Building a Regional Food Shed

Food as a basic human need has, in its production, distribution and consumption, the ability to transform the societal and environmental paradigm. The first agricultural revolution, occurring some 10,000-12,000 years ago, did just that; providing the surpluses that allowed for the development of sedentary lifestyles and civilization. In the middle of the 20th century agriculture itself was transformed by industrialization; the chemicalization and centralization of the so-called “green” revolution. Now less than a century later, agribusiness’ effects on our health and environment, climate change’s realities and a resulting sense of our planet’s finite resources and fragility have inspired us to look for more sustainable ways to create and distribute our sustenance.

A New Food Revolution

A sustainable food revolution needs to combine traditional local/regional self-reliance with new technologies and thinking. The main themes being: to expand regional sustainable production, integrate improvements in renewable energy technologies in food production and distribution, create regional/local distribution systems that increase access to markets for producers and access to products for consumers all the while reducing our carbon footprint. Another key concept in building the sustainability movement is to keep resources circulating in communities building vibrant local/regional economies for the food and financial security they provide.

Over the past four decades the organic food movement has grown from the “lunatic hippy fringe” to mainstream America, becoming the only sector of the grocery industry that continues to show double-digit growth. Organic Trade Association (OTA) figures show 15% to 21% growth each year since1997. In 2007 over 17.4 billion dollars of organic food was sold in the U.S. and researchers estimate that by 2010 organic food will account for 4% of total U.S. food sales. (Facts and Figures on the Organic Industry, Alec McErlich, David Granatstein, Washington State University, www.agr.wa.gov) Organic production covers some 59 million acres worldwide and over 3.7 million acres of U.S. agricultural land. (www.ota.com) This is really just a drop in the bucket when compared with the 938 million acres of “land in farms” reported in the 2002 U.S. Census (USDA/NASS, 2004a). The good news is that organic acreage is increasing world wide due to increasing consumer demand. In New Mexico alone organic farmland, pasture and rangeland has increased to approximately 130,000 certified organic acres in 2007, up from 40,000 acres in 2005 (New Mexico Organic Commodities Commission).

Growth in the organic sector is important for several reasons. First and perhaps most importantly organic food brought about the resurgence of sustainable (in some cases traditional) agricultural practices that eschew environmentally detrimental agribusiness and factory farming methodologies. Second, organic farming practices seem to work best when practiced intensively on a smaller scale enabling the success of highly productive and diversified small to mid sized family farms. These farms are the foundation for rebuilding healthy rural economies and the sustainable local food movement.

Also of vast consequence are organic practices themselves. “Dirt First!” a phrase coined by the organizers of the national Eco-Farm Conference in California pretty well sums it up. At the core of organic production are the concepts of the restoration or creation and preservation of healthy soil with organic matter and microbes, the essence of sustainability in agriculture. Herein also lies a key to the mitigation of climate change through carbon sequestration and the reduction of agriculture’s carbon footprint.

Getting to Carbon Neutral

The Rodale Institute has for decades been the organic farmers friend and advocate. They have they pioneered education and research on a variety of organic issues and after 23 years of “Farm System Trials” that included conventional, organic and other farming techniques, their results show that organic agriculture not only emits fewer greenhouse gases but organic soils sequester greater amounts of carbon. Peer reviewed since its publication in a 1999 issue of Nature, the Rodale research reports that organic farms showed “an average increase in soil carbon of about 1,000 pounds per acre-foot of soil per year, or about 3,500 pounds per acre-foot, per year of carbon dioxide sequestered.” (www.newfarm.org).

The EPA estimates that one car driven an averageof 12,500 miles per year emits 10,000 pounds of carbon dioxide. Based on this EPA information, Rodale’s research shows that transitioning one average 320 acre, mid-sized farm to organic production is the equivalent of taking 117 cars off the road and if “the 160 million acres of conventional (agribusiness) corn and soybeans in the U.S. were converted to organic production it would translate to the equivalent of taking 58.7 million cars and their green house gas emissions off the road (25% of the national total).”

Richard Manning in his essay “ The Oil We Eat” (Farming and the Fate of Wild Nature, published by Watershed Media writes, “In 1940 the average farm in the U.S. produced 2.3 calories for every calorie of fossil energy it used. By 1974, …that ratio was 1:1.” The Ann Arbor Center for Sustainable Systems (University of Michigan) research from data assembled in 2005 shows that today it takes closer to 7-10 calories of energy for each calorie of food produced and distributed. (www.sustainabletable.org).

This is the legacy of conventional, industrialized food production. Yes, we can have strawberries in the northern hemisphere in February, shipped 1500 to 3,000 miles to your grocery store and table; but should we? Sustainable agriculture must reverse this trend.

The difference between traditional self-reliant (non- industrialized) farming systems of the past and a new wave of sustainable food production is the use of efficient and renewable energy systems. From solar heated hoop and green-houses that extend growing seasons to innovative water catchment and solar powered irrigation, farmers involved in the sustainable food movement are utilizing technologies to improve yields and increasefarm efficiencies while decreasing resource use.

Cooperating for a Regional Food-shed

Hundreds of local growers and producers have partnered with La Montanita Co-op to create the Co-op Trade Initiative: a regional food-shed production and distribution system. The Food-shed project was created to expand product, service and value for both producers and consumers. With over 1100 local products from approximately 400 regional growers and producers, the Co-op was already an industry leader when the local foods movement boomed. Through the Food-Shed warehouse, known as the Cooperative Distribution Center (CDC), the project also provides distribution services for regional/local products to other retail businesses within the food-shed area. It seeks toreduce food-miles with consolidating trucking routes and pick-up of product with delivery of farm supplies including animal feed and egg cartons and produce packing boxes. It also serves as a recycling center for these supplies. During the first full year of the Co-op Trade Initiative’s operation, local product sales at the four Co-op retail locations hit 20% of the organization’s totals, adding 4.6 million to the local farming economy. Supported by Conservation Voters New Mexico (Molly Brook, CVNM's Global Warming Program Associate, pictured upper right) and New Mexico Interfaith Power & Light, the Sierra Club's October 24th event for 350.org'sInternational Day of Climate Action outside the Albuquerque Aquarium attracted numerous volunteers and hundreds of visitors, young and old, who submitted statements on the importance of climate action and signed petitions urging adoption of the City's Climate Action Plan.

A longer version of this article appeared originally in the December 2008 edition of Journal of Sustainability.

by Robin Seydel, La Montañita Co-op