Food Production Assessment Update

Local Food Production

Interviews with Food Growers and Producers

Archuleta County is similar to most rural communities in that it’s isolated from much of the world but it is filled with farmers and ranchers who can at least sustain themselves and assist the community by providing their resources locally. Since interviewing a range of these producers from small and large scale ranches and farms to individual backyard growers, we’ve been provided with a better understanding of the barriers of food production, distribution, and community engagement as well as what solutions these growers have for the future. In the Fall of 2022, Healthy Archuleta conducted a series of interviews with local growers and producers. A total of 19 individuals shared their knowledge, experience, and ideas related to advancing a local food system. Interviews were analyzed for emergent themes. The information from the interviews were organized and are shared here for each of the 8 themes.

Theme 1: A Snapshot of Current Production - Current production of food that is processed or grown locally involves 1) larger or smaller scale ranches who raise and process livestock, 2) smaller scale farms and growers who may produce for commercial purposes or who grow for a mix of commercial and personal use, and 3) backyard growers who primarily use their gardens for themselves. The practices in use reported tend to be more regenerative, they either use low or no-till methods with less use of harmful pesticides. Most pesticides used are at least organic. These methods are ecologically supportive and don’t present risks to the ecosystem surrounding them. Local producers seek out local input for feed and fertilizers including local compost. Good soil and season extenders are also a focus and have the potential to assist in combating some of the barriers to production that growers face.

Themes 2 and 3: Barriers to Production and Solutions/Visions for Increasing Production - Difficulties in production begin with some of the complications in living in a varying environment. Weather and climate within a mountain community like ours changes from year to year with the promise of a short growing season and difficulties in transporting livestock out of harsh winter weather. This also impacts what the soil quality in different areas will be like and where wildlife will be heading throughout the year. Talks about more wildlife fencing or wildlife protections would assist in raising safe livestock and producing healthy crop yields. While the weather is out of our control, season extenders such as high tunnels can be set up on larger properties and the Natural Resources Conservation Service can offer financial assistance through their Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP). Since these tunnels are a barrier to some wildlife and use minimal water resources they do help growers who have limited access to water or those who have trouble with smaller wildlife such as birds or prairie dogs. Besides the environmental factors, producers do stress that there is currently a lack of labor and labor knowledge which could be met by education/mentorship programs and youth engagement in our community.

Theme 4 : A Snapshot of Distribution - Distribution of the food produced within Archuleta County ranges within five different areas. The first and easiest is Personal Use. Fresh or preserved food is distributed within the individual's personal network of friends and family and is typically what backyard growers do with their smaller yields. The second area of distribution is In-County Sales. Being the small community Archuleta County is, oftentimes we are connected via word of mouth or on our local social media pages to sell to other individuals and we have a summer Farmer’s Market for growers to participate in to sell and tell customers about their products directly. Other areas of distribution include donating to the local food pantry network, sending food to La Plata County, and commercially distributing food on a larger scale to areas outside of local communities.
Themes 5 and 6: Barriers and Solutions to Distribution - The barriers of distribution to our local community are categorized by Produce Sales, Meat Sales, and Donations. One of the main ways locals can sell produce is through the local Farmer’s Market but their barriers in doing this consist of a lack of quantity, time, and interest in doing so. Similarly, growers who were asked about selling their product through separate retail/wholesale outlets said they wouldn’t know who to contact, they have a limited quantity, and they’d be forced to lower their prices despite the cost of production. Meat Sales done locally have their own drawbacks including increased costs for feed and processing, a lack of a USDA processor, and a lack of storage (since meat is usually processed in bulk quantities). Donations are the third and final form of distribution and are met with barriers such as our FDC’s limited operation time, prep and planning required by donors and 4-H purchases, potential waste at the food pantries, and a need for a USDA processor for the meat donors. The community overall would benefit from a large volunteer network to help reach growers and ranchers with a lacking labor force and in-turn may assist in the communities knowledge of our producers and knowledge of the Farmer’s Market and Food Pantries. Besides volunteerism, a mobile USDA processor, a food storage facility, and coordination in the processing of animals would largely benefit ranchers raising the local livestock for the community.

Theme 7: Barriers to Community Demand for/ Access to Local Foods - The several issues that are found in the demand for and access to local food are intertwined. Barriers selected from the interviewees include:
Transportation for consumers and producers,

Cost of living/higher prices for local food,

Lack of time to explore different vendors and venture outside of purchasing from convenient grocery stores,

Not enough time/knowledge to grow their own food,

Lack of awareness of what local food is available and how to find it,

Location of the farmer’s market,

Limited supply of the food
Limited supply of food is also affected by a lack of interest among producers who aren’t currently selling and many who have a base of customers established, don’t plan on expanding.

Theme 8: Solutions for engaging Community - The answers from the interviews continuously explain how detrimental community involvement is for our producers and for the community’s overall benefit in receiving more locally processed/ grown foods. Campaigns to increase visibility of local produce/ local farms, garden mentorships, and involvement within our community gardens are just a few ways the process of educating our community is underway. As these programs increase in size and in number the demand for locally processed food will force competition and lower prices and raise access to food for everyone in the community as time goes on. Other solutions interviewees recognized are increasing the number of cooperative garden beds within the community, organizing education and campaigns to prevent food waste/develop a composting program, and engaging youth and families through schools, internships, garden classes, and cooking/ nutrition classes.

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Utilizing Primary Preventive Health Care

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Where is the data available?
What does the data say?
What action steps emerged?

