Ecoshed

An ecoshed is a geographical niche network of community food webs practicing adaptive watershed rehabilitation. The ecoshed concept is similar to a social ecosystem, except that the culturally defined geographic area is set by the watershed boundary. Ecoshed is a contraction of the terms ecology and watershed. Local community food webs are interconnected networks in which each ecoshed can exchange food, goods, and services. Healthy watershed rehabilitation management based on integrated river science foundations will form resilient ecosystems. Local cultural restoration results when community food webs empower its human members through shared goals. Ecoshed processes can reestablish local control and knowledge relationships in food supply systems that have become distorted by increasing distance (physical, social, and metaphorical) between producers and consumers.

An ecoshed uses bottom-up strategies to rehabilitate watersheds through community participation. Top-down government policies are often tied into capitalistic limitations and thus take many years to become established. The concept is analogous to how organic food certification was eventually established from small groups of empowered citizens growing their own organic food and communities without government subsidies.

An ecoshed establishes a boundary within the watershed of a community-based food consumption framework. Localization of food systems and chains implies that food should be consumed as close to the point of origin as possible. The term foodshed has been used to include all food within a certain distance. As defined by Gail Feenstra, a foodshed is an area that is defined by a structure of supply and the foods that can be grown within it, as well as the social and cultural elements of a community. An ecoshed reflects deep local watershed ecosystem knowledge and passively integrates communities with global ecological degradation. Instead of the global powers dictating the value of ecosystem services, the ecoshed concept works with local cultures and economies from the bottom up.

Ecosheds can meet the needs of its citizens through locally owned enterprises empowering communities to have greater control over their basic need of foods and services. The profits are recycled back into the community, stabilizing the economy and providing incentives to protect the environment. The full cost pricing of energy, materials, and land use will expose the true inefficiencies of conventional agriculture, making ecosheds the better alternative.

The ecoshed concept may seem abstract and faces challenges to adoption; however, many foundations are working to create proper distribution and marketing systems. Millions of enterprises and public initiatives that value local food economies at the fringes of the global economy are gaining momentum. Local grassroots food movements such as Slow Food, community-supported agriculture, and farmers’ markets are already established. A healthy watershed will evolve from a successful ecoshed objective. The basic healthy food and clean water benefits of the ecoshed are the first drops in the bucket to solving global environmental crises such as climate change and river rehabilitation. Through integrated adaptive watershed rehabilitation, local food webs, and social restoration, the synergisms to achieving ecosystem integrity will spin food webs of ecoshed districts.