One Local Year: The Road Ahead

A year ago, I wrote a post about making the road by walking. We walked, and made a little footpath. When I started the local food buying cooperative, a few others joined us on this path. And of course there are others making similar paths in every part of the country, though other matters have come to the forefront of public consciousness now.

We plan to continue eating locally, but cutting ourselves a bit more slack. If we're going to keep this up the rest of our lives (which we plan to do), we need to pace ourselves a bit. I will buy a few little niceties, very small amounts: mustard, artichoke hearts for DH's weekly homemade pizza (about one heart per pizza), vinegar, lemon juice. I

I plan to keep narrowing the circle as possible. Can I find California artichoke hearts, instead of Peru? Can I get more Front Range fruit in place of the Western Slope fruit? Can I figure out how to put in a garden at our home that I can actually keep up? (With aging and physical problems, gardening is hard for me.) Can I keep chickens without losing them all to predators? The most-local food you can get is what you grow and raise, after all.

And that brings up another vitally important point. We, and several hundred others in Larimer and Weld counties, are eating a large percentage of local food. We buy local meats, patronize local dairies, belong to local CSAs. But there are about 287,000 people in Larimer County, and about 243,000 in Weld County. That's more than a half-million people. Although agriculture still has a significant presence, particularly in Weld County which is the highest-ranking agricultural county in the state, we're far from having enough growers and ranchers in the two counties to feed the population with diverse foods. Many of the farms are extremely large, growing government-subsidized commodity corn and soybeans which are mainly fed to cattle.

We need to think seriously about what we as a community can do to encourage more small farms, more vegetable growing, more bean growing, more pastured livestock. The soil is fertile, the climate fairly mild though dry, and much of the land is irrigated from mountain water. But farmers, especially small farmers, face tremendous challenges. The cost of their inputs keeps rising faster than the prices they can get for their produce. Loans are becoming more and more difficult to get. Some of the better land is being eaten up by country subdivisions and outlet malls at a tremendous rate.

Speaking as someone who wants to eat food in the future, I believe it is essential for us to do two things: encourage and protect small and diverse farms; and start planting our suburban lots to vegetables and fruits, with perhaps beehives and small animals where possible. This will take money and work, of course, but in particular it will take a strong commitment for us as a community to build a resilient and productive local foodshed. There is a place for everyone in this vitally important work, whatever your skills and interests. Give some thought to where you might want to help in this effort.