F
ood systems, and particularly a shift
toward local food, has gained significant public awareness in recent years. Food system issues have been elevated into mainstream discussion by individuals such Alice Waters and Michael Pollan, and now examples abound in the media. Some highlights include Will Allen, the founder of “Growing Power” in Milwaukee, who received a MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant for his work; the Seattle city government recently declaring 2010 to be the “Year of Urban Agriculture” and Hollywood’s recent foray into the food debate, Food, Inc. Not surprisingly, given urban planning’s “green” roots in landscape architecture, led by key planners such as Jerry Kaufman and Kami Pothukuchi, the planning field has followed the national focus on food systems. In 2007, the American Planning Association (APA) released a Policy Guide on Community and Regional Food Planning and even more recently published a Planning Advisory Service Report titled, A Planners Guide to Community and Regional Food Planning:Transforming Food Environments, Facilitating Health Eating as well as dedicating a special issue of Planning magazine entirely to food systems. A “food system” refers to all of the processes and transactions that bring food to people, including: farm inputs (feed, seed, fuels), and the production, processing, distribution, selling of food and discarding of the waste products. For the the purposes of this article, sustainable, resilient and local will be used to describe agri-
cultural practices that generally preserve rather than deplete natural capital, which is defined as a
Producing food has far greater environmental impact than the distribution of food, which is the part of the food system chain that the “localvore” movement has focused on changing. supply of natural ecosystems that yields a flow of valuable ecosystem goods or services for future generations.
A SUMMER IN VERMONT My first year in planning school sparked a serious interest in food systems, and I had the opportunity this past summer to study food systems in what I imagined to be the sustainable food system Mecca, Burlington, Vermont. Through an internship with The Intervale Center, a national leader in agricultural economic development, I was able to spend the summer researching the local food system in the greater Burlington area.
My research included determining how much food was consumed and how much was grown in this region, and what land use changes would be needed to bring food production and consumption into alignment in Greater Burlington. As I packed up my apartment in West Philadelphia, I pictured dirt roads, small family-operated farms, and bustling farmers’ markets bursting with fresh, sustainably-produced fruit and vegetables, all basking in the Vermont sunshine. As a state known for farming and rural character, I predicted that Vermont had the capacity to show the rest of the country how a local food system could be achieved. I couldn’t wait to dive into the data. As I rode my bike down the hill into the beautiful valley where The Intervale Center is located and pulled up to the farmhouse, I was positive I would soon discover that while farmers faced certain challenges, in general, the local food system in Vermont was alive and well and geared towards benefitting small-scale farmers that grew food the old—and new—fashioned way, with local production and consumption.
FOOD SYSTEM CHALLENGES Fast-forwarding to ten weeks later when I had finished my study, I was, in a word, wrong. While Vermont exhibits a strong cultural commitment towards local farms (local food is not considered new or unusual there), there are few products that are produced in volumes that are high enough to meet local demand. My study area included Chittenden County, where the popula-
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