The Future of Food/The Future of Taos

November 16, 2005

(The first in a series of six articles.)

A time may be coming when we will all need to grow our own food—or at least live in a community where a significant quantity of food is grown and consumed locally. Why? Because there are real and present dangers to our national food supplies, and they are not being addressed by our government.

Despite our status as global “superpower,” our petrochemical-based food and energy systems are extremely fragile and fundamentally unsustainable. A growing number of researchers are forecasting severe food shortages, projected to impact rich and poor alike in the not-distant-enough future. As New Orleans residents tragically discovered, there are serious consequences to ignoring warning bells—and these days bells are going off all around us.

In these monthly articles, we will briefly discuss potential long- and short-term impacts to our food security, including global warming and climate change, “peak oil,” the rising populations of countries like India and China, the demands of first-world lifestyles, increasing resource shortages, debt, and war. More important, we will discuss solutions and strategies—paths through this wilderness that we can begin to forge for ourselves as individuals and as a community.

These articles are about Taos and our real potential to become a model of sustainability for the rest of the country.

Not long ago, Taos was a food-producing region with a history of self-sufficiency older than most other existing communities in the United States. Though Taos has gone through radical changes in the past 100 years, reestablishing a new form of local sustainability is not impossible and may be imperative. Many of us already build with “green” materials and harvest passive-solar energy for our houses and businesses, which benefits us economically and environmentally. We have enough land and water to provide food for a large population, as well as a wealth of local agricultural knowledge. Many of our neighbors still remember how to grow food traditionally, and some are still growing that way. Others use modern techniques that make growing food easier: drip irrigation conserves water, agricultural fabric protects plants, and greenhouses extend our short growing season to the entire year.

In this series we will reach out to local growers to discuss how we might reestablish sustainable community agriculture and create real food security. We’ll explore the consequences of the recent, widely held belief that individuals and small communities don’t need to grow food anymore; that it will just come to us from somewhere far away, arriving unnoticed on trucks, magically appearing on grocery shelves, or being tossed out of drive-through windows.

This assumption stems from a blind faith in our industrial agriculture system: a system that functions as long as there are no disruptions in an endless supply of cheap oil and natural gas. But these resources are not endless, nor are they truly cheap.

Meanwhile, the adverse health effects of subsidized agribusiness and its toxic, low-quality food are exponentially building. If you are severely overweight, diabetic, or suffering with cancer, you are experiencing a few of these consequences right now.

What a mess we’ve gotten ourselves into! And yet, stories about Taos during the Great Depression indicate that many locals were unaffected by the national economic disaster because they still had what they needed: shelter, a big stack of firewood, and food they grew themselves.

Nevertheless, people often equate farming with poverty and struggle. It is hard work, of course, but there is also a joy that comes from experiencing a direct connection to the mystery, beauty, and power of the earth—to an intelligence that informs and provides. This vital union is missing in many lives; in our culture as a whole. It’s likely we suffer from it in ways we don’t completely recognize.

Because food is a great common denominator, a vibrant local agricultural network has the capacity to gently mend racial and cultural tensions. If we grow food together, we relate more. We find the common ground beneath our feet, share the enjoyment of the harvest, and appreciate that the same water flows down the acequias and through all the cultural neighborhoods.

These articles are meant to inspire an informed dialogue about the choices we are facing, so that we can plan intelligently and compassionately for our shared future. It is our belief that we can flourish as a community, recognizing where our power lies, if we choose to.


Bob Pedersen and Victoria Linden are co-founders of Tierra Lucero, a Taos nonprofit focused on issues of food security. They are also the owners of Mountain Rich Soils.
Email: growfoodnow@tierralucero.org.