Jul 06, 2015 — People want to support their communities by buying and eating what is made close by. Rural economies want to rebuild around the idea of “local," but it is not easy.

In Canton, N.Y., for example, hard work to develop a food hub and a mobile slaughterhouse did not pan out. Efforts to distribute fruits and vegetables more broadly to area colleges, stores, and hospitals have not met expectations.

Jennifer Walker, a national expert on rebuilding local economies, said it is not uncommon for rural towns to struggle to reshape their economies. She said she heard "a lot of energy and enthusiasm" when she visited Canton last month, but she also heard about "a lot of things that were started and failed or didn’t come to fruition and end up like they wanted." She said she also heard a lot of frustration about not knowing which way to go forward.

Last month, Walker co-facilitated a conversation about where Canton can go from here. The village is one of 26 communities nationwide that won a federal “Local Food, Local Places” grant. About 50 community leaders came together to make a strategic plan around local food.

Walker said it is tough for any rural community to know the right way to develop a robust economy, but there are examples to learn from.

Click "listen" to hear some of those ideas or read highlights of David's interview below.

Walker said the way to rebuild local economies around local food is to up the production base, cultivate new farmers, encourage people to get into farming, build the farming supply capacity or find the markets, and get the markets locked in. She said the many institutions such as hospitals and universities in Canton make great potential for markets, but there is not enough supply to meet that demand. There is not going to be enough supply, however, until farmers know the market is there.

Walker pointed to an example from Louisville, Kentucky where the New Roots group runs the ‘fresh start’ program in which they activated people within communities who are not already participating in local-foods-movement-type of things.

She said successful communities work with someone who is at least moderately excited about local foods on some level, who has leadership,and who has the attention and is invested in their own community, and connect them with the resources they need to be the champion. Walker recommends communities broaden the base of people who understand local foods from the importance of health, personal wellness, environmental health, economic development, and all the possibilities that go in with that.

Walker and the group she co-facilitated in Canton defined four basic goal areas. She said one of the most exciting is the idea of incubating new farmers. She said it can take many forms, but the basic form of the farmer incubator program involves teaching a new farmer the horticultural skills; how to grow, how to market their produce to different entities, and the business and production planning. She said they teach new farmers how to do a farm plan before the season starts. It usually involves having a quarter-acre lot to try things out for a couple of years to start growing and selling and building a local market. 

If those in the new farmer program decide farming is not for them, they can still be involved in the local food movement. They can act as aggregators, open a restaurant, or serve as buyers for institutions. Because of their farm training and their knowledge of the local food system they received through the training, they are better equipped to integrate local foods into the rest of community life.

Walker said researchers know an emphasis on local agriculture builds civic participation and engagement in a way that is, by definition, local. Food is one of the few things that although you can take out the production—we can continue to get food from China—we still eat every day, wherever our bodies physically are.

Growing local food can provide part-time employment or supplemental employment to a lot of people. For the few people who want to take on farming as a profession, it can create decent, well-paying jobs. Food is a way to talk about the importance of paying attention to where you are and what is important about your community. It is a way to build community pride and civic engagement.