ely to respond to a community’s calls for increased wages or sustainable waste management, Jackson says, because the farm and its operators live and work within the community.
“Our consumption matters in that we make a choice on the kind of food system we want — large, centralized and vulnerable or decentralized, resilient and supportive of our values?” Jackson says. “By keeping food local and regional, we, as consumers and citizens, can create the food system we want, that responds to our values and beliefs — be they environmental, economic, social or all of the above.”
This isn’t to say that consumers should not support a national food system. Lengnick adds that the issue is more complex than simply buying local products and that consumers should try to strike a balance. “Farmers in California are hurting from the impacts of this drought,” she says. “I wouldn’t want to say stop buying California products because that’s the system we’re in and those farmers are depending on sales.”
But Lengnick says she believes consumers can drive a transition to more a resilient food system by using their own dollars to develop regional food systems and by advocating with politicians and the government to make policy changes that support those systems.
“A resilient U.S. food system would be made up of strong, diverse, local and regional agricultural economies,” Lengnick says. “There are some good ideas in resilience science for how to transform the system, but they’re mostly theories. I would say we want to proceed carefully, but we need to start working now to start transforming our system to be more resilient to climate risk.”
Lengnick adds that federal farm subsidies could be restructured to support small-scale, sustainable agriculture instead of industrial production of specific crops. In her book, she suggests this could include accounting for income and ability when distributing financial support so as to give more aid to new and developing farmers instead of encouraging the expansion of large, investor-owned agricultural operations. She adds that changes to the 2014 Farm Bill, including crop insurance options for organic growers and increased subsidies for beginning farmers, are noteworthy steps.
McGuirk notes that there’s another reason we should be thinking about our local food system: The slight increase in temperatures in the region, coupled with the reduced availability of water in California, may mean more large-scale production will be shifting back to the Southeast. “I see the biggest, long-term effect of climate change here as being a return to major food production in the Southeast, rivaling that of the West Coast,” McGuirk explains. “It will take investment in infrastructure, research in pest control and, most of all, adequate clean water. The Clean Water Act has been our friend in that regard.
“But, the way I see it, agriculture is ripe for further growth in WNC and elsewhere in the Southeast,” she continues. She points to research by University of Alabama climatologists that found that water in the West is overvalued relative to what can equally be derived from agriculture in the East. That research suggests the California drought could be an opportunity for under-irrigated states such as Alabama and other Southeastern states.
“If you’re going to irrigate a crop, you might as well irrigate it in the Southeast, where there’s water, rather than the Southwest, where’s there’s not,” McGuirk adds.
Jackson adds that part of localizing a food system is having consumers get in touch with the people who grow their food to let them know what kind of food they want to see produced in the region. It’s also a way to help people to gain a deeper understanding of the origins of the food that they purchase.
“[Food] is not just something that just shows up in a grocery store with no past or no real connections,” Jackson explains. “It’s something that’s very intimate and connected.”