For Local Food, We Need Local Farmland

Urban farming is a great way to meet an increasing demand for local food and to move towards a more efficient and sustainable food system.

But growing food on small plots of land in cities like New York and San Francisco does not make up for the production that is lost when farmland in surrounding areas is lost to development.

In a recent Wall Street Journal article [sub. req.], Justin Scheck makes this point by showing that despite a strong interest in urban food production, farmland located in the counties surrounding San Francisco -- responsible for a vast majority of the food consumed in the Bay Area -- continues to be developed at rates that will make it increasingly difficult to feed the city's appetite for local food.

This is a problem that American Farmland Trust also documented in its San Francisco Foodshed Assessment that was released in September 2008. While investigating the feasibility of San Francisco feeding itself exclusively with food grown within a 100-mile radius, the assessment found that 12 percent of the city's foodshed is already developed -- and that if current trends continue, another 800,000 acres of farmland in the area will be lost by 2050.

These findings highlight a huge problem within the local food movement: While we value the food and, for the most part, value the farmers, the land itself is not always seen as the essential piece of the local food puzzle.

When you also consider that 86 percent of the country's fruits and vegetables -- and 63 percent of its dairy products -- are produced in significantly urbanized areas where development continues apace, this lack of love for the land becomes even more problematic.

Unless we begin to integrate land protection priorities into the local food agenda, it's very possible that the movement itself may be in jeopardy of becoming a passing fad, unable to sustain itself because of a lack of local farmland available to serve consumers' demand for local food.

Photo credit: Linda N.