Food Chain Radio Show #1046

Michael Olson, Author & Urban Farming Agriculturalist

Local Food for the 90%

This Poll is closed

Could you survive on locally grown food?

No

Yes

*

100%

Guest: Dr. Elliot Campbell, Assistant Professor of Environmental Engineering University of California, Merced

Produced with UC Intern Producer Dylan Huntzinger

Michael Olson Food Chain Radio – Could you survive on locally grown food?

In the early 1970’s there were 6.8 million farms in the United States. Then word went out across the land from USDA’s Secretary of Agriculture for farmers to take advantage of technologies of the Green Revolution and “Get big or get out!”

And so farmers industrialized the production of food, which meant fewer and fewer farmers grew more and more of fewer and fewer crops on larger and larger parcels of land. Today there are less than two million farms in the United States.

That so few farmers can grow so much food most certainly has its benefits. City people, for example, can now devote more of their precious time to more fruitful endeavors than growing food, like… like… like….

But some city people are not satisfied with eating the processed foods of industrial agriculture. They prefer foods that are fresh, unique, colorful, full of taste, with a pleasant bouquet, and oh yes, full of nutrition. They want to tell their neighbors about the heritage, dry-farmed, vine-ripened, organic tomatoes they found at the farmers market.

Critics of this local foodism say proponents are just fooling themselves in thinking local food can ever provide enough food to satisfy the hunger of so many people living in close proximity to each other.

Then along comes an academic study claiming up to 90 percent of Americans could be fed entirely by food grown or raised within 100 miles of their homes. This leads us to ask…

Leave a comment below: How can local food feed the 90%?

Tune in here, for the syndicated Food Chain Radio Show #1046 March 5, 2016 Saturday 9AM Pacific