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Research Update

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Food Security and Sustainability for All
Sustainability is “to live within the ecological carrying capacity of Earth.” (Moore and Rees, 2013, p. 42). The 1996 World Food Summit explained “Food Security exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life,”. It’s all about making sure the future generations have food at the table, easy access to it, and can do so without compromising all of our natural resources. Global trends that challenge these are climate disruption, human population growth and consumption, pollution, extinctions, and the loss of diverse ecosystems, and how all of those things interact with each other. We have a long way to go as a diverse and intelligent species but research and development has been telling us for years these goals are in reach, as it is a goal we must reach.
Data published by Moore and Rees between 2012 and 2013 can explain the basics of our global footprints and the impacts of those shown by how many planets we would need to sustain a “Fair Earth-Share” vs. a "High-Consumption” country. Based on estimates of resources, a Fair-Earth Share is the equivalent to our goal for a single planet. Our country is listed as a “High Consumption” country under their data. This means if everyone lived like the average middle-class U.S. citizen, we would need between 3-4 planets of natural resources. We aren’t alone, most of North America, Europe, Japan, Australia and the consumer elites of lower-income “appropriates nearly 80 percent of the world’s resources and generates most of its carbon emissions from fossil fuels.”(P. 42 of State of World 2013, Comparing Fair Earth-Share and High-Consumption Societies, Moore and Rees,)

Zooming out of that data, we know that the globe is divided into countries that maintain growing their own resources and others that have to tap into that to provide for their own people. Even as early as 2012, we’ve seen countries making land acquisition deals and leases with food growing countries to maintain some sort of food security for themselves. Lester Brown, president and founder of the Earth Policy Institute, stated “Food is the new oil, Land is the new gold”. What are the answers to meeting our resource needs without overutilizing resources? How can we help each other?

A report from Denmark called “Achieving Food Security in the Face of Climate Change” from 2012 suggests these 5 basic answers to have a “Safe Operating Space for Interconnected Food and Climate Systems include:

Improve Crop Yields
Change Diets
Reduce Waste
Adapt to Climate Change
Reduce Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Emissions”

Their findings include what they call “Sustainable Intensification” and “Sustainable Diets”. Sustainable Intensification calls for a raise in crop yields without negative environmental costs, allocating more land for this can raise the probability for those negative costs so we’ll need to use what is already available. Therefore, we use the technology we have and what is in development to increase those yields while placing less pressure on the environment overall. In conjunction, benefits from changing our diets to meet the “Sustainable Diet” (FAO and Biodiversity International 2012; 2012 p. 7) model would include not only less environmental impact but would allow everyone to meet food security goals that are still affordable, culturally accessible, and respectful of biodiversity and ecosystems. If we can address the issues of food equity, access, and distribution we’ll be able to improve production and security. These are just a few ways we can start to impact the world with positive change.

Progress breeds progress. Change in our growing methods and diets can be the beginning to a more sustainable world, but what does this all mean to us? Improving our crop systems to a level of sustainability is one thing but diverse ideas such as regenerative agriculture, agro-ecological agriculture (De Schutter, O, 2009) and other under-utilized practices need to be shared. Education systems in biotechnology, farmer field schools, and plant breeding will be required for us to deal with the effects of climate change and reduce hunger. We need to share techniques, encourage and become part of a community of healthy living and show each other that a world of sustainability isn’t just achievable but is within the hands of all of us on the global scale. People working cooperatively is the pinnacle of this change.

In closing, as we work on increasing local food production/supply, food access and security, and health equity, we might explore answers to this question “When thinking of the everyday life of a normal citizen, what changes are we making in our individual lives to help become more sustainable?”
References/Resources

It’s official: Footprints for monitoring biodiversity health
Global Footprint Network Annual Report 2013
Resilient, Healthy, And Sustainable Food Systems For Biodiversity Conservation And Use 2030 Action Targets: A Global Collection Of Good Practice Cases
Comparing fair earth-share, world average, and high consumption countries
"Full Planet, Empty Plates: The New Geopolitics of Food Scarcity. New York: W.W Norton and Company. 2012" Lester Brown, president and founder of the Earth Policy Institute “Food Security Update: What Is Food Security?” - WorldBank.
The State of Food Insecurity in the the World 2013. The Multiple Dimensions of Food Security. Rome: FAO; 2013; pp. 16-17.
Scientific Consensus on Maintaining Humanity’s Life Support Systems in the 21st Century. Information for Policy Makers. Millennium Alliance for Humanity & the Biosphere. May 2013. Available at: http://mahb.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Consensus-Statement.pdf
http://bit.ly/SafeSpaceClimateFood and Beddington J, et al. Achieving Food Security in the Face of Climate Change. Final Report from the Commission on Sustainable Agriculture and Climate Change. CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture, and Food Security (CCAFS), Copenhagen, Denmark. 2012. Available at: www.ccafs.cgiar.org/commission
Sustainable Diets and Biodiversity. Directions and Solutions for Policy, Research, and Action. Rome: FAO and Biodiversity International; 2012; p. 7. Available at: http://www.fao.org/docrep/016/i3004e/i3004e00.htm
De Schutter, O. Seed Policies and the Right to Food: Enhancing Agrobiodiversity and Encouraging Innovation; October 2009. Available at: http://www.srfood.org/images/stories/pdf/officialreports/20091021_report-ga64_seed-policies-and-the-right-to-food_en.pdf

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Assessment Update

Local Food Production

Acknowledgments