The Catskills water management plan that protects both NYC water and the livelihoods of farmers in the watershed. Support from rural development agencies in Appalachia for entrepreneurship of innovative agriculture-related businesses. In order to scale up these examples, actions are needed at all levels to broaden the emergent new social contract between agriculture and society. Leadership requires nurturing personal growth, teamwork, collaboration, community organizing, policy campaigns, institutional change and shifts in the political economy of society. Watershed organizing provides lessons of locally organized solutions.
Some solutions are larger in scope and require public engagement with state and national policy.
This infrastructure often requires public investment and publicly provided technical assistance. Similarly, locally owned businesses can help support the entrepreneurial climate that reinforces broad based participation in agriculture. A new relationship is needed between the nation and the global economy neither protectionist withdrawal nor an absence of social and environmental condition.