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Since the days of the Spanish explorer Onate, tourism has brought northern New Mexico more money than any other industry. But tourists are not our local economy’s most valuable resource. That would be water.

We often hear about how the people of the Rio Grande Valley survived through many dry spells over the centuries. Perhaps we don’t talk enough about how, during a drought, the 900-year-old Hokoman culture vanished from what is now southern Arizona. Without water, civilizations disappear.

New Mexico’s water supply is shrinking at an alarming rate. Sure, the Buckman Diversion project will buy Santa Fe some time, but we must look at our regional water supply much more creatively if we want a flourishing economy. Fortunately, by using a wide variety of techniques, methods, and systems, many concerned citizens and well-meaning groups are providing hope in the form of practical solutions to our water woes.

In my just-released book, Harvest the Rain: How to Enrich Your Life by Seeing Every Storm as a Resource, I reference over 100 people, organizations, and businesses based in northern New Mexico. Many of them are part of the growing water-harvesting industry; others are backyard gardeners, while others hold positions of power among those who make political decisions on the water front.

Upcoming  Events

Ecological landscaping, water harvesting, wastewater treatment, and watershed protection, all provide excellent green-collar jobs at all skill levels. Laborers, arborists, plumbers, engineers, educators, entrepreneurs, water-quality scientists, product manufacturers, and community organizers all have critical roles to play. Given the economic importance of both water and tourism, let’s look at three upcoming events that focus on regenerating local watersheds as they attracts tourist dollars to northern New Mexico.

For anyone with political-activist leanings, the highlight of the three events will probably be Oscar Olivera’s appearance at Northern New Mexico College on Saturday, November 6. Olivera, who will be speaking at the Traditional Agriculture and Sustainable Living Conference, and his group of Bolivian activists succeeded in forcing Bechtel, Inc. out his country. Back in the early part of this century, Bechtel tried to privatize the water system in Oliveras’s community, but when people began to realize that only the very rich would be able to afford Bechtel’s pricing structure, Olivera’s and his group rose up and turned the international conglomerate back. Although one “water warrior” was killed in the struggle, Olivera sets a hopeful example to local people everywhere: It is unacceptable for mega corporations to own entire communities by controlling the resources necessary for their survival.

Local organizer Emigdio Ballon expects excellent turnout even given a tough economy. “In previous years we’ve had 500 people come to our conference,” Ballon told me. “This year we have some incredible speakers, so we are very excited to see what happens.” The fifth annual conference on Friday, October 5, and Saturday, October 6, costs $75 per person—down 25% from last year’s price. Sponsored by the Native Earth Bio-Culture Council and Tesuque Pueblo, the conference culminates with a circle of Aztec dances, a seed exchange, and a native traditional ceremony. More information can be found at www.foodandseedconference.info.

For people wanting a smaller crowd and more hands-on experience with water harvesting, Ampersand Sustainable Learning Center will be the worth checking out on November 6. Located between Cerrillos and Madrid, New Mexico, Ampersand is hosting a workshop called “The Natural Kitchen” with Los Angeles-based author and sustainability coach Deborah Eden Tull. The cost is $50 to $65, sliding scale.

Sustainable agriculture, green menu planning, zero-waste meals to go, and solar cooking represent some of the topics to be covered, but water harvesters and water-harvester wannabees will be particularly inspired by the workshop’s setting. “Living off of rain catchment has attracted a lot of attention,” says Ampersand executive director Amanda Bramble. “People don’t believe that you can do it on 10 inches of rain per year, but we do. It’s not like we are living on a farm, but a little frugality can go a long way, especially when we divert a lot of our wastewater to the plants around the house.”

Ampersand offers a wide variety of classes, workshops, and tours throughout each spring and autumn. Bramble says the last stretch of road before you get to the center is too undependable to attempt to plan large events in the snowy and rainy seasons. Visit www.ampersandproject.com for a full list of upcoming events.

Less than a week after making the tough decision between the events described above, the Quivira Coalition’s 9^th annual conference will take place in Albuquerque from November 10 through 12. Titled “The Carbon Ranch: Using Food and Stewardship to Build Soil and Fight Climate Change,” the conference will attempt to weave a thread through a variety of important issues. “If we can sequester carbon in the soil, we can fight climate change by growing local food, improving the health of our local watersheds, and helping our local economies,” says Quivira’s executive director Courtney White,  “There’s no downside to increasing the soils capacity to hold water.”

White expects to have about 500 people in attendance at the two-and-a-half-day conference, which costs $125. One-third of the attendees are likely to be ranchers, he told me in a phone interview, and speakers are flying in from California, Missouri, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Washington, D.C., Wisconsin, and Vermont—not to mention Australia. To sign up, check out www.quiviracoalition.org.

It is hard to put a dollar figure on the effect that water problems have on a local economy, but leave it to people from the City Different and the Land of Enchantment to make the best of a difficult situation. As a national leader in water-conscious policy, we do ourselves and our local economy right. There are solutions to our water woes and thanks to people like Emigdio Ballon, Amanda Bramble and Courtney White, we are likely to find them right here at home.

If you happen to be looking for more stories about the water harvesters in our community, please check out www.harvesttherain.com.

Nate Downey is the author of Harvest the Rain, a new book about water and sustainability (Sunstone Press 2010). He’s also the president of Santa Fe Permaculture, Inc., the ecological landscaping company he started in 1992. Contact Nate at 505.424.4444 or via his blog at www.backyarddigest.com.

