

For all species, including humans, nothing is more critical than food. Jason Bradford in a post at The Oil Drum argues that reliability of food production in the face of change requires resilience rather than efficiency. A food production system capable of surviving disruptions and failures and of responding quickly to changing circumstances is essential.

Our existing food system is not resilient. As a result of government policies, financial pressures, cheap fossil fuels, and market trends over the past several decades, our food system has become dominated by a relatively few large players. As a result, our food system has become rigid and brittle.

The key to resilience in social-ecological systems is diversity. Biodiversity plays a crucial role by providing functional redundancy. Social and economic systems are no different.

Bradford sketches out what a resilient farm might look like:

A resilient farm has diversified operations to buffer against volatility. The benefits of diversity accrue in many ways.

Organic and especially agroecological farms are less dependent upon outside inputs that can change in price rapidly and unpredictably. Crop rotation plans include many species of plants and animals that are complementary in functions, such as legumes fixing nitrogen, grasses building soil carbon, and animal manures making nutrients more readily available to plants. Instead of buying mechanized services or fertility inputs, the farm integrates the functional diversity of life to create synergies.

Inherent diversity means no single crop failure will ruin the farm, and soil imbalances are prevented. The focus is on soil health, with all fields going through periods of planting in perennial and deeply rooted species to build soil organic matter and mobilize minerals such as phosphorus from deep layers. Fungi associating with roots locate source rock and solubilize minerals that are trans-located to leaves. Topsoil fertility is therefore built from below.

Landscape structure is created to provide habitat for native and naturalized species that participate positively in the farm food web, such as pollinators and predators. No need to buy pesticides when raptors have homes in the trees, predatory wasps have nectar sources, frogs can breed in clean water, and ground beetles have zones of refuge from tillage, for example.

While the emphasis is on letting the biology do the work, renewable energy infrastructure also creates resilience. Farms are often ideal places for wind and solar technologies, and on-farm biofuels are likely to have positive energy returns.

A resilient food system requires in the farm economy as well. Creating healthy and resilient rural economies requires transforming the entirety of our food system.

What might healthy and resilient rural economies look like? Again, Bradford sketches an outline:

It will be organized akin to an ecosystem, or food web. Farms and renewable energy infrastructure occupy the level of primary producers, with businesses acting as conduits for feeding omnivorous humans. In contrast to our current food system, which is linear in structure, the future food system will cycle nutrients back to the farm. This structural constraint will mean that much more food is grown for local populations.

Farms might be more self-sufficient, producing a wide variety of products, for trade, barter, and gifting as well as cash sales. This is a strategy many of our friends are already pursuing, seeking to diversify their income sources and means of support as a way to increase their personal financial resilience.

There structure impediments to our markets which inhibit building resilience. For example, the best and often the only use for much of Oregon’s farm land – even in the Willamette Valley, especially where irrigation is not available – is  as pasture. Grass-fed livestock avoids the health and environmental problems associated with grain-fed livestock and feedlots, while recycling nutrients back into the soil. But the lack of inspected slaughterhouses and butchering facilities means that marketing is a challenge, especially for small-scale producers, as access to retail customers is restricted to the big players.

Similarly, the dominance of giant chain supermarkets makes it difficult for local producers to find outlets for their goods. Buyers for the chains can’t be bothered with small producers. You have to go to independent locally-owned markets like the First Alternative Co-op in Corvallis or to an online marketplace like Eugene Local Foods to find locally grown produce, local cheeses, or locally raised meats and poultry.

Developers push “destination resorts” as a boost to rural economies. But destination resorts don’t do anything for the people already living there – rather, they are pretty much self-contained units, alien invaders that remain distinct and disconnected from the local rural economy. For an idea of a model of tourism that is immersed in the local rural economy looks like, look to France and gîtes ruraux – accommodations at a private farm that can be rented for a week, a weekend, or a short stay.  Gîtes foster a real relationship between the owner of the property, the visitor, and the surrounding countryside. The additional income goes straight to farmers and other residents of the rural area, adding resilience to the local rural economy. In France, gîtes are vigoroulsy promoted by the government.

So here’s an impromptu agenda for beginning to build healthy and resilient rural economies: allow and encourage local processing of poultry and livestock; encourage independent, local markets; and authorize and promote direct rural tourism.

More ideas, anyone?

