Stone's Throw Farm

One of the more interesting sessions at the Lake Superior Farming Conference for me was the one called, “Locally Adapted Food System for the Western Lake Superior Region,” presented by Stacy Stark of UMD and David Abazs of Round River Farm. Back in November, David published an essay about the project in the Duluth News Tribune in conjunction with the Superior Grown Food Summit, which I missed, unfortunately. As David explained in the essay, the basic idea of the research is to determine,

“Can we feed ourselves within this region? Do we have enough land to grow the food we need? What would a healthy local diet look like? What would a local food system mean for our economy, health, the environment and our western Lake Superior communities?”

Superior Food Web -- click to view more

As part of the project, a group of doctors, dieticians and nutritionists developed a healthy diet that can be grown in our region. At the conference Saturday, David explained that the “Western Lake Superior Healthy Diet” would require 369,567 acres of farmland to grow 100% of our food needs in this region, whereas 500,671 acres would be required to grow 83% of our food needs under the “Standard American Diet,” which is how most of us eat.

According to Stacy’s calculations, it seems we do have enough farmland in the region to grow our food. In Carlton County alone, we have 550,400 acres of land, and about 15% of that is “reasonable” to farm. That’s 82,560 acres in Carlton County alone.

So, if we could figure out a way to ensure that at least a portion of the so-called “prime” farmland in our area is reserved for growing food, we’d be set. It’s not a simple task by any means, but I believe it’s worth working on.