City Repair, Growing Gardens and all sorts of wonderful local food and micro farms are happening in Portland Oregon. I recently attended Portland's Village Building Convergence (10 days of free classes all across Portland Metro Area) and was inspired by a speaker to 'just start' a guerilla garden. My yard is a permaculture, flower, food forest and I ran out of room, so just down the street from me on an unimproved road I started planting a food forest. Neighbors are currently curious and seem interested. I say the blog entry about some of the negative practices we have occuring (grass mini farms and SUVs) in the U.S. and I agree - there are those. However, all you need to do is look to find wonderful examples of micro food forests, a little support for those, some press, some efforts by individuals and people will follow suit. Food forests are contagious, they build community and as an emergency services worker, I know they will help us become more resilient in the face of disaster. So, let us 'look' for those excellent examples of great energy and creativity, community and positive steps forward, focus on those and encourage more of the same!!

Actually I hope we learn to attach greenhouse to our homes to get solar heat and organic produce
http://smallmtn.net

In America the trend seems to be toward "hobby farms" 5-15 acres of grass to mow, a horse, some llamas or exotic show cattle or goats, a big SUV to drive to Whole Foods for your organic produce and designer wines, and as big a John Deere Tractor with mower as you can get turned around on your lawn. It's much easier to import our organic food from Chile, or Mexico, or New Zealand and take over the middle east to secure the oil needed to fuel the imports. I've seen very little evidence of people taking that much responsibility for their own food or their own impact on the environment.