In overwhelmingly approving the report of its Peak Oil Task Force, the Bloomington (Indiana) City Council,  has endorsed a truly revolutionary idea:

Recognize the need for, and the inevitability of, a steady state economy – one that is not predicated on ever-greater amounts of energy and materials throughput, but recognizes the limits of the biosphere.

The Task Force report – Redefining Prosperity: Energy Descent and Community Resilience - calls for a reduction in community oil consumption by 5% per year in an effort to realize a 50 percent decrease in consumption in just 14 years. The targeted rate of decrease in oil consumption is along the lines laid out by the oil depletion protocol.

Suggested strategies for achieving the reduced fuel consumption goals include:

• Explore new energy sources, greater efficiencies and conservation opportunities for the following energy-intensive municipal services: water and wastewater treatment; law enforcement and fire protection; heating and cooling municipal buildings; and trash removal and recycling. Immediate attention should be given to off-grid water production to meet minimum community needs.
• Promote economic relocalization. Our community’s reliance on a steady supply of inexpensive goods from as far as halfway around the world makes us vulnerable to a decline in inexpensive oil and/or shortages. Producing and processing more goods within the community fosters greater security in a post-peak world while strengthening the local economy.
• Intensify the City’s emerging focus on form-based development, so that residents can easily live within walking distance of daily needs, such as grocery stores, schools and pharmacies.
• Increase home energy conservation and aim to retrofit 5 percent of housing per year.
• Establish community cooperative rideshare programs.
• Advocate for greater local, state and federal funding for public transit.
• Accelerate local food production by training more urban farmers and removing legal, institutional and cultural barriers to farming within the city.
• Plant edible landscapes throughout the city.

The Task Force’s vision is for a city where “most residents live within walking distance of daily needs; most of the food required to feed residents is grown within Monroe County; residents can easily and conveniently get where they need to go on bike, foot or public transit; most of the community’s housing stock is retrofit for energy efficiency; and local government provides high-quality services to its residents while using less fossil fuel energy.”

That actually sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? A post-peak world need not be dismal.

We experimented with Brassica for the first time in our garden this year – cauliflower, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbages – with mixed success.

The cauliflower – yellow, purple, and white – ripened first, and all at once. What do you do with all that cauliflower?  But the orange-yellow and beta carotene rich  Cheddar was particularly flavorful and delicious.

We discovered deer love broccoli and brussels sprouts. We were lucky to eke out enough for a couple of meals. For next year, we have an idea for a portable deer fence, made with steel T-posts and 6″ welded wire mesh (normally used to reinforce concrete). The fence would be cheap, light, and easy to move around as needed and to get out of the way when not needed. Portable fencing could keep the deer away from the peas and beans, as well.

The cabbage was a total triumph, yielding a dozen or so huge heads. We made a little slaw. But I’m not crazy about coleslaw, and how much can you eat anyway while the cabbage is still fresh? So with the last half dozen heads, we determined to try preserving the cabbage as sauerkraut.

Sauerkraut is finely shredded cabbage that has been fermented by various lactic acid bacteria, including Leuconostoc, Lactobacillus, and Pediococcus. No special culture of lactic acid bacteria is needed because these bacteria already are present on raw cabbage.  Traditionally fermented sauerkraut has lots nutritional value, as it contains beneficial digestive enzymes and lactic acid bacteria and is high in vitamin C. (There may be an added bonus, as well. A study by nutritionist Lejla Kazinic Kreho at King’s College found that sauerkraut is as effective as Viagra at increasing sexual function.)

Sauerkraut has a long shelf life and a distinctive sour flavor, both of which result from the lactic acid that forms when the bacteria ferment the sugars in the cabbage. The name comes directly from the German, which literally translates to sour cabbage. Sauerkraut is traditional throughout northern and central Europe, where it provided a vital source of important nutrients during the winter before the days of refrigeration and global food transport.

We borrowed an 8-gallon ceramic crock from friends Jan and Pete, scanned the net for a look at kraut recipes (like here, here, and here), and got to work. Sterilize the crock. Shred the cabbage. Toss with kosher salt. Throw the shredded cabbage in the crock. Tamp firmly – the punch down we use for wine worked perfectly – and as the cabbage was really fresh out of the garden, it was almost instantly submerged in its own juices, safe from oxygen. Cover with a food-grade plastic lid that luckily fit snugly in the crock. Weigh down with a plastic bag filled with water that also served to seal out air. And put in the root cellar, to wait for six weeks or so.

Six weeks later it’s October, and the kraut should be about ready. Serendipitously, Irina’s cousin Doris and her Mann Bernd arrived from Germany. Who better to consult about actually cooking the stuff?

