Sustainable Thoughts and Ideas: Thinking outside the Soapbox about “Going Local.” Part 1: Definitions

July 28, 2010 
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By: Nathan Melson, MS Agricultural Sciences
Written for Living Natural First Magazine March 2010

At the end of January I was asked to speak at the Texas Organic Farmers & Gardeners Association (TOFGA) annual conference also known as the Texas Conference On Organic Productions Systems or TCOOPS . I was fortunate enough to be asked to do two talks, one about how we run our multi-species non-certified organic livestock farm and meat business, and one about my thoughts on how we need to pursue “Going Local” in our state and nation. I was also able to visit with several friends and make new ones as well as meet the distinguished editor of this growing magazine, Bob Funcannon. If you ever get a chance to go to one of these conferences as a producer or consumer I would encourage it. You get to network with many like-minded individuals and learn a lot about what is going on in Texas in the way of “natural systems” agriculture.

As many of you who read my articles on a regular basis know, I’ve been trying to incorporate the many thoughts I’ve had into discussions to spur people into new ideas and concepts. I was able to share thoughts and exchange discussions with 120+ like minded farmers or future farmers at TCOOPS. While there, I put together a chain of thoughts that tied into my “Going Local” talk. This article is an attempt to summarize the discussion on my first topic that dealt with defining “Local” . It is safe to say that this is now a movement many of us like to classify as “Going Local” or “Beyond Organic”.

For years the American farmer and rancher has been told to “get big our get out” and find another source of income. Of course, America only needs an industrial sized food system to feed it and the world. Entities such as the Farm Bureau, Land Grant Universities, and the USDA have been supporting this push, whether knowingly or not. Now more and more folks from farmers, to consumers, to companies are starting to recognize the errors and problems of an over-globalized, over-industrialized food and economic system, but the cause has a long way to go to be championed. Over my next several articles I’m going to expound on these issues. I’ve come to realize that the several topics that I discussed in my “Going Local” discussion at TCOOPS need some in-depth discussion time.

At my presentation, I basically got to get on my soapbox and talk about a lot of the thoughts and ideas that I’ve written about here in LNF. I was able to generate a more advanced set of thoughts on how we in the local and natural foods movement could advance our cause. This will need to be done through advocacy and education of the general public, current farmers, future farmers, and agricultural academicians so that a new locally based food, fiber, and energy economical system can develop here in the USA.

About 30 conference attendees sat in on my “Going Local” presentation. From this group I discovered that there are varying definitions of “local”, “sustainable”, “heritage”, and “food-shed” that are very person dependent. As I’ll try to explain, there is a lot of thought and diversity in a definition. The definition of “local” can range from within your neighborhood, to within your county of residence to 80 miles away, to half a days drive away, to the state of Texas, or to the Southern Region of the US. I think the best definition that I heard was that it depends on the product. For instance, pork should probably come from within 100 miles of where you live, but when speaking about oranges 500 miles might be “local”. Some folks even qualified it with living within season.

We then discussed the topic of “sustainable”. I went around the room engaging the audience of my presentation and asking folks what their definition of “sustainable” was. Some people defined it as “able to be repeated over and over again without depleting resource”, others as “providing a living wage while leaving their corner of the earth as good or better than they found it”, and still other folks said “Something that is economically, ecologically, and socially viable and responsible.” I personally liked the last definition, but they are all correct. So once again we see the diversity in different peoples preferred definitions.

I discovered that the word “heritage” holds a different meaning amongst folks as well. This was not unlike several of the other “word concepts” that I wanted people to define. For some “heritage” means it has a historical record or tie to the past. To others it just means “old-time” or like grandma used to do. While to still others it means a combination of the two or just a traditional.

“Food-shed” was a big topic in my discussion that created some comical relief. I asked some folks in the crowd, “What did they define as a food-shed?” One attendee said that “It was the place where he kept his pickles and other canned goods.” Hah, Hah! While others mentioned that “It was a geographic zone around a particular population that can or does supply a percentage of the populations food.” That would be quite correct. Most all population centers have a potential “food-shed” surrounding them, which could provide a large percentage of the food consumed in those areas making for a much more sustainable, less resource consumptive society. In my April article I will try to focus on this concept extensively and work to define some of the different food-sheds in Texas, in particular the DFW Metroplex Food-Shed.

The final concept that I wanted to discuss for better understanding before moving deeper into my talk was “Sustainable Capitalism” which is well defined in a book of the same name by Dr. John Ikerd, an Agricultural Economist who is now based out of the University of Missouri. It is what it says, “a capitalism that takes the ecology, the economy, and society into account in its operation toward sustainability.” I personally believe that it will eventually be a system that is key for America’s survival as a great nation rural, suburban, and urban alike.

The whole point of going through this exercise with these folks at the beginning of my presentation was to show people how diverse, and yet correct the definitions of these current buzz words in “natural systems” agriculture can be. It goes to show that people make interpretations differently, but that a common ground can be found. For example if you are a direct marketing farmer like myself, just be straight forward and tell your customers that you product comes from X-miles up the road. It can be a marketing tool. This lets potential customers decide if your product is “local” according to their own personal definition. Since our target market is in the DFW Metroplex, for our business this mileage is between 60 and 90 miles away (“local”) depending on which area of DFW that we are marketing into.

I hope that I’ve been able to convey how different people conceptualize definitions differently within “natural systems” agriculture. My point is that the buzz words should be defined with a stroke of common sense, yet be broad enough to include differing opinions while being narrow enough to maintain the integrity of the concept. Please stay ready to read the upcoming series of these articles over the coming months. I plan to discuss”food-sheds” and “food miles”, “sustainable capitalism”, “localism”, agricultural census statistics, problems “natural systems” farmers face, what is in the favor of the “Righteous Food” (I borrowed this term from Brad Stufflebeam, a young organic vegetable farmer in Washington County, Texas.) movement, the cost of local food, and what can be safely argued as what much of the public desires. I hope that I can keep you interested for the long term. You see, it is readers like yourself who will be the grassroots movement as customers or current and potential farmers. You will work to get your family, friends, and neighbors involved in the local food system and support local family farms producing “righteous food” like ours because you believe that what we are doing is just better. Farm on!