The Market Is Open

Sheesh, wasn’t it 75 degrees a couple of days ago? Maybe I really will need to get out my winter clothes this year:) Welcome to another week of food. The ALFN market is open for ordering!

News & Updates

• We had an great market on Saturday. Thanks to our awesome coordinator and volunteers who pulled off a feat. The internet wasn’t working on Saturday, yet the team was able to pull through with few hiccups! Well done! I’m reminded of how integral ALFN members are to our weekly markets. I was also reminded of the importance of food infrstructure. This weekend, planned food convoys to Madaya, a city under siege in Syria was delayed until Monday after reports of death by starvation have been growing. It is hard to fully conceptualize the importance of food systems and infrastructure until they breakdown. Yet, how unique is it to take part in a locally governed and managed food distribution system? To take part in a democratic, horizontal system of local food is refreshing and empowering.

• On January 30th, we will have our first Community Market Day. Are any of you interested in sharing a skill, recipe or talent? Do you have a friend you would like to coerce? Shoot me an email!

Waste

I went off on plastic last week, so I thought I would stick with the theme for a bit. Afterall, January is about cutting back the excess anyway, right?

I know many of you compost your kitchen scraps. In our home, we feed them to our chickens and worms. I’ve had a growing fascination with microbes that do all the dirty work AND the microbial waste they emit as they compost our trash. Afterall, it is microbial waste and flatulence that gives us fizzy drinks and alcohol. In Mozambique, I was always looking into systems that tried to capture the gas from decomposing waste for cooking fuel. From cow manure digesters, to food digesters surround by composting wood mulch, scientists have found ways to use the excess gas for cooking and powering cars. A couple of entrepreneurs have set up a pretty slick system for families. Evidently, the Biogas system will provide 1-3 hours of cooking gas from residential kitchen scraps. Check out their video here: HomeBiogas. Alas, Christmas is far away from now:)

In a book entitled, Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things the authors argue our economic system, sparked by the Industrial revolution is a linear system that drives from extraction to waste disposal. The authors, McDonough and Braungart, suggest that Industrial Revolution birthed a system that:

• puts billions of pounds of toxic material into the air, water, and soil every year

• produces some materials so dangerous they will require constant vigilance by future generations

• results in gigantic amounts of waste

• puts valuable materials in holes all over the planet, where they can never be retrieved

• requires thousands of complex regulations—not to keep people and natural systems safe, but rather to keep them from being poisoned too quickly

• measures productivity by how few people are working

• creates prosperity by digging up or cutting down natural resources and then burying or burning them

• erodes the diversity of species and cultural practices. (pg 18)

From this bleak systemic reality, the authors argue for restructuring an economic model that loops back on itself. Waste returns to the beginning point as raw material. Thinking in circles may be poor thinking for a logician, but it is ecological thinking for environmental scientists, and it should be the way new economists and engineers think. As eaters, it doesn’t take much to see the loops in our own household economies. From food to waste to soil, there are numerous pathways to put energy back into the system instead of flushing it down.

Have a regenerative week!

Kyle Holton
Program & Market Manager