If you want to understand the potential power of local economies, pay a visit to Burlington’s Intervale some afternoon between April and October. It’s on the site of the old city dump and of the last dairy farm in the city—it’s literally on the wrong side of the tracks, right behind the city’s main power plant, at most a mile from the center of town. Here, on a couple of hundred acres, a dozen different farmers are raising: vegetables, eggs, black beans, wheat, berries. Lots of them—at least a half million pounds. Six or seven percent of the fresh food needs of Vermont’s largest city. That’s a real number. That’s not a pilot project, or an experiment—that’s a sign of what could happen everywhere else. Because remember—this is Burlington, Vermont. Think long winter, think short growing season. Think Atlanta. Or Santa Barbara. Or Houston.

Does it matter? Of course it matters. Every bite of food from the Intervale travels maybe three miles before it reaches a gullet; the average American forkful, by contrast, covers 1,500 miles from factory farm to supermarket. And every bite of food here employs local people—fifty or more at the height of summer, even though two of the biggest farms are CSAs where members do much of the picking. Oh, and it tastes like food, not like “food.”

What would it take to scale it up further? Not so much, maybe. There’s plenty more rich land along the flood plain of the Winooski River. At the moment most of it is being used to grow corn for commodity dairy production. But what if, as many now think is possible, the city of Burlington starts backing the local alternative currency, Burlington Bread? If you could use the scrip to pay your taxes, and your light bill, it would become real overnight—not just a medium of exchange for backrubs and vegan meals. Suddenly every merchant in town would be willing to take it—and just as suddenly people holding the currency would have a strong incentive to use it at, say, the Intervale. Or some other local farm.

But what would it really take? It would take the continued spread of the idea that we are neighbors, members of communities, instead of isolated consumer atoms each engaged in the economists’ beloved search for the lowest price. And that is a deep cultural change, one that won’t happen without lots of people speaking and writing and living it. I spent last winter living only on the food of the Champlain Valley, just to see if it could be done. It could—in style, even in the middle of March. And it didn’t just taste good—it felt good. I met neighbors, got to know my county in a new way. And sensed the possibilities for what could someday come.

Cheap energy has allowed us to spend the last 200 years expanding our supply lines. But expensive oil and the threat of global warming may well compel us to spend the next century slowly reeling them in. That sounds grim—like scarcity and hardship. Until you visit the Intervale on an empty stomach.

Bill McKibben is the author of The End of Nature, and Wandering Home: A Long Walk Through America’s Most Hopeful Landscape, Vermont’s Champlain Valley and New York’s Adirondacks.