Until quite recently, the production of food was a core part of culture and community life, helping bring people together around the shared tasks of providing for each other’s basic needs. Over the past few decades, government subsidies and an emphasis on low cost over quality has resulted in industrial agricultural coming to dominate food production. The results have damaged our physical health while destroying the cohesion and economic stability of our communities.

 Community Food Security takes a whole-systems view of how to return the production of food with real nutrient integrity to our local communities and how rebuilding our local food systems can help re-weave the strands of community that have become frayed through the industrialization of food. We will look at how to work across all scales and densities—from container and rooftop gardens in dense urban cityscapes to small, local farms in nearby rural areas—to create patterns of abundance and restore access to nutrient-dense real food.