Berndt said his favorite recipe was with Polish sausage. Slice and brown the sausages. Add julienned onions. Cook with the kraut for about a half hour.

Doris told a story of Irina’s mother’s favorite, a dish that Doris would often cook for her when visiting her in Darmstadt. Cut some big – like 2″ – cubes of nice fatty speck (bacon that’s cured but not smoked). Brown a bit, then add onions and cook until soft. Add the kraut, then simmer gently for a couple of hours. Mother was in heaven.

So we tried a fusion – sauerkraut with sausages and speck. We had some speck from Michael at the Pepper Tree Sausage House, and we used his bratwurst, as we didn’t have any of his Polish sausages lying around. Bernd first did the pork belly bit, then add the browned sausages for the last half hour of simmering.

The result was a revelation. The sauerkraut was tangy, tasty, and crisp, and the meats were tender and rich. Accompanying the main dish were mashed Yukon Gold potatoes with sweet butter from the Noris dairy in Crabtree and a fresh green salad from our garden with fresh herb dressing. The potatoes, lettuces and herbs were all from our garden.  A bottle of own Pinot Noir, of course, from the fresh and fruity 2008 vintage. A simple meal with delicious, nutritious food and good friends – life doesn’t get any better than this.

Voilà – a smashingly successful demonstration. Winter doesn’t have to mean deprivation, even in the absence of refrigeration.

In October 2008 San Francisco formed a Peak Oil Preparedness Task Force charged with assessing the impact of declining supplies and rising prices of fossil fuels and coming up with a plan to mitigate the ill effects. Now the Task Force has posted a working draft of its final report.

To avoid what the Task Force sees as “a much darker future,” the report makes more than 70 recommendations, including:

• Energy: conduct waste audit, develop diverse renewable wind, solar, & tidal energy plan, build smart grid, consider feed-in tariffs.
• Economy: source locally; revise tax policies (”progressive” business taxes, carbon tax, demand-sensitive parking fees, city vehicle tax, gasoline tax based on price floor), invest in infrastructure based on future viability (no “orphan” projects, invest in short-haul water freight, rail).
• Food security: buy local, create city Board of Agriculture, provide incentives to use vacant land available for food production, make city parks and golf courses available for garden plots, tax fast food to fund local food production, plant fruit & nut trees along streets, tear up concrete & plant street-side gardens, allow small-scale animal husbandry, create neighborhood compost centers.
• Transportation: impose congestion & parking charges; make intercity & regional public transit cheap, convenient, direct, reliable; build mixed-use neighborhoods, encourage telecommuting, make biking safe & convenient and establish bike-share program, promote car-free lifestyle & make it possible, switch freight from trucks to rail & water.
• Built environment: require all new buildings to be zero energy, retrofit existing buildings, include blower test in building inspections, require energy audit on sale or remodel, use solar assessment district to finance solar installations.
• Protecting vulnerable populations: Implement grow-your-own food program for low income families, eliminate all parking requirements for new residential construction & convert garage space to living space, provide discounted passes for public transit, implement bicycle & neighborhood electric vehicle plan, provide programs to reduce energy use for low-income families esp. renters, prepare rationing plan to allocate resources during shortages on per capita basis.

The task force is expected to finalize the report by today (Tuesday March 17) and then submit it to the Board of Supervisors.

The city of Belo, Brazil eliminated hunger while at the same time reinvigorating the local farm economy.

Frances Moore Lappé, author of Diet for a Small Planet, writes at Yes! Magazine that Belo, a city of 2.5 million people, once had 11% of its population living in absolute poverty, and almost 20% of its children going hungry. Then in 1993, a newly elected administration declared food a right of citizenship and created a city agency, which included assembling a 20-member council of citizen, labor, business, and church representatives, to advise in the design and implementation of a new food system.

The city offered local family farmers dozens of choice spots of public space on which to sell their produce. Local farmers’ profits grew, while at the same time farm income in the country as a whole was dropping by almost half – and poor people got access to fresh, healthy food.

In addition to the farmer-run stands, the city offers people the opportunity to bid on the right to use well-trafficked plots of city land for “ABC” markets (from the Portuguese acronym for “food at low prices”). 34 ABC markets now offer customers the opportunity to buy about twenty core, healthy items at a price set by the city, about two-thirds of the market price. Everything else the market owners can sell at the market price.

