Last month resilience.org posted an interview with Caitlin Taylor, an architect with an interest in food and farming. Here is a brief summary of her remarks.
Our modern industrial food system depends on monocultural, fragile worldwide supply chains. It is based on the impossible promise of infinite growth in scale, uniformity, efficiency and profit. Sameness is valued over deliciousness and health. The cost of production is externalized onto the global ecosystem, such that agriculture accounts for 40% of the planet’s greenhouse gases.
Seeking to contribute to local and regional agriculture, Ms. Taylor and her husband have embarked on a family farm business. Her perspective as an architect is focused on “active form”: the design of systems and relationships over time. Her vision for agriculture is to scale down into bioregional networks — resilient, seasonal, calibrated — building up the “missing middle” as a more viable and visible civic space in the food system.
Taylor uses the design process as a form of deep community engagement, and to that end has established Midcourse Design & Development (MD&D), a nonprofit organization which is now working on a “proof of concept” pilot project in vegetable aggregation and processing. To access the necessary funding, MD&D seeks out “social-purpose” real estate investors, i.e. people who want to support climate mitigation and food sustainability. The target is a small share of the $1.3 trillion invested in real estate in the USA annually, and the $6 billion on agricultural technology – on land, equipment and products.
The interview concludes with some personal reflections on how to inspire and advise others who want to make a difference in their involvement with food, and how to be an effective change agent in this time of “the great unravelling” of the climate and other earth systems.
Ms. Taylor’s conversation with host Rob Dietz is rich and informative. The full 48-minute video interview is available after a free registration and sign-in on resilience.org’s website.
Photo Credits:
Feature image: Wheat, Stephane Mingot, Unsplash
Photo in article: Canola field, Adobe Stock
Ross Thrasher enjoyed a career as a librarian at post-secondary institutions in the U.S., the South Pacific and Canada where he led the Mount Royal College library’s transition to university status. Ross is interested in literature, travel and the performing arts. Especially satire.