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You’ve seen the stars around town, the trucks and trailers, the ubiquitous yellow signs with initials, and perhaps the billboards touting “the largest job creation program since the Manhattan Project.” The movie business is clearly here in New Mexico, but are you seeing that business on your bottom line? Since prioritizing motion picture and television as a target for economic development growth in the late 1990’s, NM has gone from a backwater in the movie business (albeit the original home of movies in the U.S.) to one of the biggest production centers outside of New York & Los Angeles. 12,000 jobs are tied to its success and movies have shot everywhere from Red River to Lordsburg. Hundreds of millions of dollars in construction has gone into studios and other infrastructures, and new facilities are planned in many areas of the state. Even a small budget picture can spend millions in a community and it’s not unusual for a single project to spend 7 figures in NM. Stories abound about regular looking guys walking into lumberyards and placing orders for millions of dollars in lumber or a single phone call that results in a six month, 250 car rental contract. A typical movie has 300 or more vendors on their list and a big project can easily surpass 600. This all sounds great but if you’re not one of the 600, how can you access this revenue stream? Let’s explore.

One common myth about the picture business is that it’s from Hollywood and those making the buying decisions are from out of state. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Movies are typically staffed by your friends and neighbors and possibly your existing customers. Even on a big project at least 60% of the crew is from NM and on many films it can exceed 90%. We’ve even seen 100% staffing recently. The local crew makes the decisions on where to buy building materials, house crew, purchase office supplies, and they recommend where to eat. It also means the wages are paid to New Mexicans and that money stays right here in the community. You have two bites of the apple – one to sell to the movie company and one to sell to the crew who live and work here year round. For those in the tourism business, there is also an opportunity to sell to the travelling crew, who, when they have time on their hands, also have a substantial per diem they can spend in your shop, restaurant or gallery.

The first rule in selling to a picture company is to stock what they need. The idea that they use the same lumber or office supplies or eat at the same time as your regular clientele is a misconception that prevents many businesses from working with this industry. For example, if you’re selling to a building contractor erecting a house to last 100 years, the materials will be significantly different than a construction coordinator building a set to last a few months. Obviously they don’t need plumbing or electrical supplies – 1×2 framing is much more popular than 2×4’s and it’s going to take a lot of paint to make that acceptable to the production designer and the director of photography. When it comes to “dressing” that set, it could be everything from urban contemporary through period Western. NM has shot everything from a Mars colony to a post-apocalyptic future U.S. to many, many westerns. Often the set dressers will rent rather than buy because of budget constraints and peculiarities of the project. Having antiques or at least good copies is obviously a premium for these types of shows but your junk could easily be a movie company’s treasure. Don’t assume that somebody won’t need it; make an attempt to market what you have. If you’re a service business, are you open hours that picture companies need you to be? I distinctly remember a situation where the maid service in a hotel in Arizona would not alter maid service time. Unfortunately the picture company was shooting nights and that would have involved the crew moving out in the middle of their precious sleep time. The hotel simply didn’t get it and this raised quite a ruckus, which eventually involved moving the crew in the middle of the day to a new hotel. Having the bar open when they get in late at night or the breakfast served when they leave early in the morning can be the difference between picking up a long-term commitment from the picture company or losing the business to a competitor. Knowledgeable and film friendly staff is always appreciated. One large company last year wanted to rent Priuses only, and there weren’t enough here in town. The rental car company insisted they had other fuel-efficient vehicles and refused to being in additional Prisuses from other locations. The picture company really wanted Priuses so they ended up bringing in over 50 for close to a year to supplement their existing order. This was money that could have been spent here but was lost. It was also a loss to the company, as the vehicles brought in were not subject to the rebate. The moral? If you don’t have it they can’t buy it. The solution? Work with the professionals here in the local communities that know what it is that they will need.

It’s also important to emphasize that what you have is as locally sourced and sustainable as possible. The motion picture business is highly unionized and its members tend to be fully aware of the impact on the environment and their contribution to the sustainability of NM on their global responsibility. Two members of IATSE Local 480 recently published a guide to green filmmaking and it has a heavy influence on local sourcing and sustainability. Thankfully the days when movie sets were torn down and placed in a dumpster are long gone and from top to bottom there is an emphasis on responsible film making. Therefore green or at least recyclable products are sought out and picture companies are often willing to pay a premium to obtain them. This can be as simple as negotiating a rental deal rather than a straight purchase or arranging for pick up and correct disposal when the goods are no longer needed. Several local small businesses have sprung up over the last several years dealing with recycling and reusing materials with everything from organic composting to recycling entire sets becoming the norm. It’s also important to movie companies and especially the local crew that you are a socially responsible business paying not just a living wage but providing access to health care and other benefits to your employees. This can mean as much as the bottom line price to that large purchaser – if that is what you are doing make sure you tell them.

Finally, film technicians do not go shopping at the mall like your friends and neighbors. They are predisposed to spending their money locally but you need to tell them who you are and what you have. Many times there is not an opportunity for them to shop around so they will go to the company they have worked with before. If you are new to this business, you need to get your shingle out in front of these potential customers. Organizations such as the SF Alliance are useful in helping you gain that exposure. Good luck, and we’ll see you in the movies (or at least your stuff!).

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I thought it would be best to start this article as I do every Thursday with my introduction of Cook with the Chef culinary demonstrations at the Santa Fe Farmers Market: The Farm to Restaurant Project (F2R) showcases local chefs of independently owned restaurants who support regional food producers, whether they have direct relationships with farmers who deliver to their doors, or they come down to the farmers’ market, or they are part of the pilot distribution project.

In the current global food system where food is mass produced, sprayed with chemicals and transported hundreds of miles to get to your plate, I am proud to be involved in a project that counteracts this unhealthy mechanism and takes us back to a more community-based way of acquiring our food that respects the earth, the food and the people who grow and prepare it.

Like many others in our community, I make organic and locally grown food a priority in my diet; but when I go out to eat, I don’t want to have to throw those values out the window. Thankfully, as the coordinator of F2R, I know and trust that the project participants do, indeed, utilize local food in their dishes and stand behind their decisions.

