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Local Future Wayland
UPCOMING EVENTS
The Power of Community
Local Future Wayland Kicks Off a Growing Season
of Events
On Saturday, February 20, a group of local volunteers will kick off a series of
events aimed at strengthening our local community. Wayland volunteers Maryann
Lesert, Greg Lewis, and Erin Lesert, working with local nonprofit organization
Local Future (Middleville and Gun Lake members are also hosting events), have
put together a schedule of 2010 Local Food events focusing on supporting and
maintaining a truly local food supply – one of the most important necessities in
building local resilience. The event schedule spans the growing season, which
organizers hope will create a higher level of awareness of local growers and
providers as well as encouraging Wayland residents to pick up valuable
composting, rain-catching, gardening, and food preserving skills along the way.
The first event, scheduled for Saturday, February 20 at 2:00 pm at United Church
of Wayland, 411 Superior, will be a film screening and discussion of the
documentary “The Power of Community, How Cuba Survived Peak Oil.” The film,
produced by Community Solutions, a nonprofit community-building organization of
Yellow Springs, Ohio, “tells the story of the Cuban people’s hardship,
ingenuity, and triumph over sudden adversity” during the 1990’s when the former
Soviet Union collapsed. Because Cuba received a great portion of its oil and
agricultural supplies from Russia, when the Soviet Union dissolved, Cubans found
themselves faced with a crisis: without access to a continuous oil supply, many
functions of their daily lives, including large-scale agriculture, suddenly
stopped.
Though Americans have not yet had to face such a drastic energy shortage, Local
Future volunteers believe that increasing Americans’ awareness of peak oil is
important, and their first film, “The Power of Community” reveals the direct
connection between the availability of cheap oil and our dependence on large
scale corporate agriculture. In short, the global economy is made possible by
cheap oil, whereas a healthy local economy is possible only if we carefully
cultivate and preserve it. Much of our food supply has been “globalized” even as
energy experts warn that the Age of Cheap Oil is coming to an end.
The term peak oil originated when oil geologist M. King Hubbert predicted that
new discoveries of significant oil fields in America were on the decline, and
that by the year 1970, the U.S. would enter a downward curve in oil
availability. As it turns out, Hubbert was right. Readily available U.S. oil
supplies did peak around 1970, creating what energy experts now call the Hubbert
curve: a curve that looks like a steeply sloped bell, rising upward until 1970
and then peaking, rounding, and beginning its descent.
Today, energy experts are more concerned with global peak oil – that point when
the world reaches the peak of easily accessed, economically produced oil. Peak
oil experts do not claim that the Earth literally has run out of oil, but
rather, that the remaining oil supplies become more difficult, more expensive,
and more environmentally hazardous to process. We are seeing evidence today of
oil and coal both becoming more difficult and damaging to produce: in Canada’s
massive oil extraction efforts in the Tar Sands, in mountain-top removal in the
Appalachians, and in the U.S. urge to “Drill, Baby, Drill!” in the Alaskan
tundra.
So what does a healthy local food supply have to do with access to cheap oil?
Everything. Huge corporate farms are possible thanks to a steady supply of cheap
oil. Unfortunately, because huge scale agriculture and global big box stores of
all types have proliferated throughout the U.S., local farmers and local
business owners have been steadily driven out of business; exactly the opposite
of what is needed to build locally resilient communities that can flourish
without depending upon the 3,000-mile Caesar salad.
Local Future volunteers hope community members will be interested and enjoy
their first film and discussion on February 20. Come and hear about the growing
season-long schedule of events planned, month by month, to help us all
recognize, revitalize, and rebuild a truly local food supply.
Come, too, to see how one community, the island nation of Cuba and especially
the inhabitants of their capital city of Havana, now survive with 70% less oil –
through cooperation, conservation, and the will to rebuild their local
communities. The film, told through the stories of Cuba’s own citizens,
“provides a valuable example of how to successfully address the challenge of
reducing our energy use” (Community Solutions). And, because Cubans needed to
learn to grow food, fast, their story is highly instructive for any community
wishing to build and strengthen a local, sustainable, food supply.
Monthly events in the works include a Local Food Fair to introduce Wayland
residents to a range of options for purchasing local food; a summer music
festival featuring local musicians; skill-building workshops in home gardening,
composting, rain-catching, and saving, storing and sharing seeds; specialty
trainings in permaculture (offered through the Pierce Cedar Creek Institute near
Hastings); and fall harvest activities such as a Local 50-Mile Radius Food
Potluck and skill-building events in canning and preserving.
For more information about events in the works, or to inquire about joining our
efforts to build local resilience, please attend our local film/discussion
events on Sat. Feb. 20 at 2:00pm at the United Church of Wayland.
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