Historically, Missoula County produced and processed lots of food, said University of Montana professor Neva Hassanein - in the early 20th century, just about all that Missoula ate. Today, 85 percent to 90 percent of our food comes from somewhere else.
"The processing is almost completely gone," she said, "and we are losing our working farms."
In a survey for the Missoula County Community Food Assessment done last year by a steering committee of people from various sectors of food and agriculture, 68 percent of Missoula residents said that food freshness was at least somewhat of a problem or concern.
Sixty percent said that how far away the food they buy and eat comes from is at least somewhat of a problem or concern. And 55 percent of people said they would like to see more local foods in grocery stores.
Almost 80 percent of the people surveyed said they bought food grown or produced in Montana at least some of the time.
The study, which was co-led by Hassanein and UM social work professor Maxine Jacobson, also found that 82 percent of people were concerned about food safety - mad cow disease, pesticide residue, the effects of food additives and other worries.
On the assets side, people listed the Farmers Market, the Good Food Store, the community gardens and other Garden City Harvest programs, and local producers such as Bayern Brewing, Flathead cherries and Benson's Farm.
In short, Hassanein and Jacobson told the City Council Public Safety and Health Committee, there is public support for locally produced food.
However, she said, "We cannot have a healthy food system if we do not have farms or farm land."
Missoula County has 641 farms, the highest number since 1954, the study found. The number has gone up since 1974, when the Census defined a farm as any place where $1,000 a year of agricultural products could be sold. But the farms are smaller, the study found, and the total land in farms is shrinking dramatically.
The average farm size in Missoula County in 2002 was 403 acres; the median size was only 42 acres.
The market value of what farms produce averages $13,000 per farm, the study found. Larger farms are disappearing to development because market forces make subdividing immensely attractive.
Agricultural lands are the most likely to be subdivided, Hassanein said, because they are big, flat expanses with space for lots of houses. In the 1990s, 10,000 acres of Missoula County land was subdivided.
Hassanein, Jacobson and Bonnie Buckingham, program manager at the Missoula Food Bank, approached the City Council's Public Safety and Health Committee as a first step in creating a Missoula County Food Policy Council. Their next step will be a presentation to the Missoula County Board of Commissioners.
They propose a 15- to 20-member council of food and agriculture specialists and citizens from many arenas, with representatives from city and county government. The council would advise government on policy and carry out projects designed to foster local farming and ranching and a local food supply.
Council president Jack Reidy expressed great reluctance to wade into land use issues to protect farms, and Councilman Don Nicholson called land use a "prickly-pear issue."
"You're getting into a web there that is really hard," Reidy said.
But the Food Assessment Steering Committee is not proposing a regulatory approach, Hassanein said.
Back when Reidy worked for Eddy's Bakery, he said, he called on the Buttrey grocery store, which went into Tremper's shopping center in 1958. At the time, he said, the store got all its produce from Ben Hughes' Hughes Gardens, along the river on the way to East Missoula.
Hughes eventually subdivided and developed the land because of the economics of truck gardening versus development, Reidy said.
"The kids aren't interested in farming like their folks did," Reidy said. "There isn't money in it.There's more money in development."
Influencing the food market would require swimming upstream against economic forces, said Councilman Bob Lovegrove.
"The vast majority of people are voting with their pocketbooks," he said. "Instead of raising their vegetables, they're going down and buying McDonald's."
Committee chairwoman Lou Ann Crowley encouraged the steering committee members to draft and submit a resolution to the council because many things can be done in the area.
For instance, Jackie Corday, who manages the city's Open Space program, is working on a conservation easement for a 340-acre farm in Grass Valley, where development is moving.
Reporter Ginny Merriam can be reached at 523-5251 or at gmerriam@missoulian.com
Find out more
For more information on the Missoula County Community Food Assessment and the proposal for a Missoula County Food Policy Council, call Neva Hassanein at 243-6271 or Maxine Jacobson at 243-6384. To see the reports on the Internet, go to www.umt.edu/cfa.
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