Another innovation involves three large, airy “People’s Restaurants” (Restaurante Popular), plus a few smaller venues, that daily serve 12,000 or more people using mostly locally grown food for the equivalent of less than 50 cents a meal.

Belo’s food security initiatives also include extensive community and school gardens as well as nutrition classes. Plus, money the federal government contributes toward school lunches, once spent on processed, corporate food, now buys whole food mostly from local growers.

Hello, local progressive city mayors and city council people? How about something similar here?

A new report by the New Rules Project (a project of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance) titled Energy Self-Reliant States: Homegrown Renewable Power says that at least half of the fifty states could meet all their internal energy needs from renewable energy generated inside their borders, and the vast majority could meet a significant percentage.

Currently, federal energy policy is largely focused on harnessing renewable energy in a few states and transporting it hundreds or even thousands of miles to customers in other states. The report suggests that focusing on harnessing local renewable resources for local markets is a better strategy. Wind and solar, for example, can be found in abundance in virtually all parts of the country. Harnessing local sources could dramatically expand the number of communities and states economically benefiting from the use of renewable fuels while minimizing the transportation-related environmental impact of moving energy products long distances.

The report finds that while significant variations in renewable energy among states exist, in most cases, when transmission or transportation costs are taken into account, the net cost variations are quite modest. Homegrown energy is almost always cheaper than imports, especially when you factor in social, environmental and economic benefits.

A quick review identifies two major shortcomings of the report: heavy reliance on biomass, which is not a sustainable energy source; and, in the discussion of solar power, exclusive consideration of solar photovoltaics to the exclusion of solar thermal (or, as Joseph Romm calls it, baseload solar).

The Executive Summary is available here.

A recent post talked about how high gas prices could lead to the draining of population from small towns in rural areas as people moved closer to jobs and amenities in urban areas. But there is another possibility: the rebuilding of local, rural, agriculture-based economies that rely on human labor rather than fossil fuels.

That’s the objective of the Southern Willamette Valley Bean and Grain Project, which aims at the transformation of agriculture in Lane, Linn, Benton, and Lincoln counties at the south end of Oregon’s Willamette Valley.

This bioregion contains roughly 700,000 acres of farmland, approximately 400,000 acres of which is used for cropland. It once produced a wide array of grains, fruits, and vegetables. At times wheat represented almost a third of what was harvested. The region had the agricultural capacity and food system infrastructure to feed itself.

Now, the region is dominated by farms growing fescue and rye grass for the global grass seed market. Less than 20% of its cropland acreage is utilized for food.

The Bean and Grain Project seeks to convert grass seed acreage into plots for organic beans, grains, and edible seeds as a critical first step to reinvigorating the regional food system. Harry MacCormack, co-founder of Oregon Tilth and owner of Sunbow Farm in Corvallis, Oregon, provides the vision and inspiration.

The project aims to rebuild a complete regional food system, growing food first for local markets and then for global markets only if surpluses are available.

The project sees peak oil as a force driving the relocalization of agriculture:

“It is often overlooked, but nearly every aspect of our current food system is based on petroleum and other carbon-based inputs. Soil nitrogen levels are maintained by fertilizers made from hydrocarbon gases. Pests are fought with petroleum-based pesticides. Weeds are eliminated by petroleum-based herbicides. Fields are cultivated and harvested by machinery powered by petroleum-based fuels. Food products are transported by trucks or trains or airplanes powered by petroleum-based fuels. Foods are processed with machines run by electricity generated by fossil fuels. Foods are packages in plastics made from petrochemical products. We cook with fossil fuel derivatives. From field to distributor to store to kitchen cabinet to stove, our entire food system flows upon a stream of petroleum. This system has evolved and grown through a period when petroleum and natural gas were irrationally cheap. That era appears to be over. The cost of a barrel of petroleum has increased ten fold in the last ten years. Oil production has or will soon peak. Hydrocarbon-based agriculture and its global food system is a literal and figurative dinosaur. Freight costs alone ensure that our food systems must change.

“Add the detrimental environmental impacts of industrial farming techniques–aquifer depletion, topsoil loss, petrochemical contamination of the watershed and other biota, toxic residues on or in crops themselves, and it is becoming increasingly clear that changing the way we farm is both sensible and necessary. Creating sustainable regional food systems based as much as possible on organic inputs and as independent as possible of petroleum fuels, should be one of humanity’s highest priorities. That is the exact purpose of the Southern Willamette Valley Bean and Grain Project, rebuilding a regional food system in the Willamette Valley.