Now What, Lexington Session Notes: Agriculture, Urban Planning, Food

(Possibly these notes duplicate those taken by someone else)
Knox Van Nagell, Rona Roberts (combined sessions)

This session started in two different locations. Two different people probably took notes. These are partial, and could use fleshing out by participants.

Knox described the work of the Fayette Alliance, and advocated for moving toward an integrated system of food production, processing, and distribution. A few key points:

Knox described the Bluegrass area’s similarities with Madison, WI (economic reliance on research/healthcare, plus food), with the Madison area deriving $5 Billion in economic impact from food.While local food movements around the country are coming of age, ours is still in its infancy.The Fayette Alliance is five years old, and has had success moving 50 major policies into law.We are equipped with the soil, water and climate to be a world food capital.Fuel prices are pushing us more quickly toward investing in local food systems.Economists predict China will require all the world’s food production by 2030; this kind of competition will demand much greater investment in local food production and processing.Policies are needed that offer incentives for positive development of the 6000 acres estimates as undeveloped with the Urban Service Boundary, to avoid taking up any more productive farm land.
Knox advocates for creating an Agriculture Advisory Council with quasi-government standing that would advise the Mayor on agriculture and food policy. The Council would be made up of stakeholders, and would address needed policies and systems.

Other ideas: [most of these items need more detail provided by the person who suggested them]

• Convene a regular, informal, open gathering of everyone interested in local food systems, health, obesity, sustainability, ecology, cooking/community kitchen, food enterprise, community gardening, and more.
• Develop a written directory of all the organizations already at work on some aspect of the food system.
• Figure out how to link interested people or groups with available plots of land within the Urban Service Boundary.
• Address transportation as part of the system.
• Develop a local goods certification program run by Fayette Alliance or others, so “Local First” becomes a visible brand.
• Increase communication channels. It’s hard to find a reliable source of information on available CSAs, for example.
• [missing part of this point] Different players/different levels together
• [missing part of this point] Community education focus; low-income and upper-income focus
• Downtowners need to be willing to expand out to suburbs.
• Missing formal conversation with players; need to come together in organized, facilitated ways
• We need a comprehensive approach, as Bill McKibben advises, to simplifying our lifestyles and decentralizing.
• We need to launch a unified CSA, in which smaller farms join together for combined weekly offerings to subscribers.