During a panel discussion yesterday titled “Local Food: Cultivating an Economy, an Industry or a Movement?” professors from the UMass Amherst nutrition, food science, and sustainable food and farming programs agreed that the demand for locally grown foods is on the rise. But they offered different perspectives on the significance behind that fact.
The event was hosted by the Food Access Research and Engagement (FARE) Partnership, a campus group that aims to serve as a bridge between the university and the broader community, linking the teaching and research capacity of the University of Massachusetts Amherst with diverse community partners and decision-makers.
In a lively conversation before a packed room, Nancy Cohen, professor and head of the Nutrition Department, peppered her remarks with data suggesting that all the buzz about local food might actually be starting to improve how we eat. Over the last 10 years, Cohen said, the number of farmers’ markets has doubled and the number of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) operations has tripled. “I think that these things are here to stay,” she added.
From a nutrition standpoint, that’s a good thing. Cohen cited statistics showing that CSA members are more likely to eat the USDA’s recommended daily servings of fruits and vegetables than are their neighbors who don’t own a farm share. That obesity and the average caloric intake among children in the United States both leveled out in 2010 suggests that the increased focus on eating good, healthy foods — including locally grown fruits and vegetables — is starting to have a real impact on our country’s diet.
But we need deep, systemic nationwide changes in our funding priorities if we hope to build on these successes, said Eric Decker, head of the Food Science Department. “Everybody likes to blame foods for all our health problems in the U.S.,” said Decker. “We don’t look at food as a preventative medicine.”
As long as only .04 percent of all research dollars in this country go toward studying food and nutrition, we’re unlikely to make many food-related health breakthroughs. And as long as our agricultural subsidies go toward crops such as corn and soy that are used as animal feed, rather than toward fruits and vegetables that humans eat, farmers won’t have an incentive to grow more and higher-quality produce.
The problem is, though, the world actually needs more fruits and vegetables in order to feed the ever-growing global population, which topped 7 billion last year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. “In the next 40 years, we will need to produce as much food as we have in the whole history of the world,” Decker said.
John Gerber, professor of sustainable food and farming, not only believes humanity is up to this challenge. He also believes we have a responsibility to feed the globe’s citizens with food that is healthy for humans to eat in such a way that is also healthy for the environment.
The development of regional food hubs was one suggestion he had for increasing the production and improving the distribution of locally grown food. By aggregating the means of production and distribution, the local food system would function more efficiently, Gerber said.
Until relatively recently, we have fed people across the world without simultaneously hurting the planet. And Gerber believes we can do so again. “This problem is mind-made,” he said. “And if it’s mind-made, it can be mind-changed.”
The Center for Public Policy and Administration coordinated this panel on behalf of the FARE Partnership. CPPA is the hub of interdisciplinary public policy research, teaching and engagement at UMass Amherst.