This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Community Corner

Grassroots Group Seeks to Make over Local Economy

"Food feet, not food miles."

As the price of gas tops $4 per gallon and seems headed ever upward, a small grassroots group based in the Centreville area wants to teach residents to become more self-sufficient and help the community resist future economic downturns.

Transition Centreville Clifton is aimed at helping revitalize Centreville and make it less reliant on the larger economies that dominate the Northern Virginia landscape.

They are not talking about turning back the clock to post-colonial days when farmers rolled massive hogshead casks of tobacco down dirt paths to the docks on the Occoquan. And, it’s not a born-again segment of the environmental movement. Instead, they see it as a revolution in socioeconomic localization.

Find out what's happening in Centrevillewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

To put it more simply, they want to equip communities for the dual challenges of climate change and the constant decline in petroleum reserves, said environmental scientist Jackson D. Harper, of Clifton, a member of the group’s steering committee.

There are about 300 “Transition Communities” in the United States where citizens support each other in finding ways to live with less energy, he said. Communities are encouraged to seek out methods for reducing energy usage as well as reducing their reliance on long supply chains that are totally dependent on fossil fuels for essential items. The movement is patterned after The Transition Handbook: from oil dependency to local resilience, by Rob Hopkins, a British environmentalist who taught a permaculture, or natural building course, at Kinsale Further Education College in Ireland.

Find out what's happening in Centrevillewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Food is a key area, and groups talk about "Food feet, not food miles." 

“It wasn’t so long ago that we all got our food locally and we didn’t’ go to big box stores to get everything,” Harper said at a recent meeting of the group to discuss local food options. “With oil in terminal decline, we have a lot to do and we need to think about our food supply.”

Initiatives so far have included creating community gardens to grow food and an increasing support for local farmers, either through farmer’s markets or Community Supported Agriculture or CSAs. The way that CSAs work is straightforward; residents cover a portion of the farm operating budget by purchasing a share of the season's harvest. In return, they get a box of locally-grown, fresh produce every week for most of the growing season, said Leigh Hauter, who runs one of the area’s oldest CSAs out of his 100-acre Bull Run Mountain Farm.

“We try to grow everything that you can naturally grow in Virginia,” Hauter said. “And we try to make it fun for the shareholders. Right now we have a you-pick-‘em asparagus field and raspberry patch. Kids can also get eggs out of the hen house.”

It can be as uncomplicated as putting up solar panels on the roof of your home or starting gardens in the back yard, said Olga Garcia Harper, Jackson’s wife and group co-founder.

“With the constant decline in petroleum,” Olga Harper said, “the ‘transition towns’ that England and the U.S. are making will totally change the way we live, eat, and work.”

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?

More from Centreville