According to Patrick Gharrity, Executive Chef of La Casa Sena, “Purchasing local food is important to me because it is evident our food chain is out of whack. I hope to reduce our carbon footprint and to support and boost the local economy.”

Marketing Campaign

Two facets make up the F2R project: the marketing campaign, which includes Cook with the Chef, and the pilot distribution project. The marketing highlights those restaurants and caterers that acquire local food. Each is required to fill out a simple questionnaire that is available to any independent enterprise that would like to join this promotional campaign.

Participation does not depend on the percentage of local food purchases or number of established relationships with producers, but rather, initiatives and commitment to continuous improvements in local purchases and consumer education. We ask about current relationships with food producers, how it’s working, plans to increase purchases, and what barriers they experience in purchasing local food.

Transparency and accountability are key factors to this project, so we ask restaurateurs for a list of growers and producers with whom they work, what they purchase, and how much of their food costs is spent on local food. While some report local food costs at more than 50 percent, (85 percent in the case of the Tree House Pastry Shop & Café) others are less, bringing the average to around 25 percent among all participants. One of our stellar local food establishments, Joe’s Restaurant, projects spending $60,000 on local food this year.

Actual marketing questions are next, inquiring as to a restaurant’s willingness to market their local dishes through the F2R project. Most proudly display the F2R poster in their window (or centered on the wall of their entrance like Amavi), place the logo on their menus, as La Casa Sena does, or on their website, as Flying Star does. Some even go so far as to display “farm cards” acknowledging the sources of their produce. The locally sourced products sign that Back Road Pizza features is right next to where orders are taken. Roland Richter, owner of Joe’s, has an entire newsletter dedicated to explaining his philosophy of why he sources locally, and copies of Omnivores Dilemma by Michael Pollan are for sale. We hope to see more participation in this realm in the coming years, so that this co-branded campaign can come full circle for more public awareness.

Pilot Distribution

The F2R pilot distribution was launched in July of this year, and we are now working with 15 restaurants and 15 producers who have agreed to a “value-chain,” standing order process to help establish this project. A value-chain is a kind of flow chart highlighting relationships, accountability, sustainability and trust, that tracks food from farm to restaurant. Its goal is not the lowest price or fastest convenience but the most embedded value for the food. (The low price/efficiency chain is usually known as a “supply chain.”)

This is being achieved through meetings, feedback, trial and error, satisfied customers, planning and more meetings . . .and a grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Yes, the USDA has acknowledged little old Santa Fe with the Santa Fe Alliance spearheading this project, and awarded us $98,000 to get it off the ground. This grant is called the Farmers Market Promotion Program, however, we are the only entity doing a project like this. Most other grant recipients throughout the country are just trying to launch their own farmers’ markets.

Working with the La Montanita Co-op distribution truck, we make deliveries twice a week to 15 restaurants all around Santa Fe; from high-end places like 315 Restaurant & Wine Bar and Andiamo! to sandwich and pizza joints like Louie’s Corner Café and Back Road Pizza.

We’ve had three solid months of the Santa Fe F2R distribution system with sales reaching a little more than $10,000 at the peak of the season. Unfortunately, this is not enough volume to cover the distribution costs at our current margins, so we will be cutting some transportation costs and going back to a series of stakeholder meetings. This first season was really a “pilot run,” a chance to test a new system, and most importantly, to learn from it. We really look forward to these meetings, as the future of the project will depend on the participation of both restaurants and producers. As Kim Muller, executive chef of Real Food Nation says: “I think the (pilot distribution) program has great potential. I’m sure there will be kinks to work out and some restaurants may be more forgiving than others, but hopefully everyone will remember the “big picture” and realize that this is such an important project to get going and it can be a great model for others to build on.”

In the months and years ahead we will refine the marketing and distribution of the Farm to Restaurant project and garner new and more involved participation from local restaurants. I, for one, am really glad we have project like this in Santa Fe, that not only will be a model for other communities, but will at the very least provide me a list of trusted restaurants that provide healthy food that comes from my very own community.

Kathleen Chambers is the Project Coordinator of the Santa Fe Alliance’s Farm to Restaurant project and party planner of Santa Fe Green Drinks, a monthly community social event for the environmentally concerned. She also is the Marketing Consultant for SIERRA magazine, the national publication of the Sierra Club. For more information, e-mail programs@santafealliance.com

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Sustainable economy-building strengthens the foundation of a culture by working with, rather than against, the values of a community. New Mexico still retains many of the economic strengths stemming from diversity, now lost in most regions of the U.S.  Discovering ways of moving forward with economic development while retaining the cultural preciousness and uniqueness of local cultures depends upon understanding the important interplay between culture and traditional economies.

Eco-cultural sustainability requires listening to indigenous methodologies, and describing the framework for economies that work from within those cultures, rather than instituting an outsider point of view. This re-integration is not introducing something new: it’s just restoring wisdom, bringing back some of the values and underlying economic support systems of 70 years ago.

Instead of discovering new approaches, economy-building is more likely to succeed in a culturally-diverse region by restoring traditional economic forms and supporting small-scale, linked enterprises. Getting clear on the difference between economic development (a term often erroneously interchanged with business development) and the bigger picture of a total economic system is an important starting place. When these terms are interchanged, the small, entrepreneurial business tends to be forgotten.

In traditional and rural societies, economies tend to be holistically interwoven with kinship, religious, educational and political systems. In other words, when the cultural connection is met, economy building is likely to be meaningful and continued over time.

VALUE-BASED APPROACHES

The time has arrived to learn from traditional cultures and respect traditional paradigms for business development. By respecting local traditional business strengths, forms and styles, development can increase a good “cultural fit.” We might start by asking, “what happened to the formerly strong, culturally-based economic forms?”

