Occupy Backyards

Based on the Declaration of the Occupation of New York City

__________________________________________________

Why is Occupy Backyards so Important?

The Declaration for Chickens to Occupy Backyards is about healthy food systems and local economies. It's about kitchen gardens and family farms that produce food grown in living soils, using sustainable systems, with environmentally regenerating methods, including chicken helpers.

The stakes are high. The era of cheap and abundant food is quickly coming to a close. Rising oil prices along with grains used for fuel production has created spikes in food prices, and shortages in supply. Couple this with massive erosion of topsoils, climate change, and rising populations, and the stage is set for serious food shortages.

 

Nutritional poverty is epidemic with obesity, diabetes, and chronic-diseases that are the result of poor eating habits and life-styles. The USDA has defined Food Deserts for localities without access to anything to eat but processed food. Famine and food shortages are happening in many parts of the world. It does not have to be this way.

The Occupy Backyards with family flocks offers a practical solution to to an urgent and profound dysfunction of our present commercial food production and distribution system. In many ways, chickens are the missing link that enable local, healthy, sustainable food supply systems; with less dependence on oil.

Change is in the air; everybody feels it. Part of this change is how we choose to eat and live. Another part of this change is what we choose to value.

We are telling ourselves the wrong story. The story of unlimited consumption, monocropping, Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFO) and processed food designed to keep folks eating addicting high-saturated fat, sugar and starch is not the only story our culture can buy into. How about a new story that values healthy people, livestock, plants and soils. How about a story that considers the future, not only of our species, but of our entire planet.

To quote the father of medicine, Hippocrates: "Let food be your medicine and medicine be your food." The saying "you are what you eat" has never been truer. The health care crisis won't be solved until the majority of food eaten by our citizens is from crops grown in living soils. These crops would provide foods that are nutrient dense (Nourishing Traditions), and are not King Corn based, nor high in vegetable-based saturated oils.

That's why you, and others can occupy your backyard with kitchen gardens, support local farms and have control over your food supply. Bumper stickers are available from the store.

Declaration of Chickens' Occupation of Backyards

Based on the Declaration of the Occupation of New York City

Oprah Hen-Free is the inspiration and "wind beneath the wings" of the Declaration to Occupy Backyards. She represents—on behalf of all chickens—"We hereby declare The Chicken Have More Plan to be a sustainable strategy that employs family flocks occupying backyards across America—and even the world—to enable individuals, communities and local governments to be more food self-sufficient and economically stable.

As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all local growers, family farmers and backyard gardeners, who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we, heritage chickens, are your allies.

As one flock, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the local sustainable agriculture requires the cooperation of humans, livestock and plants alike.

That a democratic, healthy food supply system derives its just power from the people who grow and consume that good food.

Our system must protect local rights to grow wholesome, healthy, non-GMO food, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors and future generations.

We understand that urban gardening, farm-yards and local agriculture growers are on the verge of a giant leap forward, ushering in a new—and necessary—era of local and home food production that utilize heirloom seeds and heritage livestock. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.

1. The Chicken Have More Plan shows how folks can have a good meal of eggs and garden goods that only travel the short distance from backyards. Heritage chickens have valuable skill-sets that can be employed in local food production systems. Some of these “skill-sets” include producers of manure for fertilizer and compost, along with being mobile herbiciders and pesticiderers. And of course, local chickens provide eggs and meat that don’t have to travel over 1,200 miles through a feedlot.

2. Diverting Food and Yard “Waste” from Trash Collection. Chickens can help convert biomass “wastes” such as kitchen scraps, leaves, grass clippings and garden residuals into organic assets of fertilizer, compost, garden soil and eggs. Employing chickens as clucking civil service workers can divert tons of residential “biomass wastes” from the trash collection system, and transform those residuals into compost and top soil, also called “black gold” and one of the most valuable commodities on the planet. As a result, this can save BIG TIME tax payer dollars from not being spent on equipment, personnel, fuel, tipping fees and other costs associated with solid waste management streams. This is because much of these household biomass residuals don’t have to even leave the backyard.

3. Decrease Oil Consumption and Oil Dependence. Commercial food systems cannot produce without oil. Over 17% of America’s oil is used in agricultural production and, about 25% of this oil is used for fertilizer. The total energy input of food production, processing, packaging, transporting and storing can be greater than the calories consumed. It is estimated that every person in this country requires about one gallon of oil per day just to bring food to the table. How sustainable is that? Chickens, and their skill sets, can help America kick the oil habit by decreasing the amount of oil products used in feeding ourselves...and, at the same time, keep landfills from filling up with methane-producing organic matter.

4. Emergency Preparedness. When disasters occur, local food can become a matter of life or death. Keeping local chickens is even more important in times of trouble. With family flocks, folks can still have a good meal of eggs or chicken stew.

5.  National Defense. Whoever controls your food supply controls you. Food supply—or lack of it—has created and destroyed civilizations since time began. The Defense Department has repeatedly stated that America’s most vulnerable points is not with planes crashing into buildings or things getting blown up. Americas weakest links are our food and water supplies. Local agriculture rich with living soils, and modern day Victory Gardens help keep America strong and save.

City Chicks ushers in a new paradigm of how to use chickens in a variety of roles that help decrease carbon footprints, save tax payer dollars and support local food supply production. And all this is done in a way that is biologically sustainable, economically equitable, and serves you, your communities, our Earth and the future generations of all beings.

To the people of the world, employ chickens and Occupy Backyards Across the Planet to Enable Local Agriculture and assert your power. Exercise your right to peaceably grow your own food, use your own heirloom seeds, support family farms and community supported agriculture. Save and protect heirloom seeds and heritage livestock. Help to create a process to address the problems of a healthy food supply that is grown in living soils. This, will in turn, will generate solutions for our health care crisis, environmental pollution and epidemics of nutritional poverty and hidden hunger in food deserts across the planet.

To all communities to take action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy, we offer support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal. Join us and make your voices heard and your food supply green, abundant and healthy!