Can a State Feed Itself

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Permalink Reply by Maine Food System on September 13, 2009 at 4:35pm

Good question!

Lisa, as you know from, "A Farm for the Future", a conventional farm can feed 5 people per acre, while "edible forest gardening" can feed twice as much ( 10 people per acre ) with NO fossil fuel!

Therefore, the answer to your question reduces to elementary arithmetic! ...which is refreshingly simple!

MAINE (our state): has

POPULATION: 1,274,923
FARMS: 7,196
TOTAL ACRES (land): 19,589,136
ACRES CULTIVATED: 1,369,768
ACRES NEEDED (conv): 254,985
ACRES NEEDED (efg): 127,492


SO! Maine has plenty of land available and already produces enough food to feed itself.

Therefore, Maine provides at least one example of a state that can feed itself.

However, this is rare. But, with careful planning & concerted effort, we submit: most states probably could feed themselves.

http://sites.google.com/site/mainefoodsystem/me-food-sys-by-the-num...

http://www.mainefood.us

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Permalink Reply by Avery Yale Kamila on September 13, 2009 at 5:11pm

Cheryl Wixon of MOFGA is working on a report about what it would take for Maine to be self sufficient in 20 categories of food. Here's some more info about her study: http://themaineswitch.com/story/can-maine-feed-itself

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Permalink Reply by LisaF on September 16, 2009 at 11:58am

Thanks Ed and Avery. Another interesting approach is to look at this by town, as in the case of "Can Totnes Feed Itself" (see http://transitionculture.org/2009/07/10/announcing-the-release-of-c...).

In that example, the answer was "Yes, but...." which equates to a "No" unless all the "but" contingencies can be met. The main issue there was overlapping foodsheds, to use the jargon. The town in question could feed itself until the big, mean neighborhood foodsheds decided to exert their clout (or considerable economic purchasing power) to appropriate supply.

I think looking at this at a state level is a good idea. Looking at it by region within the state can't hurt either. I am excited about Cheryl Wixson's work.

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Permalink Reply by John Harker on September 19, 2009 at 10:03am

A report was done by the University of Massachusetts some years ago that addressed this issue, and for each on of Maine's basic commodities, we fared well.

I agree that the study Cheryl is doing is well worth the effort. I hope she includes pest issues and research needed to overcome these, especially if the recommendations are to grow these only organically, labor issues, and also focuses on price as deterrents for farmers to get into those commodities.

There is a major effort underway, supported by the Department of Agriculture, to help some organic farmers produce their own milk. The case study of how they either succeed or fail will also be an eyeopener as to how to grow more of our own.

Has anyone done a study of, "if only home owners would each grow a garden", and trade off some time in the garden with, say, with boating or going to the beach, or some other recreational activity, and what impact THAT would have on getting us to better self sufficiency?

John


John Harker

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Permalink Reply by Maine Food System on September 29, 2009 at 4:10pm

Some great posts, everyone! ... John Harker...would you kindly have a look at my earlier response to Lisa's original post? I have reposted it, again, here, for your convenience. I'd like to know your thoughts about the specific numbers & general framework I'm using. It's a only a start & it's only a rough sketch, but, I think this kind of simple arithmetic approach is one way to begin to get at the kind of question you ended your last post with. Thanks!


My earlier response to Lisa's original post:

Lisa, as you know from, "A Farm for the Future", a conventional farm can feed 5 people per acre, while "edible forest gardening" can feed twice as much ( 10 people per acre ) with NO fossil fuel!

Therefore, the answer to your question reduces to elementary arithmetic! ...which is refreshingly simple!

MAINE (our state): has

POPULATION: 1,274,923
FARMS: 7,196
TOTAL ACRES (land): 19,589,136
ACRES CULTIVATED: 1,369,768
ACRES NEEDED (conv): 254,985
ACRES NEEDED (efg): 127,492


SO! Maine has plenty of land available and already produces enough food to feed itself.

Therefore, Maine provides at least one example of a state that can feed itself.

However, this is rare. But, with careful planning & concerted effort, we submit: most states probably could feed themselves.

http://sites.google.com/site/mainefoodsystem/me-food-sys-by-the-num...


http://www.mainefood.us

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Permalink Reply by John Harker on September 29, 2009 at 10:08pm

Well, as usual for me, I am direct. I believe it is not so much the resource that is the critical component. I could argue whether you need that many acres in nuts, food etc, or if you need ten times that amount. It really does not matter to me...WHY? ...read on.....

