It seems many of us in the Locavore project are traveling this time of year. I went to Boston and back for the Association of American Geographers Annual Conference. Unfortunately I had to cut my trip short, and I only stayed for half the festivities. But, I can say that the current state of local/organic food was at the center of several papers. As I've said before, my work deals in part with agro-environmental issues and geography, so I attended several sessions about the status of farming around the world. In my own sessions, particularly relevant to the Locacavore project is the work of Bruce Scholten from Durham University, on the state of organics and the ways in which large food producers are buying up smaller organic farms and changing the meaning of the work organic. Among his points, he talked about how many national brand organic dairies and egg producers are still confined operations, and the consumers' idea that their organic dairy items come from "free range" animals is not always the case. (See http://cornucopia.org/pasture/index.php for some interesting follow up information about who owns national brand organics and how current fossil fuel prices effect family farmers). He also questioned what will happen to farming as we shift to alternative fuels. What will happen as the price of inputs goes up due to the high cost of fossil fuels? Are any of you seeing a change already?

Along those same lines there was a whole day of sessions entitled "Food Glorious Food". I was especially taken by the work of Jennifer Forkes of the University of Toronto. Her paper assessed the viability of everyone eating local, especially in the Toronto region, but her points can be expanded to any region really. The point is that at the current rate of farmland loss and farm consolidation, our capacity to produce enough local food for all people in a large city is limited. She raised several interesting theoretical points about scale and farming, but the more applicable points to the Locavore project was the suggestion that her work doesn't take into account what would happen if we expand urban agriculture, or if all people with property had some sort of garden. This struck me because I have noted a couple of projects in and around Cleveland trying to get urban community veggie gardens off the ground.

There were many other interesting sessions, but I won't bore you with the details. Besides, I spent a lot of time in carbon offset sessions, which is another story altogether (albeit related). I guess what I found most interesting is that access to fossil fuels helped industrialize agriculture, which helped to make our food more uniform and less local through out the 1900s. Now, with fuel prices being so high, farmers are getting pinched. Unfortunately, the smaller farmers feel that price pinch first, but many respond by trying to switch to organic fertilizers and other organic techniques. CSAs take off as farmers struggle to survive in niche markets (see the film "The Truth About Farmer John" for the story of one interesting farmer who ended up doing a CSA to stay afloat). Also urban areas consider urban gardening, which helps us all to regain the locality and seasonality of our food. This all aids us in attempting to make our food systems both environmentally sustainable again, and also to help increase food security.

All in all a good intellectual trip. More on the actual food of Boston later this week.