WEEK 8

Notes and Links

Outline for lecture 8:

• artisan farms
• local farming
• food and development
• world views
  • scenarios
  • risk & uncertainty

Themes:

"Artisan" agriculture has a great potential to to meet our need for sustainable food production.

We can use world views to explore different alternative futures (scenarios) and compare these.

 

1. Artisan agriculture

• Polyface Farms in NC - mentioned in Michael Pollan's book
• Zena Farms here in Willamette Valley - summer program
• Tryon Creek community

 

2. Local food production - using the urban & suburban landscape

 

• Local food production
  • CSA
• Farmers markets all through out Portland area
• Portland Urban Growth Bounty
  • zoning for urban farms
• using the commons to grow food
  • Portland Urban Edibles
    • map
    • discussion of ethics
  • Philadephia Orchard Project and the map of edibles
  • Seattle fruit tree harvest
• Chickens? Portland has highest per capita chicken population
  • article
  • urban chickens blog
  • Tour de Coop - maybe get a job here?
• Urban Growth Boundary keeps farms nearby - map

 

3. Energy, food and local development

Spending locally

use grant money to catalyze (and organize) local spending

• $66k grant catalyzed $226k locally
• pilot project for entire state - use school money to provide healthy and locally sourced food
• http://www.ecotrust.org/press/f2s_investment_20090318.html

 

4. World Views and scenarios

How do people make decisions.

World Views

• culture theory and views of risk and control
• more world view descriptions

 

Creating scenarios with world views

Millenium Ecosystem Assessment

Four scenarios

• global orchestration
  
• technogarden
• order from strength
• adapting mosaic

reference for scenarios

 

Comparing possible outcomes from policies

a method to deal with uncertainty

generate sets of hypothetical futures

can evaluate the risk of policies (or control strategies) by comparing what if you use type X policies and regulations, but the world really works by type Y

example: what if you think everyone should just get along because they are basically nice, but in reality people need to be kept in line by strict regulations

van-asselt-rotmans-2002 notes

 

5. On-line activities:

Videos:

These videos are about Polyface Farm and explain several aspects of artisan agriculture. The details of farming are relevant to our course and ecological farming techniques. Joel Salatin's personal opinions on how the world works are very interesting and represent a different perspective than you're liable to get in Portland, but take them with a grain of salt.

• 4 minute video about Polyface Farm
• another short video on Polyface (slaughtering chickens)
• salad bar for cows
  

Simulations:

In this unit - the scenarios are like simulations.

 

Case study or Example:

• read these article about the Millenium Ecosystem Assessment scenarios
  • http://www.maweb.org/documents/document.332.aspx.pdf
  • Four scenarios

 

 

6. Learning objectives:

week 8 learning objectives

 

7. Link to the on-line assignment:

go to D2L

 

8. Quiz feedback

normally posted after the quiz is due