The 10% Localvore Challenge

Whenever I lose sight of why the work I do is important, I try to remind myself of how most Americans, and most Vermonters, eat.

It is estimated we Vermonters get a paltry 5% of our diet from local food. While this figure is slim, compared to the rest of the country, we’re doing very, very well.

What would it look like if we developed our agriculture enough so we could eat 10% of our diet from local food? While 10% is still a small minority, the amount of development work needed to allow us to double our local purchases is astounding. And, thanks to the release of the Farm to Plate Strategic Plan, we now have some sense of where we would need to develop infrastructure, invest in businesses, develop policies, provide education, and more. The Plan also catalogues the great benefits increasing local food consumption to 10% would have on Vermont’s economy and job creation. These are just some of the fascinating pieces of the Farm to Plate Strategic Plan released this Wednesday at the Statehouse in Montpelier.

The Farm to Plate Initiative has spent over a year meeting with hundreds of Vermonters and putting every aspect of our food system under a microscope, researching everything from where our seeds come from to where our food scraps go and everything that comes in between. In short, all the pieces that allow us to have a thriving agricultural landscape.

One interesting piece of their analysis that immediately caught my eye was their sections on whether Vermont can feed itself.

While we don’t have any data that shows how much and what kind of food Vermonters currently eat, we can compare the food available, per person, from national sources as opposed to local sources. As this chart shows, we produce a few products, like milk, maple syrup, and apples in quantities that far exceed national per-capita availability (presumptively meaning that we produce more than Vermonters would ever consume). Other crops lag far behind the national per-capita availability. Even crops relatively easy to grow in Vermont like carrots, potatoes, and onions fall far short of what you can imagine we’d need to grow in order to feed ourselves.

The Executive Summary of the Plan is now available online, with the chapters being released in the next few months. If you’re interested in local food, it makes for a really interesting read.