Why Buy Local and Support a Sustainable Food System?

Northern Rockies Bioneers Conference Focuses on Food

By Alison Grey, 10-17-07

The Northern Rockies Bioneers Conference, held annually in Bozeman October 19-21 by the Bioregional Outreach Network (BORN), brings progressive communities throughout the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem together to consider a vast array of local issues and empower them to create real solutions.

Bioneers is a national non-profit that brings together visionaries throughout the community to discuss and demonstrate practical ideas and strategies for restoring both our environment and our communities by addressing our most important challenges, both ecologically and socially.

There are 18 Bioneers conferences simultaneously going on across the United States this weekend, all beaming satellite feeds of live speakers in the morning, and then focusing on local issues and workshops in the afternoon.

This year, the Northern Rockies Bioneers Conference is focusing on local food. The conference stresses the importance of supporting local farmers and producers, based upon the notion that a sustainable food system is the best thing for both our environment and our communities.

“We decided to focus on food for a number of reasons, but mainly because the local food movement and sustainable food movement has a lot of power and interest in the community,” said Dean Williamson, director of BORN. “There’s been a swell in popular interest, and we decided to make it real.”

Food is also a topic that encompasses an array of social and environmental issues, going far beyond our individual health. It is a complex system that includes everything from fuel consumption, to labor, the local economy and land use development, said Williamson.

“There’s a lot more reasons to support local food than simply our health,” he said.

Our food system impacts everyone, and anyone who has an interest in eating will find something of relevance at this year’s conference, said Williamson.

Bioneers brings together local and national experts and leaders in the food movement, including policy decision makers, growers and environmental groups, to talk about the real challenges that lie ahead of us.

The conference seeks solutions to the problems our society has inflicted upon our food system, one dominated by industrial powers, by creating viable and innovative solutions that work with nature to heal nature and restore a more local, sustainable food system, said Williamson.

The weekend will offer a variety of workshops and discussions, films, music, local food and more. They will ask questions: What’s on Your Plate? Why is the local food supply integral to our communities? How do we promote and protect that? How do you grow your own food? Beyond food, the conference will also address other social and political issues.

“It’s a really a time to get serious and have a conversation about what we’re buying and what we’re putting into our bodies,” said Williamson. “The single most important thing an individual can do is spend their money wisely. When we start putting our money in a food system we believe in, than that’s the system that is going to survive.”

Despite the complexities and enormity of problems that define our current food system, Williamson believes that every individual has the power to create real change in their communities, an idea that fuels the Bioneers’ movement.

Every individual can make a difference, he said.

For more infomation and a conference schedule, visit BORN

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