California Business Minute™

Hi, I am Tim Johnson and welcome to the California Business Minute.

During this past weekend’s Slow Food Nation festival, dedicated to healthy eating
practices, the American Farmland Trust, AFT reminded city dwellers specifically
those in the Bay Area that unlike most Americans, people here can feasibly buy
all their produce from farms within a 100 mile radius.

This distinction is based on the idea that the more local food is closer in proximity
to the consumer, the better it is. “No place in the United States, and perhaps in the
world is as blessed as San Francisco by an amazing cornucopia of products grown
nearby,” said Ed Thompson, California director and senior associate of the AFT, who
helped write a study called Think Globally-Eat Locally: San Francisco Foodshed
Assessment.

According to the AFT, San Franciscans consume 935,000 tons of food each year,
and 5.9 million tons in the Bay area as a whole, while the region’s agricultural production
tops 20 million tons of food annually. Most of that food comes from the California’s Central
and Salinas valleys.

The AFT, an organization that advocates for preserving farmland, argues that a key to
local food is supporting local farmers. “Without local farmland, there can be no local food,”
said Thompson. “New development in this region is consuming an acre of farmland for every
9.7 residents – the epitome of urban sprawl. If we continue at this rate, we’ll lose another
800,000 acres by 2050, and much of that will be an unnecessary waste because of how
inefficiently we are paving over the best land on earth.”

I am Tim Johnson and this has been the California Business Minute.

To see the study, visit www.farmland.org