When assistance programs (policy usually begins at the federal level) began asserting the notion that economic development must be measured in terms of full-time jobs and tax revenues, the strengths of traditional economies began to erode. Rural and tribal communities were often told that they did not have a viable economy and needed to change. In reality, the small-scale (generally extended) family managed enterprises tied to the land had a lifespan of several generations, in contrast to the mainstream American business failure rate of over 50%.

Job-related programs, often defined federally and trickling down to the state level, measure employment in the short-term timeframe. Instead of employment lasting 6 months, in actuality a subsidy to industry, employment needs to be considered in terms of a generation or longer.

The business plan aimed primarily at profit, produced to secure a bank loan, failed to take into account cultural values and strengths of internal cooperation within cultures. In local traditional cultures, multiple income streams (from more than one source) offer more long-term security. Barter offers lower capital-intensive resources, and networks of community cooperation provide the most effective form of marketing – word of mouth.

How do we shift to culturally relevant business networks? These are some of the elements needed for sustainability:

• Value-based enterprise concepts as a foundation for the business concept ( each business decides culturally and individually important values to reinforce),

• Culturally-based business plans,
• A clear definition of community benefits,
• Consumer education strategies to educate the market,
• Respect and care for the environment addressed in the concept,
• Linking to form a network as part of a benefit,
• Low capital investment,
• Culturally-based training, building upon local strengths, and
• Rather than luring or introducing new large businesses, ask what more can be done to encourage locally owned, green businesses to thrive.

The exciting potential for linked, small-scale enterprises is now underway, as reflected by the articles in this issue. The current movement toward small-scale, locally owned enterprise needs culturally-based training, marketing assistance, working capital, and culturally-informed technical assistance to succeed and grow. Participation of all cultures in New Mexico will bring strength through diverse, culturally-based solutions.

Green choices reflect the re-integration of cultural values relating to ecosystems, extended family cooperation, generosity friendliness, community and local economy. Supporting entrepreneurial business development creates long-term, sustainable employment. Green and local are a good cultural fit.

SUSTAINABILITY MEASURES

A fundamental question is “How, specifically, do we achieve sustainability?” The word will otherwise become merely a buzzword. Answer: “Stand the corporate business paradigm  (profit, then find customers) upside down.” If people rather than profit are the foundation of a new paradigm, values and culture must be central.

Success is often defined from a different cultural viewpoint in rural communities than in the urban setting. For business development that is sustainable, benefits to a culture or a community must be considered along with financial advantages.

Often at the crux of resource allocation is the perception that the generation of tax revenues and entrepreneurial activity often isn’t perceived as the greatest means of generating tax dollars. This is a short term view. Seen in the longer-term; sustainable sense, entrepreneurial activity creates products and resources, plus, it generates a more interesting and stable economy for the community and for visitors.

Sustainability criteria can include:

• Meeting basic needs (housing, food, medical care, energy),
• Retaining the cultural traditions of culturally diverse communities,
• Targeting a means of distributing profits or reinvestment in community as well as individuals,
• Creating long-lasting, family-based enterprises,
• Networking for sharing business knowledge,
• Encouraging low energy consumption,
• Retaining land for agriculture, habitat and wilderness, and
• Supporting economic forms, such as multiple income streams for families, community and family gardens, as well as barter systems.

The more specific the measures for these criteria, for each enterprise, the more likely a sustainable outcome. Continuing the dialogue on sustainability measures that include all local cultures and values is central to building a unique, culturally-based economy for our region.

These are a few strategies to mesh enterprise development with local values:

• Increased sales opportunities are needed for locally-made products. There exists an important business niche for “locally-made” stores. Vending, a traditional New Mexico economic form of doing business gradually pushed out of roadside areas over the past 25 years, needs more opportunity.

• Constantly recommend locally-owned and green businesses rather than succumbing to high cost Big Business marketing. Word-of-mouth is the most effective way of marketing.

• Develop the simplest means of consumer education for your business, such as product information, details about locally-owned, or recipes. Use the most inexpensive means. Make copies and give them to customers.

• Think through the corporate training often taught and question whether this training reflects local and cultural values. Adapt where necessary.

• Develop customer service to reflect local traditions.

• Support authenticity in businesses by purchasing locally-made goods.

• Develop local networks with mentoring programs for sharing training, information and linking for effective and inexpensive marketing.

• Give feedback to businesses. Request locally made and green items, and increase awareness in others. As a consumer, you are the market. Not many people make requests at stores – your voice counts more than you may realize.

Such an approach may not bring the immediate, measurable tax base, but it will add some resiliency in times of financial instability. We need to continually rethink measures of success to create a more sustainable economic framework. Simple, community-based solutions are the most effective.

A new economy is coming. Now is the time to restore precious time-honored solutions. Recognizing and respecting the strengths of local, traditional economies will benefit all locally and create a strong national model as well.

Susan Guyette, Ph.D. is Métis (Micmac Indian and Acadian French) and a planner specializing in cultural centers, cultural tourism and native foods. She is the author of Planning for Balanced Development: A Guide for Native American and Rural Communities. E-mail: santafeplanning.com.

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by Carolyn Parrs

His Holiness the Dalai Lama made a stunning proclamation last year at a Peace Summit in Vancouver. He said, “The world will be saved by the Western woman.” This statement shocked the audience and started a tsunami of responses in cyberspace. Can you imagine? Women saving the world?

After the initial elation I felt hearing such a highly respected male leader make such a statement, I thought to myself, duh, of course it will be women. We make 85% of the consumer purchases. We can save the world right now by what we buy – and don’t buy.

