The article I found is entitled Inedible Edible: Supporting Food Independence in Todmorden, England, and talks about a program called Inedible Edible that is working to make the English town of Todmorden independent in terms of food supply by promoting local gardens. The program has become increasingly successful by making – and then meeting – small but significant goals as well as has taken part in “guerrilla gardening” as a leading-by-example tactic. Many of the local institutions are now involved, and positive action has been taken on the issue, such as the major housing authority giving tenants seed packets and gardening courses and local schools switching over to using only local produce in cafeteria as well as planting their own school gardens. The program offers the community courses on foraging, making preserves, and harvesting local chickens, and the town in hoping to create a fish-farming center as well. The program has been in action for two years; within this time period, a third more residents are now tending their own vegetable gardens and 15 times as many townspeople are keeping chickens in their backyard, putting the town on track to meet its goal to be food independent by 2018.

Considering the statistics and progress outlined in the article, I believe that this story has been effective. I think that food independence has already and will become a major issue for many communities throughout the world, as most nations import many foodstuffs from outside their country. By altering the present food culture to be geared more towards local farming, many environmental issues could be curbed. For one thing, local farming presents the opportunity to decrease transportation costs of transporting produce and other food goods. When food doesn’t have to travel far from the farm to the market, less energy and fossil fuel is required, effectively decreasing the amount of carbon and other green house gas emissions such as nitrous oxide into the atmosphere. More local food also tends to come from smaller-scale farms, which also require less heavy machinery that is very energy intensive that are used for the huge, industrial farm complexes prevalent in industrialized nations today. Food independence is not only an effective way to improve the food security of a town, region or country in terms of decreasing its dependence on outside food sources but can also be characterized by food security in the form of more diverse produce grown. In small, local gardens such as the ones cultivated by the Inedible Edible program, the growing of a variety of produce is common, which protects the produce from becoming subject to viruses or blights that large monocultures are much more highly susceptible to.

The Inedible Edible program seems to be very successful in recruiting the citizens of Todmorden to become involved and plant their own gardens as well as raise their own chickens. The program has targeted and recruited the facets of society that are most important in promoting such change, as the town council and schools are on board. In looking at Donella Meadows’ leverage points, Inedible Edible seems to be successfully working towards changing the paradigm of not eating locally, the first and most important leverage point highlighted by Meadows as the method for bringing about change in a system. Inedible Edible is changing the town’s perception of local food and where food should come from, a large part of which I think can be contributed to the increased number of courses offered to the townspeople focussed on gardening techniques and sustainable food practices. By changing the paradigm of non-locally grown food to one focussed on locally grown produce, the program is changing the town’s food culture to include more emphasis on local food. The recruitment of the town council is another important step, as integrating a sustainable mindset in the local government allows change to occur on a larger and more widespread scale. This program is definitely replicable, as can be seen by the trend of community gardens that has been established especially in the US; however, while there are more community gardens throughout the country than there used to be, I do not currently know of any programs as widespread as that of Inedible Edible. I do think that a great emphasis and effort be individuals and certain organizations can lead to an increase in towns that move to become food independent. The success of a program such as Inedible Edible makes me hopeful that such a program can become more widespread, as scattered community gardens are the first step in this process. It seems that more communities just need a push to get on the same track as Todmorden, England.