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WORK TITLE: The Local Food Revolution
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY:
STATE: CO
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
http://www.localfoodshift.pub/author/michael/ * https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-brownlee-0aa50425/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Male.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer and food activist. Founder of Local Food Shift Group (formerly Transition Colorado); partner in Local Food Catalysts; publisher of Local Food Shift magazine.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Michael Brownlee is a writer and food activist based in Colorado. He founded Local Food Shift Group, which was originally called Transition Colorado. Brownlee is also a partner in an organization called Local Food Catalysts and publishes a magazine called Local Food Shift.
In 2016, Brownlee released his first book, The Local Food Revolution: How Humanity Will Feed Itself in Uncertain Times. In this volume, he identifies problems with the existing food system in the United States and around the world. He suggests that the industrialization of the the food system is unsustainable and could cause the downfall of our civilization. People have come to rely increasingly on food that is out of season, is from places that are far away, and may not be very nutritious. Brownlee also believes that industrialized food companies, which he calls Big Food, are in cahoots with the pharmaceuticals industry (Big Pharma) and industrialized agriculture (Big Ag). He calls their relationship the Unholy Alliance. According to Brownlee, the Unholy Alliance has conspired to keep the knowledge of how to grow food for oneself out of the mainstream. He notes that, in recent years, there has been a movement in favor of bringing food production back to the local level. He calls this movement the Local Food Revolution. Brownlee states that this revolution should be something that is completely separate from the global industrial food system, which he believes cannot be improved or saved. Rather, people should make a concerted effort not to support the global industrial food system. He encourages readers to take back their food system from the Unholy Alliance and begin supporting local farms. Brownlee discusses the connection food once had to spirituality and calls for a return to reverence for food. He urges readers to consider cooking, ranching, and farming as a type of sacrament. Brownlee chronicles various key moments in our development as a species, highlighting the current era, called the Anthropocene or the Information Age, as well as previous eras, including the Industrial Age and the Agricultural Age. He also summarizes the work of intellectuals, including Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry. Both Swimme and Berry have advocated for living as partners with the Earth, rather than plundering it for its resources. Brownlee comments on the destruction humans have wrought on the planet, emphasizing global warming and threats to animal populations. He suggests that humans may be the next species to become extinct, unless we make major changes. He hopes that the human race will consider this brush with extinction a wake-up call and will become better stewards of the Earth, starting with supporting local agriculture.
A Publishers Weekly reviewer suggested that The Local Food Revolution “offers practical strategies for restoring economic and food sovereignty alongside multidisciplinary research, anecdotes, and seeds of wisdom.” Carolyn Baker, critic on the Resilience Web site, commented: “In this book, author Michael Brownlee is inciting a local food revolution, and this revolution is far more expansive, far more radical, and far more life-altering than creating a few farmers markets and promoting one’s local economy.” Baker also noted that the volume includes “a stunning ‘Local Food Declaration of Independence’ that is certain to warm the heart and also challenge the assumptions instilled in us by the Unholy Alliance.” Baker concluded: “The Local Food Revolution is no-nonsense reading that is at once profoundly practical and wildly inspiring. … After reading it, your relationship with food will never be the same.” A contributor to the Online version of Kirkus Reviews described the book as “a useful, if not original, statement of the centrality of food production to our way of life that could have benefited from a more concise, organized formulation.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Publishers Weekly, August 15, 2016, review of The Local Food Revolution: How Humanity Will Feed Itself in Uncertain Times, p. 61.
ONLINE
Kirkus Reviews Online, https://www.kirkusreviews.com/ (September 1, 2016), review of The Local Food Revolution.
Local Food Revolution Web site, http://www.localfoodrevolution.net/ (May 18, 2017), author profile.
Local Food Shift Online, http://www.localfoodshift.pub/ (May 18, 2017), author profile.
Resilience, http://www.resilience.org/ (October 16, 2016 ), Carolyn Baker, review of The Local Food Revolution.*
Michael has long been a catalyst in the process of food localization in Colorado, working to ignite, inspire, guide, and empower those who are facing the challenges and opportunities of localizing our food supply. He’s the co-founder of Local Food Shift Group (formerly Transition Colorado). More recently, he’s been focusing his efforts on a single project: publishing a magazine to be the voice for the local food revolution in Colorado. More directly than any other strategy, he says, this publication will support both the local food movement and its accompanying emerging industry segment, and at the same time help catalyze a truly local food culture. The first edition will be available in September 2015. Michael is also the author of the forthcoming book, The Local Food Shift: How Humanity Will Feed Itself in Uncertain Times, to be published in 2016 by North Atlantic Books (Berkeley).
Brownlee, cofounder of the nonprofit Local Food Shift Group, maps out the underlying process of food localization and outlines the route that communities, regions, and foodsheds often follow in their efforts to take control of food production and distribution. By sharing the strategies that have proven successful, he charts a practical path forward while indicating approaches that otherwise might be invisible and unexplored. Stories and interviews illustrate how food localization is happening on the ground and in the field. Essays and thought-pieces explore some of the challenging ethical, moral, economic, and social dilemmas and thresholds that might arise as the local food shift develops. For anyone who wants to understand, in concrete terms, the unique challenges and extraordinary opportunities that present themselves as we address one of the most urgent issues of our time, The Local Food Revolution is an indispensable resource.