Let’s look at the numbers. It is estimated that American women spend about $5 trillion annually. That’s over half of the US GDP. Wow. We purchase everything from autos to healthcare. Here are some quick stats on our purchases:

91% of new homes

66% PCs

92% vacations

80% healthcare

65% new cars

89% bank accounts

93% food

93 % OTC pharmaceuticals

And online:

22% shop online at least once a day

92% pass along information about deals or finds to others

171 average number of contacts in their e-mail or mobile lists

According to the New York Times (8-23-09), “There are more women controlling more wealth in the U.S. than ever before. Of those in the wealthiest tier of the country (defined by the IRS as individuals with assets of at least $1.5 million), 45% are women.”

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see what we can do if we rally our forces and use our economic power to change the course we’re on. We’ve got the power. So what’s standing in the way? Why aren’t we using our smarts at the supermarket to make conscious choices in what we buy? Why aren’t we sending big messages to Madison Avenue every day with our pocketbooks?

As a green marketer for the last 10 years, what I’ve noticed over and over is this: We simply do not know what we’re putting into our pores. Most of us are just plain uninformed.

Would you buy that brand new baby blue carpet for your child’s nursery if you knew that a baby crawling on a conventional carpet inhales the equivalent of four cigarettes a day? (Source: Scientific American Magazine). Would you smear that satiny chartreuse paint on your walls if you knew that indoor air pollution is two to 20 times more toxic than outdoor air pollution, even if you live in an industrialized city? (Source: Environmental Protection Agency). We’re getting out-gassed on a daily basis and we don’t even know it.

In the U.S. about 80,000 industrial chemicals are registered for use in all of the products we eat, touch‚ wear and use to furnish our homes, but fewer than 20% have been tested for their impact on human health and the environment. These include ingredients in our food, household cleaners‚ and body care products. They also include chemicals used on and in toys, furniture, clothing and bed linens.

Of those that have been tested, most have been evaluated for their acute impacts to adult males. Yet, women are the first environment for the next generation. Many chemicals stored in a woman’s body are passed on to her child during pregnancy and later through breast-feeding. A 2005 study by the Environmental Working Group revealed that at least 287 hazardous industrial chemicals pass through the placenta to the fetus. Synthetic chemicals are so prevalent in a woman’s breast milk today that, if bottled for sale, most breast milk would not pass FDA regulations. While studies still document that breastfeeding remains the best option for building infant immunity (I breastfed both of my kids), the quantity of chemicals we are exposing to our young is of tremendous concern and poses an unnecessary burden on the developing child.

Don’t Get Too Depressed. Here’s the Good News.

All of this and more is igniting women to take their health and wellbeing in their own hands. Because we cannot find the kinds of products that are safe enough, healthy enough for our families and children, many of us are making them ourselves.

I coach women. For years, I have listened to the intimate stories and motivations of women and mothers who are not only making green purchases for their homes, but are also putting their missions where their mouths are and starting green businesses. These women are saving the world one diaper, cleaning product, pajama and perfume at a time.

Take Liberty for example, a mother who through the deeply painful experience of losing her baby due to toxic out-gassing in her home, started a business in her community so no parent would ever have to go through what she did. Her store, Indigo Green, in Gainesville, Florida, is now a thriving green business selling healthy home building products nationwide.

And then there’s Margarita, a mother of three who refused to put disposable diapers on her babies because she knew that the chemical in the liners contain sodium polyacrylate, the same substance removed from tampons in 1985. So what did Margarita do? She started Swaddlebees, now a 2 million dollar company that manufactures organic cloth diapers that have moms dumping the disposables for a healthier choice for their babies.

These women, and millions more, are rising up and leading the way. Social entrepreneur and Bioneers co-founder Nina Simons, says in her new book Moonrise: The Power of Women Leading from the Heart, “Though people today often lament a lack of leadership, a new form is arising everywhere, largely from women, and it is as unstoppable as grass that grows up through the cracks in concrete.”

We have Al Gore. But what we need now is Alberta Gore: the strong voice of the feminine on behalf of the well being of the planet and her children. She doesn’t have a power point. She needs no charts. What she does have is her voice, and her purse.

The Moment of Truth

Women, this is it. This is the moment of truth.  We have a very specific and important role in the global change we’re in. We have economic power and ecologic consciousness. We can save the world starting right now with our passions, our purchases, and our pocketbooks. Here are some ideas to get you going:

• Never ever again buy or drink from a plastic water bottle. Even if someone gives it to you for free. If you’re tempted, just think: Oil Spill.

• Read the labels. If you can’t pronounce an ingredient on the package, put it back on the shelf.

• Buy locally grown and produced products. You’ll be healthier for it. And you’ll make a farmer very happy.

• Shut off the lights when you leave the room. That that includes when you’re in a hotel. Energy is energy.

• This holiday, recycle the wrapping paper and send an e-card instead. Or better yet, give gifts and skip the wrapping paper all together.

There are a thousand more but just start with these and commit, really commit to them, and I promise you, we’ll do some serious saving of the world. See, the Dalai Lama was right. We have the power. We always did. We just didn’t know it.

Carolyn Parrs, producer and host of the podcast/community Women Of Green, is a Certified Business and Life Coach, and a principal at Mind Over Markets, a Santa Fe-based green marketing communications company. You can contact her at carolyn@mindovermarkets.com.

