I'd like to call Lyle Estill out just a little bit on his Dec. 3 My View column "Top down versus bottom up" about the movements for locally produced food and fuel in our region.

First, congratulations on getting the state to fund not one, but two $5 million capital investments in biofuel technologies and infrastructure! Now is not the time for making small plans, and these investments will go a long way toward building a national model for energy independence. I look forward to touring the new facilities as they progress!.

Second, I think Estill offers a healthy dose of criticism about how the local foods communities manage their time and their messages, but ... I think he cherry-picks his evidence in favor of biodiesel at the expense of local foods. I think a more compelling, and more felicitous storyline about local foods would have been to report on another heady meeting he attended, not in a church basement, but in the light of the N.C. State University arboretum, when Wendell Berry came to ask for our input on creating a 50 year farm plan. But what brought him to NCSU? And why did he declare his visit to our facility one of the highlights of his national tour? Perhaps it is because we, too, are winning multi-million dollar grants to advance the research and teaching agenda of environmentally sustainable farming practices. And because we, too, have established some of the most advanced facilities (in our case, 2000 acres of farm-scale organic research systems) in the country.

Editorially, Estill still could have talked about the grassroots support that exists in North Carolina, the individual farmers who were called to that meeting (many of whom farm less than 10 acres of land!), and how Berry was seeking to build a comprehensive national agricultural strategy one farm, and even one garden at a time.

No need for Estill to change his title or thesis. But if he is going to pick your best stories among the many surely colorful stories about biodiesel, he should consider providing equally great examples from the local food community. With the new administration, people are going to be looking for positive leadership from all sides -- agriculture, manufacturing, finance, education, government. Everything needs to be fixed, and right quick!

I encourage the local food community to recognize that we, like President-elect Obama, not continue to fight the battles that presume we are a marginal community living our fringe values. We should presume the mantle that we are the knowledgeable practitioners of every aspect of the agricultural cycle (eating itself is an agricultural act!), and we should confidently lead by example, always learning and always teaching. There will always be those who are more comfortable out of the mainstream, secure in their isolation. But in the near future many of us will be called to define the new mainstream, in terms of science, agriculture, processing, distribution, selling, preparing and eating.

It would be helpful for us to rally around those efforts that are mainstream-worthy, and to all raise our game to lead the country into harvests of which we can all be proud. nd to report proudly those events that comport with that storyline.

Michael Tiemann is a member of the Board Of Advisors of the Center For Environmental Farming Systems. To read Estill's My View column go to www.chapelhillnews.com/front/story/29053.html