OPINION: A Fresh Idea: Locally Grown Foods Should Be Growth Industry

By Julie DelCour, Tulsa World, Okla.

Mar. 26–Most of the food Americans consume is better traveled than the people eating it. The average food item in U.S. supermarkets travels at least 1,500 miles from farm to table and the average meal contains ingredients from at least five countries.

Not many of us will ever see the verdant landscape of New Zealand, home to those pricey little lamb chops in the meat counter. But we’re all global diners. Half of the fruits and vegetables, 40 percent of lamb and 80 percent of seafood come from foreign sources.

We’ve come to enjoy the out-of-season any season — Chilean grapes in winter, Mexican melons in spring, Central American bananas year round. No one’s asking that we give up these palate pleasers. But with the local farmers markets opening soon, the Oklahoma Food Policy Council and the nonprofit Kerr Center for Sustainable Agriculture are asking: What about giving the home team an advantage when we can?

Last fall, six school districts, including Tulsa and Broken Arrow, served 4,000 seedless watermelons from the Hinton farm of Bob Ramming as part of the Oklahoma Farm-to-School pilot project. In a 2002 survey of state school food service directors more than two-thirds said they would purchase food from local producers if prices were competitive and supplies sufficient.

Such programs are part of a national trend. A half million students in 400 districts in 23 states eat farm-fresh products at school. Projects support struggling local producers, benefit rural economies, get fresh foods in front of kids and might well be safer, and certainly fresher, than sources from the other side of the country or the globe.

A bill by Sen. Daisy Lawler, D-Comanche, this session would create an expanded farm-to-school program in the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, Food, and Forestry. "This is a win-win bill for helping our kids with better health and nutrition and for rural economic development," Lawler said.

The program would be developed statewide. Farmers and food service directors would be offered assistance and children would be educated about agriculture and nutrition. A House bill by Rep. Susan Winchester, R-Chickasha, would create a task force to determine how best to implement the program. The Oklahoma Fit Kids Coalition supports the bills, which are sailing through the Legislature.

The work of the Food Policy Council and the Kerr Center doesn’t stop at the cafeteria door. The groups also seek to link local farmers with communities. Community Supported Agriculture or Community Sustainable Agriculture (CSA) is a broader concept catching on across the nation. One CSA application is for customers to buy a share of a farm’s output. They receive newsletters and weekly baskets of pre-paid produce during the growing season.

"This arrangement lets the people who eat the food take on some of the financial risk of farming, literally by putting their money where their mouths are when it comes to supporting family farms in Oklahoma," a Kerr Center spokesman said. Several farms offer this cooperative approach.

Purchasing local food can make an enormous difference for consumers, local economies and the environment. Most Oklahoma farmers earn on average less than $10,000 per year. It’s time, Kerr Center supporters say, to develop a more diverse and self-reliant local agriculture, with markets where consumers can buy locally grown food.

In 1920, Iowa, with many of the same demographics as Oklahoma, produced a wide variety of produce. Now most produce is imported. If Iowans bought just 10 percent more of their food locally, they could collectively save 7.9 million pounds of carbon dioxide emission a year since most food is trucked into the state.

While many products must be imported — Oklahoma doesn’t grow many pineapples — "a surprising amount of trade is duplicative and ecologically wasteful," writes Kirsten Schwind, of Iowa’s Food First Program. For example, in one year, the port of New York City exported $431,000 of California almonds to Italy, and imported $397,000 of Italian almonds into the U.S.

Next month the Kerr Center (www.kerrcenter.com

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Copyright (c) 2006, Tulsa World, Okla.

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