Is Wisconsin Food Local?

Thoughts on How the Wedge Defines "Local"

By Barth Anderson

Wedge shoppers, you may have noticed that a new tally is being totaled on your Wedge shopping receipt.

Beneath your itemized purchases, you can now find what percentage of your total bill was comprised of local product and a "local total," as well. The Wedge initiated this in honor of the Eat Local Challenge, but we'll keep tallying this number for you permanently now.

But how is the Wedge defining local? Is it a set distance? A region? Are there borders to our local environs? If so, what are they?

Where is local?

To define local, there were a number of options at our disposal. It wasn't easy to narrow it down.

For example, the most famous definition belongs to San Francisco's "locavores", foodies committed to eating locally, who adhere to the "100-mile diet": If the food isn't grown within one hundred miles of where you live, then it's not local.

But just get a load of San Francisco's 100-mile radius. Within their definition of local is an ocean, grasslands, some of the richest fruit and nut orchards on the planet, Nappa Valley wine country, one of America's biggest breadbaskets, the Salinas region, not to mention 5-star restaurant Chez Panisse which helped spawn the eat local movement. There's barely a food you can imagine that isn't grown, produced, processed, juiced, or caught in the San Francisco gourmet foodshed.

Call it local sour grapes, but I'd like to see a Californian eat a 100-mile diet up here in Minnesota. In February.

If Minneapolitans limit our definition to 100 miles, then we exclude Hoch Orchards (155 miles away) who grow some of the best apples in Minnesota; we eliminate the Viroqua, Wisconsin region (192 miles away) where many of our organic producers are located (Harmony Valley, Driftless Organics, Organic Valley, and Avalanche Organics, to name a few), and one could argue that it doesn't get more elementally Minnesota than Native Harvest of the White Earth Reservation (234 miles away), who bring us maple syrup and wild rice (the Minnesota state grain).

Because of our climate, and because our foodshed is more spread out than California's, Minnesota by necessity needs a wider definition of local.

Answer: I-35

With this in mind, an easy way to define local is by state. The Minnesota Department of Agriculture's Minnesota Grown Program has a vested interest in this angle, and it's a good one: We might be able to keep Native Harvest and Hoch Orchards if we define local as Minnesota grown. Unfortunately, while gaining Native Harvest in the northwest part of the state, we'd lose some Wisconsin farms that are less than 60 miles away. And we'd lose a Minnesota farm, too.

Chris and Kim Blanchard of Rock Spring Farm listen to Minnesota Public Radio, follow Minnesota news, and have their mail delivered from the post office in Spring Grove, Minnesota. But a federal surveying crew came through their area this summer to determine the true position of the Minnesota/Iowa border and learned that Rock Spring Farm is in Iowa, not Minnesota. (When he learned the news, a neighbor quipped, "Oh! Thank goodness! I just couldn't take another Minnesota winter.") So Rock Spring is officially an Iowa farm.

Too bad for Chris and Kim. How's the old joke go? "What's the only good thing to come out of Iowa?"

Quality of Life

So maybe "local" isn't really about either distance or provincial allegiance to one's state. Maybe local should have an ecological, sustainability component, instead.

In that case, it might simply be more important to significantly reduce the number of miles that food travels before it's consumed. The old "food mile" argument. "Fifty calories of food shipped 1500 miles is simply stupid," as Greg Reynolds of Riverbend Farm delicately puts it. Plus, gas prices in real dollars have more than doubled in the last ten years, making the average 1500 miles that most U.S. food travels a spendy (and unsustainable) trip.

But mileage can't be our only consideration here since farms release carbon into the atmosphere in other ways than transportation - they plow and "disk" their fields with gas-guzzling tractors; workers travel to and from work in cars; natural gas is a constituent part of high-nitrogen fertilizer; and the release of carbon from tilling is massive (tilling with an 11-inch moldboard plow can release more than 1,600 pounds of carbon dioxide per acre in a 24-hour period.) So "carbon calculations" are made to take as many of these factors into play as possible, and from this environmental point of view, organic food grown close to home is undoubtedly the most sustainable.

