NEWS ARTICLE
June 22, 2009
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Feature article from New Jersey Municipalities Magazine, June 2009
Food. We all need it, but how many people look to it as a way to achieve goals outside of nutrition and alleviating hunger? Food systems that rely on fresh locally grown food can offer benefits including increased access to nutrition and farmland preservation. However, coupling this concept with economic development and planning goals will bring far more benefits to the community.
Through land use policies, economic development activities and farmland preservation efforts municipal governments can have a tremendous impact on retaining and enhancing local food systems. This article will discuss local food production; our next article will discuss supporting local food consumption in the form of such things as farm stands, farmers’ markets and farm to school initiatives.
Important to sustainability, local food shrinks a municipality’s carbon footprint by reducing the travel required to bring food to a community. Food systems account for 17 percent of national energy usage. Local food production can reduce this figure with its lower vehicle miles required for carrying food. However, it must be said that food miles contribute less to the required energy input than food choices regarding meat and dairy consumption, as well as cooking and food storage. For example, if every American went meat free for one meal a week it would be the equivalent of taking five million cars off the road.
It is an unfortunate phenomena that grocery stores are leaving urban areas for the suburbs where there is more land and, often, higher incomes. What this means is that many urban areas, particularly low income areas, do not have adequate food choices, including adequate access to fresh foods. In countless neighborhoods only convenience stores and small food stores are present. Where joined with low incomes and a lack of public transportation, this can result in food security concerns, defined as a lack of food availability and/or access to it. Local food production in these places can mitigate these food security concerns and fill a fresh food void.
A municipality can support local food production in a number of ways. Most obvious is supporting farmers in the community, but it is important to recognize that the place for food production is not only in the State’s rural areas, but also the urban areas.
In rural areas where farms are large and are the predominant use of the property, municipalities should explore ways to support farmers by ensuring that agriculture can be practiced undisturbed and while minimizing impacts on residential neighbors. This can be done through enacting strong right-to-farm ordinances and requiring buffers to agricultural lands that reduce the impacts of farming, such as smell or noise, on neighboring lands. Supporting existing farmers is the first step toward supporting local food production.
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