I’m currently at a work conference. The discussion is around agriculture and our overall impact as an organization.
I’m really excited to see what the future holds for locally grown and made food. I think there is a positive switch towards local. People more than ever want to eat local and sustainable clean foods. It’s a pleasant shift away from companies that have always controlled the landscape.
It will forever be an uphill battle however. With increasing prices, difficulty finding workers and lack of financial support. It will be interesting to see how things actually shape up.
Our meeting brought up a point on how we in a state without the needed infrastructure might build it for producers. I feel like the answer is to give it to someone else. Give it to an expert in the field. Yet, we have no experts in the field who have really helped grow the infrastructure. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be having the conversation. It’s a dilemma that may very well be the downfall of many local agriculture programs. If we have local food how do we get local food to consumers?
If you can’t get people to transport and stores and restaurants to buy. It will always be an uphill battle. My solution is to push a campaign focused on eating local. Driving businesses to purchase local foods based on consumer reports and data showing consumers want to purchase local foods. I think the money, transportation and time needs to be paid for using the private sector. If we have to sustain agriculture just through federal and state tax payer dollars. It will ultimately fail. Not only because the focus won’t be on the needed infrastructure, but also because tax payers may question what good it has done. It’s a topic I don’t think racked a lot of people’s minds until recently.
Do you know where your food comes from?
Housed and Fed 