Producing food close to where we live, preserving the surplus, ensuring that everyone in the community has access to quality food: this is local food resilience. Resilience is the ability to withstand difficulties and recover quickly. The biggest difficulty of our time is arguably the growing climate emergency. That’s why West Marin Climate Action is working on systems and practices to increase food resilience.
With the Earth’s changing climate, our region faces the increasing likelihood of wildfire, drought and flooding. These threats, and others such as earthquakes and pandemics, can seriously impair the reliability, accessibility and quality of our food supply and raise its costs, magnifying inequities.
Robust local food systems strengthen community resilience. We’re fortunate in West Marin to have a provident foodshed that extends from planting to harvesting to distributing and consuming. Our farmers, ranchers and fishers not only source fresh food, but also represent a wealth of bioregional knowledge. Home gardeners can grow their own food and may have enough harvest to share. Shared spaces also increase resilience, since many community members do not have access to land. Agency partnerships are a bioregional strength, connecting West Marin Food Systems—a coordinating group for sustainable foodsheds—and ExtraFood, local food pantries, the Marin Resource Conservation District, MALT and others.
Climate change threatens the landscapes and native species that make our lives so rich. Agriculture and home gardening, practiced sustainably, can help repair damaged ecosystems and enhance biodiversity. Besides being adaptive, local food practices can help mitigate climate change—or lessen its consequences—by reducing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Here are some examples.
Producing, consuming and preserving food close to where we live reduces transportation and refrigeration needs and thus greenhouse gases. Reducing the use of synthetic or fossil fuel-based fertilizers and pesticides mitigates climate change. Obtaining potable water has a significant carbon footprint, so we save energy when we practice water catchment and conservation. Carbon farming, an innovative mitigation strategy, was pioneered right here in Marin. Ranchers, farmers and home gardeners alike can “farm carbon” by using compost or other amendments to build healthy soil rich in organic matter. Soil stores the carbon that plants absorb from the atmosphere. Soil with robust organic content is also highly productive and efficient at retaining moisture, decreasing the amount of watering needed.
The opposite of food abundance is food scarcity, and one cause of scarcity is food waste. A major study of key climate solutions, Project Drawdown, found that the number-one worldwide strategy with the potential to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere is reducing food waste. One way we can ensure that good food is not wasted is by gleaning, or gathering surplus produce from local orchards, small farms and gardens. Invited by landowners, volunteers with our West Marin Glean Team harvest surplus crops for local delivery. Gleaning helps ensure that more community members have access to healthy food, and it offers growers the extra people-power needed to gather their post-harvest crops. It also improves the return on the energy inputs it took to produce the food.
By maximizing food recovery and sending some foods unfit for human consumption to farms for animals to eat, we minimize food waste. Our group works with partners such as the Environmental Action Committee of West Marin and Zero Waste Marin to ensure that we keep all food and plant waste from going into landfills. When food decomposes in landfills, it emits the potent greenhouse gas methane. Carefully sorting our waste is now required under the new California law, S.B. 1383. This means the last stop for food waste at home must be our own composting system or the green bin provided by our waste hauler.
There are many positive local-food actions you can take for climate resilience. Although it is still winter, the food-growing cycle in West Marin is not asleep. Gardening year-round maximizes food production and efficiency of land resources. Kale, cabbage, onions, garlic, chard, peas and strawberries are growing. Winter cover crops are maturing, enriching the soil for spring and summer growth. Home gardeners can start seeds now for planting out in spring; share your saved seeds with neighbors and, similarly, your starts when you have extras. Spring produce is a gift, so support our small farmers when their harvests appear in farmstands and markets. And while you’re buying local, look for ways to support food preservers: when summer and fall harvests are at their most bounteous, sustainability-minded locals turn this produce into nutritious products that nurture us year-round.
We invite you to learn more and participate. West Marin Climate Action informs and mobilizes our community to adapt to and help mitigate climate impacts, increasing our local resilience and equity while contributing to the global solutions needed now. Be part of the solution! Learn from the resources on our website, join our volunteer network and support our work at www.westmarinclimateaction.org.
Kathy Hunting is an avid food gardener and an environmental scientist by training. Claire Peaslee is an improviser, a naturalist and a writer. They both live in Point Reyes Station.