Among life’s most basic essentials – clean air and water, food, and shelter – food and agriculture have been underrepresented in our planning for a more livable, prosperous, accessible, and sustainable metropolitan Washington.
Many have heard the phrase “farm to table.” It captures part of what we mean by the term “food system”—the set of interconnected activities from agricultural production and processing, to getting food to the plate, to composting and disposal. Our food system is local, regional, national, and global in scale.
In the region, the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (COG) Regional Agricultural Work Group has shown that we produce a variety of agricultural goods, including dairy products, grain, fruit, and vegetables. Our region is also home to a growing craft beverage industry, however, most of what we eat comes from other parts of the country and the world given the scale of local production here. With the fall release of the update to COG’s 2012 What Our Region Grows report, we’ll see this trend continue as our population grows and agricultural lands shrink.
These pressures, coupled with growing interest and investment in local food and farming, ranging from new farmer training programs, to on-farm agritourism enterprises, to the recognition of the critical role of food and beverage businesses to driving retail employment, means there couldn’t be a better time to work together to grow our regional food economy.
Moreover, there are persistent and distressing inequities in food access in the region. Too many of our region’s residents lack reliable access to healthy food. You can find evidence of this in the more than 500,000 people served by Capital Area Food Bank each year and limited places to purchase groceries in neighborhoods such as the District of Columbia’s Wards 7 and 8. A Regional Food Systems Program could offer the opportunity to address these issues too.
More than two years ago, COG had the opportunity to start a program to increase connections between rural farmers and urban consumers, and to increase access to healthy, local food. This young program has been initially focused on how the region can preserve agricultural production and working lands. It is also identifying and addressing other barriers to growing the regional food economy, including infrastructure and transportation challenges that can make local food delivery difficult.
These regional efforts complement critical work that continues in many of our local COG member jurisdictions. An increasing number of our members have agricultural marketing development officers to assist farmers in getting their product to market and finding ways to diversify their income. These positions supplement other long-standing support from local soil conservation districts and university extension programs. Several communities have hired farm-to-school coordinators, while others are home to food policy councils, many of which are working alongside our region’s emergency food service providers to improve food access.
We are working to grow COG’s Regional Food Systems Program so it will have the capacity to be a regional forum for sharing of best practices and developing solutions. Together, with our members and partners, we are working to reinforce the value that regional collaboration brings to supporting this essential part of our lives and economy.
Lindsay Smith is the Regional Food Systems Value Chain Coordinator at the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments.
MORE:
Presentation on the Regional Food Systems Program
Initial findings from D.C. Food Economy Study (Full study forthcoming)
Maryland’s Buy Local Challenge (Begins July 21, 2018)