Yeah yeah yeah, I get it. So how do we bring it about?

“In today’s global food system, what most North Americans eat travels hundreds or even thousands of miles from field to table” --Neva Hassanein (Who’s minding the store 2007:6)

“Long-distance food would be vastly more expensive if oil prices were to rise” --Brian Halweil (Eat Here 2004:140)

“We need to be out there actively fixing our civilization reforming the way we do our farming and our commerce and our schooling and our trade. Building our cities and designing our homes and our buildings and all the things that are necessary to be part of a civilization.” --James Howard Kunstler (Making Other Arrangements 2007)

I believe James Howard Kunstler when he writes about the flu of our civilization, the future restrictions of energy and oil, and the ways in which we may begin to mitigate the flu that our current system has transmitted. The symptoms have already resulted in public demonstrations that have taken the form of a more organized and driven people who have, and will continue to lead their localities to become more food self-sufficient. The situation calls for this type of reaction by local antibodies. If we aren’t involved in the issues of food democracy, high quality economical products will continue to be a thing of the past and, as oil becomes more scarce, our system will collapse.

The creation of new markets require local governments and local businesses to collaborate with their mission being: feeding their neighbors. Brian Halweil unrolls a tapestry of examples of local market innovation in the public and private realms in Eat Here.

One creative solution between these realms surfaced in the United Kingdom. Rather than giving tax breaks or direct subsidies to lure out-of-state businesses to a community, a recent government commission recommended local governments propagate the sufficiency of their own communities. Retailers that “give a portion of their store as an outlet for local producers to sell direct to the public should receive business rate [tax] relief on that part of their premises.” This initiative builds trust between the business and government communities by setting playing rules that allow consumers to buy cheaper, more nutritious food while showing there will be long-term policy support of farming production.

As demands for more local food increase, there will always be room for more urban farmers and their products, but Halweil believes that CSAs and farmers markets provide only part of the pyramid of a healthy local food system that can sustain itself. Jack Kloppenburg, a sociologist at the University of Wisconsin put it plainly when he said there needs to be “something between Sysco [the largest American distributor] and CSAs.”

These processing and distribution sectors of food have greatly diminished over the past half-century and present the largest obstacles to local food security. As a state that gained a large percent of its economy on these fundaments, Montana highlights this decline. “Fifty years ago, much of Montana's food supply was grown and processed locally and in great variety. Today, most of the 60 million acres in agriculture in the state is dedicated to production and export of bulk raw commodities, with little or no value added. Our processing sector has diminished greatly” (Hassanein 2004:47-48).

This gap and barrier presents one of the largest opportunities for job creations at the local level, an opportunity that can be realized with the boost of local government and an educated citizenry. There is a market for local food, just as there is a niche for processed food. Energy bars, cooking sauces and other food items that have been processed by independent local businesses (or farmers who have developed processing and marketing skills) return a larger portion of earnings to the farmers than they would receive after shipping those raw materials elsewhere.

These new markets can only form when a person has a vision that weighs the reality of local food with local potential. They can also become reality with collaborative efforts, even among farmers who have not traditionally been the paramount exhibiters of public engagement. “People interested in rebuilding local and regional food systems “need to create new alliances at our universities with the Colleges of Business, not just the Colleges of Agriculture, since the business school has the expertise in marketing, distribution, and supply chains design” (Halweil 2004:140).

Barre, Vermont’s restauranteur, Tod Murphy, has provided a medium for collaboration by connecting patrons with the people who grow their food. When customers pick up a menu at the Farmers Diner, they see photos of farmers. Murhpy has successfully created a locally-sufficient diner aided by “35 suppliers and plans to add 20 more next year” (Halweil 2004:108). Orion magazine reported in “Burgers à la Thomas Jefferson” that his plan “Is a near-revolutionary act in the era of the fifteen-hundred-mile apple” (Clifford May 2007). He plans to create a model for trumpeters of the locality called the “pod” that will make year-round food output possible through freezing, pickling or canning. To do this, he hopes to build two structures on either side of his restaurant--one for meat processing and the other for other food processing.

Businesses like Murphy’s rely on the steady influx of local food, but they also depend on the consciously supportive consumer-base that come back for more cups of coffee and more slices of pie. He relies on the Barbara Kingsolvers of his local area. “Most Americans are entangled in a car dependency not of our own making, but nobody has to eat foods out of season from Rio de Janeiro. It's a decision we remake daily, and an unnecessary kind of consumption that I decided some time ago to try to expunge from my life” (Kingsolver 2002:114). Phasing in new markets requires a community’s commitment to collaboration and creativity. For local foodsheds to grow lushly, people will need to intersperse and embed themselves in more than one of the following sectors: the farming, marketing, distribution, consumer and educational levels. This is not going to be easy--it will take effort and will not arise out of infomercial inventions or fresh-food, conveyer-belt technology.