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I first met Vicki Pozzebon in 2006, shortly after I started Edible Santa Fe, and just after she had taken the reigns as Executive Director for the Santa Fe Independent Business Alliance. The setting was a first Tuesday Alliance meeting. It was the first time I’d attended, and I didn’t anticipate the ways in which our paths would soon merge. For several years after, I had the good fortune to share a community office across the hall from the Alliance, where my friendship and connection to Vicki and the Alliance blossomed. Over countless morning chats fueled by coffee and chai from the Aztec Café, Vicki and I brainstormed ways in which we could engage our community around the issue of local food. We came at the discussion from different places – me, a passionate foodie who honestly believed – and still do – that we would all be healthier and happier eating the rainbow of locally grown foods from our regional foodshed, and Vicki – calculating the economic impact eating locally would have on the bottom line for local businesses, our agrarian community, and our local economy. Our frequent conversations led us to collaborate on the Farm to Restaurant Project and Cook with the Chef programs; both barely alive initiatives Vicki had inherited from her predecessors.

We hatched our concept for the Cook with the Chef series in early 2007, and we were so excited by the idea and so sure that everybody else would be excited – that we were genuinely dismayed when nearly all the chefs we called failed to return our enthusiasm or our calls. Sixty phone calls later, we managed to find ten local chefs who were interested in giving it a try. We convinced George Gundry and the Santa Fe Farmers’ Market to give us space at the market on Saturday mornings, I donated my grill and cooktop to the cause – and we were off. We had little more than our own enthusiasm that first year, which was quickly followed by buy-in from the local chefs and the hundreds of locals who turned up every week to watch them cook using ingredients sourced from market growers and ranchers.

Fast forward to today: Under Ms. Pozzebon’s guidance and the BALLE organization’s structure, the SF Alliance has become the third largest organization of its kind in the country. Our humble Farm to Restaurant project and the successful Cook with the Chef program have evolved with the help of a $98,000 USDA grant. These programs have become engines of economic development within the community, using food and fuel sovereignty as models to build and sustain a healthy local, living economy right here in Santa Fe. The Alliance programs are successfully putting more locally produced foods on your plates in restaurants, helping to create market opportunities for local growers and food producers, and raising awareness about the importance of a local food economy on our community’s bottom line. The BALLE community at large is looking at these SF Alliance programs as a model to strengthen and foster healthy communities in other parts of the country.

While food is not the sole driver of the Alliance and BALLE, it is certainly part and parcel of their vision: Think about an Alliance in every community in America that functions in harmony with local ecosystems, meeting the basic needs of all people – feeding them, housing them, providing local jobs; all by localizing food and fuel and keeping the dollars and jobs generated by these sectors within their communities. A Local Living Economy ensures that economic power resides locally to the greatest extent possible, sustaining vibrant, livable communities and healthy ecosystems in the process.

Like the Alliance and BALLE network, in four short years our little Edible community has grown from 13 to 65 community magazines, reaching more than 15 million readers a year. Our mission is still the same – to change the way our communities think about food by re-connecting them to their local foodshed; by putting a name, a face, a family, on the food that sustains each of us. Each one of us is focused on connecting you, the eater – with the farmers, ranchers, cooks and food artisans that make up your local food community. By telling the stories of the people who nurture our surrounding farms and fields, the stories of people keeping their families, their culture and histories alive through food, we connect the dots in a way that roots us more deeply in ourselves, and in our community.

While the pace of our lives and the speed at which we send and receive information can often leave us feeling disconnected and overwhelmed, everybody still eats. In an age when we are beginning to see that the system in place responsible for our care and feeding has some serious cracks, being able to look into the eyes of the person who grew your spinach and collected still warm eggs feels safe and good, and very human. Edible magazines and websites make it easy for people everywhere to find information about local food and events in their own backyards and beyond, while Edible Radio reaches across the nation to bring the voices and mission of food advocates, cooks, activists and writers to a global audience.

Working with the Alliance over the years has been a labor of love. I passionately believe in the work they do, and our missions have a synergy that makes working together a natural. Looking back – I see that the things that drove Vicki and I to local food and our subsequent collaborations can be likened to a recipe of sorts. We both came to the table with different ingredients and ideas, put them together, and have worked to create something that has become – like a good recipe – so much more than the sum of our parts.

Kate Manchester is the publisher of Edible Santa Fe, producer and host of Edible Radio.com, and co-host with Vicki Pozzebon the first Friday of each month on Local First Radio (1260) – where they talk about all things local food.

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Nowadays there is so much confusion about what is “sustainable,” “organic,” or “natural” food, that as Indo-Hispanos, we sometimes forget our own ancestral models that have worked historically and make more sense. One such concept that has fallen by the wayside as we embrace and debate such abstract concepts as “food security” and “food democracy” is the philosophy of convide, or the sharing of food among neighbors.

Indo-Hispano (Chicana/o) communities have been sharing water and food since time immemorial. The sharing of the water comes from the concept of equidad, or equality, as stated in the Quran, and is an ethical practice known as repartimiento.

Therefore, repartimiento and convide are two basic values that have made our communities sustainable over the past 400 years here in northern New Mexico and southern Colorado.

Convide – from the concept con vite; that is, “with” and  “alive” – is an idea that has allowed our communities to survive and thrive when it comes to eating healthy food. Even the Slow Food Movement, the presumed brainchild of Italian journalist Carlo Petrini, has embraced the concept of convivium.

Here in the Rio Arriba, when the women made something special, be it biscochitos, tamales, a special caldo or guiso, the whole community would aprobar or taste the food; no one would go hungry. The same would happen when an animal was butchered; everybody shared un pedacito, a piece of meat. The day of the matanza was a day of fiesta. This was the ultimate convite, and prefigures by centuries the same ideas of the Slow Food conviviums. For the matanza, everyone had a specialty: The chichorranera/o was the one who made the pork cracklins, and women usually made the chile colorado de matanza (when it was pork); the tortillera was the maker of the tortillas, etc.

Then there was the hueso guisandero that people shared to make caldo (soup), when times were really bad, to at least flavor the spring water that was infused with wild edible herbs and boiled soft tubers.