What matters is the will and needs of the population. You see, ever since Maine was colonized by Europeans, trade has been the foundation of sustainability, not homesteading alone. Even in the 1850's, just before Maine's agriculture started a slow decline, Maine did not feed itself, but relied on trade. ......Now, individual families may have produced many, if not all, their food needs, but they needed to trade or get employed in other ways to actually make it back then as well. Every family needs to work to create wealth, to live. A BIG question is what are the types of businesses can be attracted to Maine to help Mainers in the next century?

So, the basic premise that we "have" to "feed" ourselves by our own agriculture is just not of importance and historically has not been of importance unless you have a view of the world where we will be without resources, without trade, and go back to subsistence living....If one does have that outlook, then I cannot help out here.

I have an outlook that says...We will slowly evolve, hopefully using our brain trust to come up with newer and better methods that conserve nonrenewable resources, to fix the problems we have created for ourselves, but embrace the best that technology can offer to help us in the future.


Now, could I invite the discussion to go in another direction?................

I believe we need to create wealth for families and communities so that we can sustain our communities, families and future. Using the land base is a great way to do so. Maine farmers and consumers who want to work the land CAN create wealth to the community and population. Wealth creation can come from growing and SELLING ag products, OR it can come from SELF-SUFFICIENCY of a population who are otherwise employed in other occupations.

SELLING.........Right now our farmers are struggling to make ends meet in a Trade Rich Economy, just like in the past. Those who are good at it will continue to make ends meet and raise families and employee's families. The commodities that make it will be ones that are produced efficiently and that grow well here. Hence my comment about Cheryl's work, and the work of the many farmers who already are doing so.

SELF-SUFFICIENCY........Another way to create food wealth for Maine is for the general non-farm population to grow their own food, using their own disposable/recreational/extra labor. Each pound of food produced is one less pound imported. Alot of land exists for turning into farmland, and as you so noted, we do not really need alot of the overall land in Maine. Remember we had 5 million acres in agriculture at the turn of the century.How many acres in lawn do we have around each residence? How many idle crop acres are on farms that are being held by nonfarmers? How much human power is available that could be "trained" to grow food? And, with some of today's technology, we CAN grow more in small spaces. One drawback....some studies have shown that individual food preservation activities are very energy resource drains on our society, compared with centralized processing facilities that minimize energy use per unit of food output preserved....just something to think about....

Regardless, both of the above ways to "better feed ourselves" relies on WILL POWER, NEED, WANT..........We can say we want 80 % of Mainer's calories to be produced in Maine by 2020, but it is just a pipe dream. I believe I went into detail in another forum on this subject.

So, forget the studies, forget the back of the napkin numbers game, forget the food policy "goals".......Start over.....I think we need to focus on people's wants/needs/behaviors and try to figure out their mind, try to figure out what needs to be done to change behaviors......I will go so far as to say hedonistic behaviors......of the masses, quite frankly, of ALL of us in this society.


So where do we begin? I wrote a study on what are the major impediments to growing a local agriculture and gardening society in the ACES report. It is not pretty.

A hint.....it starts with the children...................and education..............and technology................and freedom, and less government regulations...and.............................

BUT, I believe we cannot throw the technology baby out with the hedonistic bath water. We need to celebrate and cherish the technology we have developed in growing, storage, and distribution that has freed us from subsistence living, giving us the time to explore this subject at this time, in this way.

did I plow too much ground? did I step in it? did I set the barn on fire?

John

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Permalink Reply by Ben on October 25, 2009 at 5:42pm

I would suggest to anyone that they watch the TV show Jericho, unfortunately it was cancelled but it's worth finding and watching. The reason I am suggesting it is it gives an example how one event, a flash of light, and all of a sudden communities have to provide for themselves. The just in time shipping system comes to a screeching halt and grocery store shelves go empty, then what? I consider it very dangerous to keep getting more and more reliant on a centralized food system. It appears more economical, but there are other factors that haven't come into play to test the vulnerabilities. I am very concerned with what the Fed is doing to our currency, we are risking hyper inflation. If that happens, the likely scenario is that people would spend all their money as soon as they get it on tangible items, this in effect could quickly deplete grocery stores. There are plenty of what ifs and scenarios, it depends how far down the rabbit hole you want to go. The point is that it is simply dangerous for our security and freedom depending on a centralized food system.

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