Michael Brownlee has long been a catalyst in the process of food localization in Colorado, working to ignite, inspire, guide, and empower those who are facing the challenges and opportunities of localizing our food supply. He is the cofounder of nonprofit Local Food Shift Group (formerly Transition Colorado, the first official Transition initiative in North America).
Long-time catalyst in the process of food localization in Colorado, Michael Brownlee has been working to ignite, inspire, guide, and empower those who are facing the challenges and opportunities of localizing our food supply. He is the author of The Local Food Revolution: How Humanity Will Feed Itself in Uncertain Times (North Atlantic Books, Oct. 2016) and an accompanying online course, Igniting the Local Food Revolution in Your Community. Michael was the cofounder of nonprofit Local Food Shift Group (formerly Transition Colorado, the first officially-recognized Transition Initiative in North America), and is currently a partner in Local Food Catalysts, LLC, a media and events company and publisher of Local Food Shift magazine.
QUOTED: "offers practical strategies for restoring economic and food sovereignty alongside multidisciplinary research, anecdotes, and seeds of wisdom."
The Local Food Revolution: How Humanity Will Feed Itself in Uncertain Times
263.33 (Aug. 15, 2016): p61.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
The Local Food Revolution: How Humanity Will Feed Itself in Uncertain Times
Michael Brownlee. North Atlantic, $24.95 trade paper (352p) ISBN 978-1-62317-000-4
Brownlee, cofounder of the nonprofit Local Food Shift Group, emerges as an "evolutionary catalyst": an organizer and visionary seeking to address the global food crisis by empowering local communities to achieve "self-reliance in energy, food, and economy." He shows that the global industrial food system, profoundly enmeshed in transnational corporate profiteering and dependent on a dwindling supply of fossil fuels, "has itself become the greatest threat to humanity's being able to feed itself," undermining communities' ability to provide for their citizens while also polluting the environment and weakening local economies. As the security of the world's food sources is bound inextricably with the precarious fate of the climate, the uncertain state of global energy, and vanishing natural resources including soil and water, Brownlee issues a passionate summons to "relocalize" before it is too late. Rooted in his own story of working to reestablish the "foodshed" of Boulder, Colo., Brownlee's handbook for community-level relocalization offers practical strategies for restoring economic and food sovereignty alongside multidisciplinary research, anecdotes, and seeds of wisdom from thinkers across many fields. Anyone interested in wresting back control over our food supply and confronting the "Long Emergency" of our global food and energy crisis will want to join Brownlee's revolution. (Oct.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"The Local Food Revolution: How Humanity Will Feed Itself in Uncertain Times." Publishers Weekly, 15 Aug. 2016, p. 61. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA461444570&it=r&asid=6ab9c07a73531a8ae9b5fffd871b5f0a. Accessed 8 May 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A461444570
QUOTED: "In this book, author Michael Brownlee is inciting a local food revolution, and this revolution is far more expansive, far more radical, and far more life-altering than creating a few farmers markets and promoting one’s local economy."
"a stunning 'Local Food Declaration of Independence' that is certain to warm the heart and also challenge the assumptions instilled in us by the Unholy Alliance."
"The Local Food Revolution is no-nonsense reading that is at once profoundly practical and wildly inspiring. ... After reading it, your relationship with food will never be the same."
Review: “The Local Food Revolution: How Humanity Will Feed Itself In Uncertain Times”
By Carolyn Baker, originally published by carolynbaker.net
October 16, 2016
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Book cover: "The Local Food Revolution" by Michael Brownlee“We are being ranched,” says Michael Brownlee, and what is more, most of us are living in one kind of food desert or another.
In this book, author Michael Brownlee is inciting a local food revolution, and this revolution is far more expansive, far more radical, and far more life-altering than creating a few farmers markets and promoting one’s local economy. According to Brownlee, our industrial food system “has itself become the greatest threat to humanity’s being able to feed itself.” However, this revolution is not merely an uprising against the global industrial food system but also a “coming together to build something new in the face of nearly impossible odds.” In fact, it is a spiritual, as well as a social and political event because it will require us to learn how to feed ourselves. What is more, it is a “center of aliveness in the midst of a dying civilization” which “provides more than hope; it is a revolution of the deeper meaning and purpose and presence that lie ahead, emerging mysteriously out of a convergence of seed, soil, soul, and stars.” The Unholy Alliance—Big Food, Big Ag, and Big Pharma, empowered by Big Banking and Big Government has deprived us of the autonomy of learning how to feed ourselves and has also convinced farmers, entrepreneurs, and investors that solutions for feeding the world are technological only.
In other words, in the local food revolution that must happen, “we are not attempting to change or fix the global industrial food system. We’re simply putting all our efforts into building our own food system, our own regional foodsheds.” According to Brownlee, we must “resign as consumers” and opt out of the global food system which is what the Unholy Alliance fears most: Losing control of our food supply, but more fundamentally, losing control of us.