The New Mexico Acequia Association was involved in a food project, a local food assessment in four watersheds including the Embudo, which includes the communities on the ríos Picuris, Santa Bárbara, El Valle and Ojo Sarco, all the way down to where the río Embudo empties into the Grande. The three most important concepts you will hear from the elders for strategies for survival are: repartimiento, convite and working en cooperación. The best example is the acequia, a truly worker-owned and democratically governed cooperative.

By sharing resources, be it water or food, and cooperating in labor, the people here were able to sustain themselves with high altitude grass-fed beef that summered up in Tres Ritos munching on the upland grass meadows.

The local food included local chile, both green and red; corn, which people used to prepare a wide range of traditional cuisine from tamales to posole. Local “Spanish” wheat was used to make flour, which was then made into the lenten pastry favorite, panocha. This is made from sprouted wheat seeds, which are dried and then ground on metates into a flour. The traditional food included fabas, lentejas, and all types of meat: beef, lamb, goat, pig, and chicken, all produced by the families or neighbors, as well as wild quail, turkey, pigeons, deer, elk, and at one time, buffalo. The diverse cuisine of the Rio Arriba included different recipes for the use of fish including freshwater eels from the Río Grande. The regional manito cuisine presented a nutritious set of food varieties.

And this is only the beginning of what was produced “natural y con la ayuda de Diós,” naturally and with the blessing of God. To this saying, the people often add an additional phrase expressing the interconnection of people to place: “para nos, para vos y para los animalitos de Dios,” (for us, for you, and for God’s animals). With fe (faith) in the land, water, and all creation, we survived by adopting and following these ethics of repartmiento, conviviendo y cooperando.

Conviviendo, helping each other as community, instead of simply “sustaining” to save and then invest somewhere else, is what has blessed us with “una vida buena y sana y alegre” because we have followed the simple philosophy of sharing the water, food and work and that has made our lives festive.

All these made the people resilient, or as we say “correoso,” meaning flexible; that is, “cuando no hay lomo de todo como” (“when there is no loin, I’ll eat whatever there is”). Correoso means one is able to recuperate from whatever life throws at you, be it a hailstorm that destroys all the crops, or a frost. It makes a people resistant, combative and difficult to overthrow. One has to be flexible and elastic to survive in times of crisis, correoso.

Juan Estevan Arellano is a writer and researcher focusing on traditional agriculture and irrigation practices. He is the translator-editor of the book Ancient Agriculture, and of many articles in both Spanish and English about the rural traditions of northern New Mexico. He and his wife, Elena, raise heirloom fruit, vegetables and wild greens in the Embudo area along the Río Grande.

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Working Locally, Networking Nationally

Vicki Pozzebon

May 2010 marked my four-year anniversary as the Executive Director of the Santa Fe Alliance. It went by without much notice – until I started to prepare for the 2010 Business Alliance for Local Living Economy (BALLE) National Conference in Charleston, SC. I was working diligently, preparing to lead a day of events for executive directors and network leaders to kick off the conference. But I was stuck. It was like writer’s block but worse because I had to come up with interesting ideas to connect these leaders from all over the country.

Most of our networks started with business owners or volunteers working with someone who has run nonprofits or marketing campaigns. We called ourselves Executive Directors but came from such diverse backgrounds, our resumes did not fit the job descriptions we were filling. Over the years, it never occurred to me that I might pick up a phone and discuss a structural problem, a community partnership, or a legislative issue with another network leader. We were working so hard in our own communities, we didn’t look up long enough to realize we had colleagues. Then it hit me, in the way that things usually do in the middle of the night: We are Network Leaders. These are my people; we are all working on the same issue, just different variations on a theme.

Before that moment, I never realized just how different our organizations are from other nonprofits or economic development corporations or even chambers of commerce. We work outside of city and county governments, mostly start from a grassroots movement to keep dollars local, support sustainable business, and educate the community. We are advocacy groups, we are marketing and press machines, we are resource libraries, we are guest speakers at events, we are events and event planners, we are linking businesses to community nonprofit organizations to accomplish work that is being called “innovative” and “social enterprise.” We are BALLE Networks, a hybrid of nonprofits, economic development corporations, social innovation think tanks, and trade membership organizations. We are over 80 networks strong across the county and growing every week.

In March of 2010, BALLE announced the Regional Hub Networks, choosing four of its largest, strongest, and successful networks. The Santa Fe Alliance was chosen as a Regional Hub because of our Regional Food and Fuel Project and leadership on many projects. The Sustainable Business Network of Greater Philadelphia has launched an initiative to develop a green collar job strategy for that region that would benefit both low-income communities and local businesses. In part because of this work, Philadelphia was the recipient of more Pathways out of Poverty green job training grants than any city in the country. Sustainable Connections in Bellingham, WA is one of our oldest and most successful BALLE networks and will be one of many cities nationwide featured in a PBS “Now” special called “Fixing the Future.” David Brancaccio, host of “Now,” said the special’s focus will be on finding new ways to think about and structure the economy after the financial meltdown and recession. Local First in Grand Rapids, MI has asserted itself as the premier organization supporting and advocating for local businesses in the Midwest, and recently partnered with the city of Grand Rapids to create a recycling rewards program.

The Regional Hub Leaders have been consulting with community leaders all over the country who are interested in starting alliances and digging deep into their local living economies. Now, through another BALLE program, Community of Practice, 12 network leaders have been accepted into a program to learn, share and convene around issues affecting our communities and country. The annual cohort-based program will link and strengthen the pioneering BALLE network leaders who are creating the local living economies movement. I am proud and honored to be a BALLE Hub Leader and a member of the Community of Practice Cohort, along with my colleagues from all over the country.

