Roxsen’s Recent Comments

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  Implementation, not Intellectualization

  Debate over the scope, positioning and semantics of the food movement is at this point energy misspent. The time is ripe to get beyond intellectualization and start implementation. As the co-author of SPIN-Farming, what I see every day are more and more entrepreneurs throughout the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Australia, Ireland and the Netherlands using SPIN's franchise-ready system as an entry point into the farming profession. By using front lawns and backyards and neighborhood lots as their land base, they are recasting vegetable farming as a small business in a city or suburb. Most importantly this is happening without policy changes or government supports. The task ahead for those in the "movement" is to channel the spontaneous combustion generated by one-time events like Slow Food Nation into constructive activity. SPIN-Farming provides one way of doing it. More importantly, it is serving as a catalyst for creating replicable models for an economically viable post-industrial agriculture that is less energy and capital intensive, more easily monitored and controlled and that produces safe, healthy food. On Slow Food Nation was magnificent in many ways, but overshot its mandate posted 1 year, 2 months ago 17 Responses

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  Citizen-farmers

  Another kind of citizen movement is also helping to render the Farm Bill moot. It is made up of first generation farmers who are growing commercially in their back yards and front lawns. What is enabling them is a sub-acre farming system called SPIN-Farming. SPIN requires minimal infrastructure and provides a specific process for generating significant income from land bases under an acre in size. It integrates agriculture into the built environment in a commercially viable manner, and removes the two big barriers to entry for aspiring farmers - they do not need much land or financial resources. It provides a tool for re-defining farming for the 21st century - sub-acre, low capital intensive, environmentally friendly, close to markets, entrepreneurially-driven. And it just might spark a farming revival that cuts across geography, generations, incomes and ideologies to provide common ground, quite literally, beneath everyone's feet.
  On For now, local politics is the way to effect ag-policy change posted 2 years, 3 months ago 8 Responses