This past Friday, we were invited to present at as part of a regenerative agriculture panel for the Global PDX conference. We were thrilled to share the stage with a researcher from OSU who brought along MILLION year old ice samples to talk about climate change trends, a consultant with experience in urban agriculture, and a communications staff person who talked about sustainable ranching.

Aside from the discussion on glaciers and how that research tracks global trends - it was striking that all of our presentations were pretty local - leading to a question about if we were examples of options or case studies, or? The unspoken question: “How is this global?”

As the leader of PFTP for the past three years, I’ve gotten to make a lot of arguments about the importance of fruit trees, the role of fruit trees, and why fruit trees are also urban forestry, soil remediation, water quality improving - you name it. This was my first time getting to talk about our whole project as it could relate globally, which was a fun exercise.

This morning, NPR had a great conversation with the co leaders of the new Center for Braiding Indigenous Knowledges and Science. One of the things that struck me was hearing one of the speakers share that he had come from an international “traditional”/western science background that tried to implement large, global solutions at local levels - and that it wasn’t really successful. His take away is one that we experience and talk about a lot - communities have the solutions more often than not. What our communities need is typically resources - time, money, sometimes different expertise.

Having sat with the presentation now for a few days, I think that is the piece that felt odd in the day. Obviously climate change is a global issue and there are clearly some things that need to happen at a global, systemic, level. As organizations and individuals though, what is the role of personal choice and action? If PFTP only directly impacts the Portland Metro area, is our work insignificant?

Spoiler alert - I think not. As a community of people who more often than not want to make positive change that benefits a broad range of Portlanders, PFTP functions as one option in a vast sea of personal choices and actions that people can take. We are passionate about how we fit into a global movement, by focusing on community values and a shared interest in the trees that feed and shade our neighborhoods.

But what are YOUR thoughts? What is the role of individuals and community based organizations in global settings?