What does this mean for our local Santa Fe Alliance, the community of members and partners? We now have a national network to talk about our own community with, to spotlight our own work, and to dialogue with on issues that affect all of us. As I explained to one Alliance member “Imagine being able to pick up the phone or send an email to a business owner just like you in a town across the country, and be able to instantly connect about issues because you are both members of local BALLE networks. You’re engaged in your own community, they are engaged in theirs. Now the networks can link you so you can share ideas too.” We have the opportunity to say, “Hey – we do that here! Or, we did something similar in our community!” I look forward to sharing the work of BALLE with our community and shining a bright light on our own community’s great work.

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BALLE

The Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE) is North America’s fastest growing network of socially responsible businesses, comprised of over 80 community networks representing 22,000 independent business members across 30 U.S. states and Canadian provinces. BALLE networks create local living economies through the building blocks of independent retail, sustainable agriculture, renewable energy, green building, local zero-waste manufacturing, community capital, independent media, and local arts and culture.

On October 28 and 29, the Santa Fe Alliance will host a BALLE How-To Workshop and Regional Gathering for those interested in starting networks or for those already established in the Southwest. It’s an opportunity to gather and share, and we are proud to host! For more information please visit http://santafealliance.com/programs/balle-regional-gathering/

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When I started my journey with the Santa Fe Alliance in 2006 it didn’t occur to me that my family background would have such a big influence on my daily work. I have a Master’s Degree in Theatre Arts, not a background in economic development. Our “new economy” experts have told me that my lack of economic development experience means I have nothing to unlearn when it comes to the work I do.  When the Santa Fe Alliance began to build out a project to localize food and energy economies for greater community wealth I puzzled over the questions “how did I get here?” and “what is it in me that leads me to move this work forward in my community?” After many conversations with local farmers, business owners and construction laborers, it hit me like a hammer . . . Local is where I come from.

My family is Italian. I’m actually first generation Canadian; both of my parents were immigrants from Italy whose families arrived in Canada in the 1950s to start anew. They brought with them the traditional farming, labor and business skills developed in the Old Country. All my uncles were developers in Northern Ontario, and their sons became owners of construction businesses – roofers, framers, plumbers, electricians – every one of them. My uncles and cousins could build a house from the concrete foundation to the roof without ever hiring a single outside person. But they have hired hundreds of employees between them; they each have owned successful businesses, building many, many houses, condos, and business parks across Ontario. My father was a water-well driller who taught us that without fresh water, you have nothing, and that to conserve water was to save money, so we had that covered too. My mother was his business manager for many years. I grew up in my father’s well-drilling office, answering service calls. My sister became his personal secretary, learning how to type more than 60 words a minute at the age of 10. In the early 1980s my father had a crazy notion that solar panels would be the answer to his hot water prayers; being the only male in a household of females, he was tired of running out of hot water. In the dead of winter he installed the biggest, ugliest solar panels I have ever seen on the peaked roof of our house. We were mocked as a family and my father was called slightly crazy for thinking that the Canadian sun (what sun?) would ever supply enough energy to power our hot water consumption. But my dad outwitted them all and soon the neighbors wanted solar panels, too. In the late 1980s my father sold his well-drilling business to become a plumber and started installing solar hot water and geothermal systems. Now in his 70’s, he is learning all the new technologies of solar installation, and my 19-year-old nephew is an Electrician Apprentice. We are family business. It’s in my blood.

My family also owned farms or had subsistence farms that could feed the whole town. Both of my grandparents moved into their new Canadian homes in the suburbs and quickly rototilled the front and back yards to make way for as many fruit trees and vegetables as they could plant in a season. It was nothing for my grandmother to pluck a chicken in the back yard for the weekend’s dinner. My young cousins and I spent hours upon hours playing hide and seek in the long rows of green beans and corn stalks every summer. Apple and cherry trees lined my front yard and grape vines provided the season’s family vintage. And in the fall my entire family picked, harvested, cleaned, pitted, packed, froze, baked and cooked – and made barrels and barrels of wine. Kids, aunts, uncles, grandparents and extended family relatives were all there for the harvest. My grandmother was an expert at making vats of tomato sauce to carry us through the winter. And she was a master at feeding people, of course; she was the Italian Matriarch. It was common for my grandmother to feed the entire neighborhood, not just her own family.   I have strong memories of my uncles, cousins and their work crews eating at long picnic tables set up on job sites, digging into bowls of freshly picked salad and vegetables, grilled meat from my uncle’s cattle, and drinking milk straight out of the barn. My aunts were always right there to refill their dishes before the men could protest that they were too full.

Extended family was involved too. This might be a good time to tell you that I have hundreds of relatives, and they all owned businesses as well. I often joke that in our family we had the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker, along with the plumber, the roofer, the clothes tailor, the accountant, the lawyer, the restaurant owner, the janitor and the lawyer. You get the idea.

When the Santa Fe Alliance’s Farm to Restaurant Pilot Distribution Project launched its first direct delivery to restaurants on July 16, I got a little choked up. The Farm to Restaurant Project started as a marketing campaign in 2005 to promote the locally owned restaurants in our membership that were committed to using regional items on their menus. Now, five years and a lot of sweat equity later, it’s a true business model that is serving restaurants directly with the products they need from our New Mexico farmers. Finally the circle of my journey feels complete. The question of “how I got here, doing local economic development work after 10 years of working in the arts” is no longer a mystery to me. I come from a world where buying from your neighbors meant literally buying from your family, where knowing that your food was from a farm meant that it came from a cousin’s farm and was butchered by an uncle, where owning a local business meant supporting the entire community. That’s where I come from and this is what “local” means to me.

Vicki Pozzebon is the Executive Director of the Santa Fe Alliance, a non profit organization working toward building a local living economy through community, local ownership and advocacy. Visit www.santafealliance.com for more information.

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