The transition to a food system free of fossil fuels is in no way a far-fetched utopian proposal. It is, rather, an immediate, unavoidable, and immense challenge that calls for unprecedented levels of creativity at all levels of society.

The encouraging news is that the movement toward clean, local farms and food is already underway and gaining strength. It receives scant media coverage, but consumers in practically every city, town and neighborhood across America are reconnecting with local farmers and artisans to create the seeds of a new agrarianism.

All this and more is possible. Human innovation has the potential to turn things around.  As The Worldwatch Institute’s State of the World 2008 report put it, “We have the tools today to steer the global economy onto a sustainable path…The task now is to bring them together and scale them up so that they become the norm across today’s economies.”