Consumers have an important impact on the food in their supermarkets. “In the industrial world, at least, most people do nearly all their food shopping at supermarkets, so any local food efforts to recapture this market will depend partly on replicating the convenience and product offerings that people have come to expect” (Halweil 2004:116). Local market startups will depend on the initial demands of people for more than the illusion of choice. In order to form a niche for two symbiotic partners in nutrition and economics, the farmer and the consumer must become responsive to each other’s needs for the local food system to flourish. “People cannot subsist, nutritionally, on one or two crops, which is the norm in Midwestern United States or any of the other industrial farming regions of the world. Nor can a local population subsist, economically, on one or two crops” (Halweil 2004:82). I don’t believe a majority is interested in Ronald Bailey’s notion that “the last century has seen a vast improvement in food quality and safety” (Bailey 2002:2). Eaters want to know where there food comes from and who grows it, but food growers also want the connection. Many want to know their consumers. What these desires illustrate more than anything is the consumer’s importance to the formation and maintenance of a local food system.

The ability of a set of individuals within a community to connect with their food and show interest in the health of the system depends mostly on the education a community provides its citizens. A community can make food democracy and food security its goal by creating programs that echo Josh Slotnick’s words, “Local food comes out of a feeling of localism.” Community education programs like those of the Garden City Harvest provide the young generation, the generation charged with the revival of local food in local people’s hands, with hands-on (and hopefully meaningful) experience that they can use in the future to promote the movement through any work they do. “Missoula BEANS,” for example, “offers teachers and students in Missoula an opportunity to learn more about our food system, gardening and farming, and healthy eating habits both inside and outside the classroom. The BEANS program works within the curriculum standards of the Missoula County Public Schools, especially in the areas of science, social studies, and health enhancement” (Garden City Harvest 2007).

One of the challenges that local food education faces is the behaviors and conditioning of students. It’s difficult for a student to make the right choices in their household if there is no choice in school. Educating students is important, as is taking students into the growing fields in different seasons. But another role of schools is to accept their natural responsibility to extend the classroom to the lunchroom. Ann Cooper, the chef of Ross School in East Hampton, New York, asks the question, “Why is someone’s long-term health less important than trigonometry?” (Halweil 2004:155-156). The school lunch program has made the argument that they’re equal by producing everything “from scratch and built around what foods are local and in-season from Long Island farms and fisheries.” A study at Cooper’s school shows that farm to school programs have positive results that are external to the mission of feeding students local food one meal out of the day. The study sees this mission and raises it another possibility. “Three-quarters of parents have been inspired to change the way they cook at home.” In scientific terms, conduction means to pass something like heat between two surfaces through direct contact. This inspiration has passed from the school traditions to home traditions through much the same rhythm of conduction.

Barriers to farm to cafeteria programs are numerous. The institutional market requires large quantities of products that are constantly flowing through the door and have been pre-processed. Meals must also meet federal or state price fixes. “Although vendors probably face competition when selling into most markets, some said that the state-mandated bidding process, which requires the lowest bid be taken, makes it difficult for them to compete with lower quality products…” (Hassanein March 2007: 5). School task forces are gradually addressing these challenges and incremental steps are beginning to wield results. “In 2005, Dining Services purchased $403,000 worth of Farm to College products, approximately 13 percent of its $3.1 million food budget” (Hassanein March 2007:3). By 2008 that number has jumped to 20 percent. This encapsulates the situation. When public awareness and support rises for local food (84 percent of students surveyed reported it is very or somewhat important to them as consumers in dining halls), the fundaments of local food (its production, processing and distribution lines) rise to meet the challenge.

There is real potential for the “localizing” movement in the future, because creating our own foodsheds will become more and more financially and socially intriguing. The majority of people are interested in one of these two qualities and I believe the future will see the two forming a marriage at the local food production, processing and distribution levels. A person’s pocketbook will become increasingly connected to the relationships they form with the farming core of their community. The perfect storm has been brewing for the is mutual self-interest and the perfect storm for rebuilding the local food system. That realization is coming. But it depends mostly on the creative solutions local governments emit and the national government’s push to eliminate “existing subsidies for coal, oil, and natural gas and raising taxes on them instead” (Halweil 2004:140). Expanding these new initiatives and connecting the next generation to the vine will prove necessary for a local system as it seeks to provide for and enrich society.

Works Cited:
Bailey, Ronald. 2002. I don't care where my food comes from: And neither should you. Reason Online, Sept. 25. Available at: http://\vww.reason.com/rb/rb092502.shtml

Clifford, Harlan C. "Burgers à la Thomas Jefferson." May 2007. Orion Magazine. 20 Oct. 2008 http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/272/.

"Garden City Harvest Community Education Program." 2007. Garden City Harvest. 20 Oct. 2008 http://www.gardencityharvest.org/programs/cep.html.

Hassanein, Neva. 2004. Who's minding the store? Pp. 44-49 in Staying Home: Reflections on food, farming, and place, edited by Kristi Johnson. Missoula, MT: Garden City Harvest.

Hassanein, Neva, Scott Kennedy, Beth Neely, and Paul Hubbard, editors. 2007. Executive summary. Tracing the Chain: An In-depth Look at the University of Montana's Farm to College Program. Missoula, MT: University of Montana Environmental Studies Program.

Kingsolver, Barbara. 2002. Lily's chickens. Pp. 109-130 in Small Wonder: Essays. New York: Harper Collins.

Kuntsler, James Howard. 2007. Making other arrangements: A wake-up call to a citizenry in the shadow of oil scarcity. Orion. January/February: 22-29.

Slotnick, Josh. 2004. Build it and they will come, and eat: The short story of Missoula's food system. Pp. 145-153 in Staying Home: Reflections on food, farming, and place, edited by Kristi Johnson. Missoula, MT: Garden City Harvest.