For the past ten years, organic farms, farmers' markets, CSAs and community gardens have been sprouting up all across America. A consumer-led revolution is reviving local agriculture and bringing do-it-yourself, sustainable lifestyles into the mainstream.
Is it enough? Can a return to a local, agriculture-based economy really provide enough food to feed the country, employ its citizens and stop environmental destruction? What's happening on the ground in America's small towns, suburbs and inner cities?
Food Cycles Bicycle Tour is the effort of two women, Hannah and Tuula, to find the answer to these questions.
As we journey across the United States, from Eugene, Oregon to Boston, Massachusetts, we will explore the abundant food resources available along our path, share what we know, and document what we learn.
In a Nutshell
We're leaving in December 2012 from the Oregon coast. We'll head south, hang a left at San Diego, and end up in Florida, where we'll turn north to Massachusetts. The whole trip will take five months, crossing 5,000 miles.
We're not professional cyclists - in fact, that's part of the reason we think we're the perfect individuals to carry this mission. Every day, average people like us do incredible things by bicycle. They commute to work, haul their kids and groceries, and face untold hazards and travails. All we're doing is 60 miles a day, give or take, for a few months.
Bicycles are human-powered transportation. They're simple machines with great potential to end our reliance on fossil fuels, improve health and fitness, and reconnect people with their environment. Ever noticed how much more you feel and observe on a bike trip compared to a car ride?
Apply this power to an investigation of America's local food revolution, and you get Food Cycles Bicycle Tour. It's all about the cycles we live every day; the unlimited power of the sun as conveyed in the food we eat. Knowing where that food comes from means everything.
Creative Harvests
Hannah is a musician and visual artist. Tuula is a writer and explorer of digital media. Our documentation of Food Cycles Bicycle Tour will employ all these talents, and more, with the goal of continuting the journey and the conversation after we return home. Along our route, we will produce:
- A blog, foodcyclesbiketour.blogspot.com, which will share trip highlights, insights into the ways that food, culture and politics intersect, and profiles of the farmers and food activists we meet along the way.
- Maps – one hand-drawn, one digital – as an adventure-based work of art and resource for other cyclists and local food activists.
- An album of songs inspired by the trip, written and recorded by Hannah.
- Videos and photo albums in abundance.
Blog Talks
Rather than just let our blog, videos and images fade into the background noise of the internet, we will present what we've learned at bike shops, churches, community groups, country granges along our route.
A blog talk is like a book reading, only the book is digital and presented using a projector and screen. At these talks, we'll read aloud from our more interesting observations, share photos, and incite conversation about what can be done on a community level to improve economic stability, food security, and sustainable transportation options.
We believe blog talks from our Food Cycles Bicycle Tour blog will be our most powerful tool to create a network of local food movements across the US. Farmers and rural communities tend to be isolated, and innovations in small-scale food production tend to be slow to spread. Similarly, people living in urban centers might not know about the healthful, fresh foods being grown just 50 miles away. We'll feature farmers and seasonal recipes on our blog to help close the gap.
If you think your community is along our route and you'd like to have Food Cycles present, feel free to contact us!
Join the Revolution!
Other expenses include our train ticket back home, our cell phone plans so we can let Mom know where we are every night, and lots and lots of spare bicycle tubes.
