Importance of Local Food Self-Reliance

Those who are familiar with the Sharing Gardens know that we are motivated to guide people towards a model of local food-production, seed-saving, and Earth-friendly gardening techniques while increasing people’s sense of responsibility to assist those less fortunate members of our communities. 

In this eight minute video, physicist Vandana Shiva makes the observation that the highest incidence of hunger in the world shows up in rural and agricultural communities. The very people who should be most able to feed themselves have been forced, through commodity-trading and mono-cropping to abandon growing the diverse variety of foods needed for a nourishing diet. We see examples of this even here in the lush and fertile Willamette Valley of Oregon  where most of the local canneries closed down years ago and many farmers are making their livings growing such crops as grass-seed, animal feed and pumpkin seeds to ship to Asia.

Shiva says, “Access to food should be a basic human right.” 

Please take a few minutes to listen to this warm and intelligent woman connect the dots about GMO’s (genetically modified organisms), seed-saving, the rights and responsibilities of corporations and other important topics related to local food security.  We hope that it will help you to understand a little better ‘why’ we do 'what' we do at the Sharing Gardens.