Environmental causes have always been attractive to me, and social justice in general, but my husband’s interest in international development and poverty has gotten me thinking over the past almost 10 years about the intersection of all these issues.  I see developing nations pinning their economic hopes on the strength of their exports - and doing it by monocropping - taking their specialty food they can grow well and exporting it.  To me it seems like a quick fix, and far, far from sustainable.  It leaves communities that used to be self-sustaining utterly dependent on foreign markets.  And now we realize that all this economic math about exporting your strengths and importing your other needs was based on cheap transportation - cheap oil.  Not just that, but massive monocropping agricultural operations depend on petroleum inputs for fertilizer and for agricultural machinery.

Relocalizing agriculture isn’t just something for rich hippies (like me) in the US to dream about - it’s a practical move for communities everywhere - perhaps even more important in the less wealthy regions where they live so close to the edge already.  And if you’ll allow this rich hippie to dream a bit more - local agriculture is local power - people with the means to sustain themselves are not as easily victimized by corporations and corrupt government.  Couple that with a few modern ideas like low-cost laptops, distributed solar power, and microcredit, and you could have some really empowered communities.