Bring back the local farm

*Having a sustainable supply of reasonably priced organic food.

* Reducing the cost - economically and environmentally - of producing and shipping food.

* Supporting a resurgent local business and the jobs it creates.

We have a start on this - community-supported agriculture, for instance. That's where you stake a local farm a sum of cash in late winter or early spring in return for a weekly supply of vegetables and fruit through the fall or early winter. We have farmers' markets. We have some local produce sold in the supermarkets. We have roadside stands along the tourist routes.

But we don't have enough of all this, though there's growing support for it.

The preference for buying locally has shot up nearly 77 percent in the past year, according to a survey by the Schaefer Center for Public Policy at the University of Baltimore.

Last month, a team of University of North Carolina researchers received a grant to study the public health impact of expanding local food systems.

"Among the most pressing public health problems in the U.S. today are obesity, environmental degradation and health disparities," said Alice Ammerman, director of UNC's Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention. "Contributing in a big way to each of these problems is our current food system, with its heavy dependence on fossil fuels - such as fertilizers, pesticides and gasoline - for large-scale production and long-distance transportation of often high-calorie, nutrient-poor food, from farm to processing facility to table. ... The result is not only damaging to our health and the environment but also devastating to the economic base of rural communities."

So imagine this: a series of new or restored farms, under 200 acres each, sufficient in number, geographic spread, and crop and livestock choice to significantly increase the amount of Maryland-grown food on Maryland dinner tables. We'd see healthier diets, local residents reconnected to farmers and farms providing a new generation of Americans with a livelihood.

Shaun Ferris, an agriculture specialist with Baltimore-based Catholic Relief Services, listened to my ideas but wondered if the farming ethic had disappeared. "It's hard work," he said, noting that fewer young Americans are drawn to the life these days. That would make a local farming renaissance difficult, he said.

Dene Bruce has 80 students at North Harford High School in a particularly enthusiastic chapter of FFA (Future Farmers of America). Their float was named best in Bel Air's Fourth of July parade, and now they're trying to raise money to attend FFA's national convention in Indianapolis in October. Bruce thinks more kids would be attracted to farming if they believed they could earn a good living and not have to start from scratch - that is, if the new business model included existing farms and the support of consumers.

"Most of the kids have a dream to be some sort of farmer," Bruce says.

Let's find some way to give them the opportunity. They're going to be needed, in a bigger way than they now know.

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Dan Rodricks can be heard on "Midday," Mondays through Thursdays, noon to 2 p.m., on 88.1 WYPR-FM.

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