The author has been aware of the collapse of industrial civilization for nearly two decades, and he has witnessed a number of revolutions coming and going, but he asserts that “real revolutions are called into being.” Called into being by what? According to Brownlee, “…by something greater than ourselves.”
If this declaration brings to mind the word “sacred,” that’s because “sacred” is exactly what the author has in mind. “Food is sacred,” he says, and “We need to make eating sacramental again and come to regard farming and ranching, along with preparing and cooking food, nothing less than a spiritual practice.”
Brownlee takes us through the watershed moments of our human development: The Agricultural Age, the Industrial Age, the Information Age, and the Anthropocene, but he does not stop there. Drawing on the wisdom of geo-logian, Thomas Berry, and physicist, Brian Swimme, who have written volumes about the notion of partnership between humanity and the Earth community, the author hypothesizes that this might lead to humanity devoting itself to repairing the destruction it has inflicted on the planet. Such a partnership could, in turn, lead to a greater community era in which “we may then emerge into a realm of life that goes far beyond our planetary sphere.”
The alternative, of course, is human extinction. For Brownlee, the realization that we are now facing impending catastrophic climate change has been life-changing in the way that near-death experiences often are. He notes that abrupt climate change is giving humanity a near-death experience that may provide, as such experiences often do, an entirely new outlook on life. Part of this new outlook for the author has been his countless epiphanies with regard to food and the possibility of an emerging food revolution. Such a revolution could not have occurred in the context of business as usual but rather, as Brownlee states, “the food revolution manifesting around local food can occur only at the moment of the death of a civilization…in the same way that the supernova process is possible only with the death of a star.”
Throughout The Local Food Revolution, the author uses the word foodshed, which simply refers to the geographic region that produces food for the population in that area. A student of the work of Christopher Alexander and his pattern language theory, Michael Brownlee suggests that “we can see that a pattern language for food localization could be about discovering the inherent patterns that bring aliveness, wholeness, and healing to our foodsheds—and our communities. This is an extremely potent development.”
The fundamental pattern to which Brownlee is ultimately referring is the pattern of relationships. “The essence of all the patterns presented here is relationship, relationships of a particular quality. What is emerging is a web of relationships that forms the underlying structure of an emerging foodshed…Perhaps the reason that local food work is so attractive and engaging—and so satisfying,” says the author, “is that it is really about recovering our very humanity and all else that has been lost with the rise of industrial civilization.”
In a chapter entitled, “The Secrets of Co-Creative Collaboration,” Brownlee lays out a detailed strategy for a local food revolution which advances from one individual waking up to our predicament, through the establishment of collaborative community resilience and self-reliance. The Local Food Revolution does not propose “a few easy” steps to creating this resilience and self-reliance, but offers a hands-on strategy for fully inhabiting our foodsheds, including a stunning “Local Food Declaration of Independence” that is certain to warm the heart and also challenge the assumptions instilled in us by the Unholy Alliance.
The Local Food Revolution is no-nonsense reading that is at once profoundly practical and wildly inspiring. I’d be willing to bet that after reading it, your relationship with food will never be the same.
QUOTED: "A useful, if not original, statement of the centrality of food production to our way of life that could have benefited from a more concise, organized formulation."
THE LOCAL FOOD REVOLUTION
How Humanity Will Feed Itself in Uncertain Times
by Michael Brownlee
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KIRKUS REVIEW
An argument that “modern industrial farming amounts to one of the most destructive enterprises on the planet.”
According to Brownlee, the co-founder of the nonprofit advocacy group Local Food Shift and co-publisher of its eponymous magazine, the bonds of community are weakened when family farmers are replaced by large corporations motivated solely by profit. The author offers the persuasive argument that even though corporate farming reliably delivers low-cost, abundant food, it degrades the environment and strips food of nutritional value. Brownlee believes that a food revolution, modeled on the 1960s civil rights movement, can change this. A first step, he writes, is to organize “an independent and parallel system” to market local produce while pressuring supermarkets to provide shelf space. This type of massive undertaking would entail meticulous organization of broad-based community support. Brownlee describes how he and a group of fellow activists launched the Boulder County Going Local! campaign on March 15, 2007, at a meeting attended by 250 people. They focused on the perilous state of the environment to mobilize support for local food producers. Their hope—that within 10 years, food grown in Boulder County would account for 25 percent of the market—proved to be overly optimistic, but the author and his associates have not given up the fight. They have engaged in national outreach to similar organizations and have broadened their perspective to include a spiritual dimension to their message, which pops up somewhat awkwardly throughout the narrative. “The fundamental design of the universe calls forth a species of cocreators…to be the vehicle through which the fourteen-billion-year process of evolution becomes not only conscious but also limitless, as if God is at last awakening in the human species,” he writes. Brownlee admits that achieving their goal is a monumental project with no guarantees of success, but it must be undertaken.
A useful, if not original, statement of the centrality of food production to our way of life that could have benefited from a more concise, organized formulation.
Pub Date: Oct. 18th, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-62317-000-4
Page count: 448pp
Publisher: North Atlantic
Review Posted Online: Aug. 10th, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1st, 2016