“A local food revolution is unfolding in our nation,” says Michael Brownlee, co-founder of Transition Colorado and a leader in the movement for local food. “It’s a revolution aimed at rebuilding our capacity to feed people in our own localities, ensuring food sovereignty for all.” 

Brownlee will be at Genesis Farm in Northwest New Jersey on September 24, 7:00 – 9:00 p.m., to talk about the benefits of localizing the food supply and shifting—foodshed by foodshed—to a more organic, plant-based, seasonal, locally-sourced diet. 

His presentation will explore how in an era of intersecting global crises—including climate destabilization, fossil fuel depletion, and economic decline—changing the way we eat and how we grow our food may be one of the most important things we can do. He will chart the gaps between needs and current realities that exist in many local foodsheds, and paint an emerging vision of a robust localized food and farming system that is capable of feeding the world.

In many communities, the front line of the localization movement is food. “Being dependent on a globalized food system means that we don’t really have food sovereignty or food security,” says Brownlee. “It also means that we don’t have nearly as much freedom as we think we do, because someone else has control over our food. The localization process shows us how we can make a significant course correction.”

“Together, we are reclaiming our food sovereignty,” he says, “rebuilding our food security, engaging as a community of citizens consciously developing a food system that empowers us to meet our own most essential needs locally and satisfies our interests and concerns. Together, we are catalyzing a new kind of food structure: place-based, localized, regional instead of global, rooted in a regional food ecology, responding to regional tastes—a regional foodshed structure that enables people to be connected, in which as much of our food as possible is produced by local people for people within their own foodshed.”

In the Colorado Front Range, Michael spearheads Transition Colorado’s campaign to rebuild community and strengthen the local economy, with a particular focus on food localization through a regional Local Food Shift Campaign. His organization publishes educational materials and organizes events, panel discussions, conferences, studies, and public dialogues to bring attention to food localization issues and to help strengthen the local food and farming system.