Loco for Locavorism...maybe someday?

During an interview today for my upcoming article on Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) in the Willamette Valley, Elin England, author of Eating Close to Home: A Guide to Local Seasonal Sustenance, asked me if I'd heard about the recent release of  The Strolling of the Heifers' new Locavore Index. "What's that," I said, my fingers busy tap-tap-tapping text into the Google search bar on my laptop. "A locavore index. How cool is that?"

Not as cool as you'd think, if you're a die hard Duck and loco about local food (I'll definitely cop to the second and, well, I do have two degrees from UO, so there's that...) Turns out, Oregon ranks 14th in the nation, in terms of CSAs and farmers markets per capita. My first response, in all honesty: REALLY?! Come on, Oregon, we can do better (or tweets to that effect). I guess Portlandia may have to move to Burlington, at least for its next food-based skit.

But, then again, national leader Vermont, population 621,760, has 99 farmers markets and 164 CSAs. The Willamette Valley has about the same number of people. I don't have a ready listing of all the CSAs and farmers markets in the Valley, but according to Willamette Farm and Food Coalition Executive Director Lynn Fessenden, since 2000 the number of CSAs in Lane County has grown from 5 to 29. Here's a helpful list, if you're interested.

So that's a sign of progress, right? I wonder how the Willamette would rank if you sawed us off from the rest of Oregon? Would we be, could we be as green as the Green Mountain State?

Maybe, but we're not there now. According to the Southern Willamette Valley Bean, Grain & Edible Seed Project, "ninety-five percent of what the South Willamette Valley eats comes from outside the region." That's pretty sad, seeing as we have about 700,000 acres of potential farmland in Lane, Lincoln, Linn, and Benton counties. That's also what you get after a generation of farming to grow grass seeds for the world's golf courses and suburban lawns. 

Then again, at least the good folks at Ten Rivers Food Web and the Willamette Farm and Food Coalition are on the job, supporting small farms and pushing for a transition from grass seed production to staple food production. And market conditions are favoring the production of staples like wheat and beans over grass seed (my allergies are applauding wildly, hear them?). 

On, the other hand, as the Oregonian article I just linked to states, farmers ship most of the food they grow here elsewhere. Better export food than grass seed, right? Sure, if you don't examine the links between food imports and environmental and social justice in the developing world (I will, but that's another blog post entirely).  

So, what's the big deal, anyway, skeptics in the crowd will ask. We've got plenty of food, enough organic produce to satisfy all the hippies in the valley. And there are some studies that point out that eating locally-produced food may not save much if any energy, and therefore won't affect climate change, the number one environmental bugaboo of the moment  – with good reason, mind you. 

Well, you can tell them, sustainability isn't merely about energy usage. And there are a host of  reasons to support local food webs: food security, supporting small farmers, food nutrition, and soil health for starters. Sounds like we're getting into another blog post again.  

There's also the fact that some of us want to eat food that, wait for it, actually tastes good. Fly to Costa Rica and eat some bananas sold in a local market and then come home and sample the bunch available at your favorite market. Or, eat an out of season tomato shipped in from New Zealand. Just try to tell me it tastes anything like one picked fresh off the vine in your garden at the peak of summer ripeness.

And, getting back to the original point of this post, it also sounds like there are a lot of people in the valley will benefit from reading my upcoming article on CSAs for the Natural Choice Directory. Maybe once more people here get educated about local foods and small farmers, we'll be able to take on the Catamounts (that's the University of Vermont's mascot, for all of you not in the know). Go Ducks?!