Also, like any statistic, carbon calculation can be bent in just about any direction. Giant corporations who move giant amounts of food have made the case that it's more energy efficient to transport food in giant volumes to the dense populations that need them. Thousands of smaller companies and farms doing the same thing with thousands of vehicles, they argue, is wasteful and less sustainable in the long run. Are their carbon calculations wrong?

But from another view on sustainability, Mark Kastel of the Cornucopia Institute says that his definition of local would be to gauge distance in time instead of miles.

"Four or four and a half hours between farm and consumer would mean the farmer could return home that same day after a delivery. When I was farming," said Kastel, "that was very important to me."

What I like about Kastel's definition of local is that it addresses something beyond the carbon calculation: the farmer's quality of life. I don't want to diminish the eco-argument, but living a livable life is a key part of sustainability. We need to nurture the highest quality of life for the greatest number of people in a sustainable system.

So perhaps "local" should be measured in minutes instead of miles?

My Head Hurts

But then there are still other considerations when defining local. If a local bakery brings in ingredients from out-of-state or beyond the "local" 100-mile radius, is its bread still considered local? If the bakery is locally owned, employing local workers, and paying local taxes, shouldn't those factors be considered in the "local" equation? If so, then what about Peace Coffee, which is locally owned, employs seventeen Minnesotans, but buys a product that is definitely not local (even if it is locally roasted)? What about local cheese makers who may "import" a small amount of milk from out of state when necessary, but who otherwise ply their artisan craft locally?

Confused? Don't worry. It's a confusing issue. In the end, the co-op decided to go with as wide a definition as possible: Local is any local food company or local grower located in Minnesota or a state bordering ours.

Why such a broad definition? Because most of our growers and food producers are within eight hours of the store, which means product can be delivered without spending a night in refrigeration before the Wedge takes possession of it (freshness must be part of our definition). We also wanted to encourage shoppers who care about where their food comes from to define this one for themselves rather than relying on us - local isn't like "organic" or "grass fed," where one definition is accepted by all, as you can see from various arguments above. Mark Kastel defines it one way. A Californian locavore defines it another. A global warming scientist might have her own definition of local. Who's right?

My personal definition of local is pretty "regional" in comparison to the locavores, because, really, I'm more concerned with the "food economy" than whether a farmer is 100 or 110 miles away, or whether a Minnesota or Iowa post office is delivering my farmer's mail. If we're going to create local food systems that can sustain numerous communities across the Upper Midwest, then small food producers need our financial patronage, and that means selling a lot of clean, local food across the region so that smart, small farmers can survive - so that we all can survive and live better lives.

I also like to support local food companies and include them in my definition of local. Local co-ops, restaurants, and food companies that are trying to better my community are important to me. Local companies that support ethical growers abroad, particularly if their products don't compete with my local farmers' fare (such as coffee, bananas, chocolate, green tea, sugar, etc), nurtures my local culture. Cooperatives like Frontier Herbs out of Iowa encourages democracy. Minneapolis-based Peace Coffee's bike-delivery program proves they're dedicated to a low impact on the local enviroment. Local companies that source Fair Trade ingredients, like Dr. Bronners (Wisconsin), helps us think locally when we buy globally.

Now, not all local companies are created equal, of course, so, if you accept my argument, you'll have to create some criteria for what you like in a good company. Cargill is local, after all, and so is 3M. Not to diss the mighty 3M, but are they delivering Fair Trade sticky notes via bike? I don't think so.

Maybe my personal definition of local is a cop-out from your point of view. That's ok. The important thing is to have this discussion about locale and sustainability, not to shut it down with an airtight argument and convenient label. If you disagree or have another point of view, email us and give us your definition. We'd like to hear how you define local, too.

Contact us and tell us how you define local