Would the gentleman with the property on Joppa Road near the Baltimore Beltway please get back in touch? You called a couple of weeks ago - something about turning your sprawling property back into farmland - and I know people who would be interested in talking to you. You might be, literally, on the edge of an important new trend.
It's called "urban edge agriculture," and some in farming believe it's the next big thing. (Note: These are not the same people who predicted that emu ranching would be the next big thing. Urban edge agriculture is not about creating a new market; it's about sustaining one that's already there but threatened in the long term.)
Here's the deal:
The rising cost of fossil fuels inflates the cost of food and causes shortages in some parts of the world. Those who see and think globally believe we cannot sustain a food-production system based on natural gas and petroleum - that is, petrochemicals for fertilization and pest control, as well as diesel for the operation of farm equipment, and for the trucks that transport food across the nation, and for the ships and planes that transport it around the world. Add in the cost of food processing, packaging and refrigeration.
"Researchers and industry experts estimate that food products typically travel 1,500 to 2,500 miles from point of origin to grocery store," says a report prepared for the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission, which is developing the Philadelphia Foodshed Study to evaluate food production and distribution in that region. The current system, the study says, uses "more calories of fossil fuel energy than they supply in metabolic energy."
David Allen Pfeiffer, author of Eating Fossil Fuels: Oil, Food and the Coming Crisis in Agriculture, is even more specific: It takes 10 calories of hydrocarbon energy to produce one calorie of food, he says. Pfeiffer notes that without petroleum and natural gas in agriculture, the United States could sustain only about two-thirds of its present population. The picture is even bleaker for the rest of the world, complicated further by the shift to commodity corn production for an emerging biofuels market.
Food security is twinned with energy security. Changing the way we produce food - specifically, shortening the distance from farm to fork - is essential.
It's a huge challenge that will take years to meet, but it can be done, starting now, if political and business leaders, along with agriculture educators, tap into the growing buy-local sentiment among consumers.
