By Megan Fehrman
Dan Armstrong has recently written an article entitled “Relocalizing Eden,” which can be found online at http://www.mudcitypress.com/mudeden.html.
Armstrong proposes that a region's social and economic sustainability can be judged by its capacity to produce, process, and distribute some significant portion of its own food. He uses our own Willamette Valley as a case study to show how the globalized market place and industrialization of our food system have greatly decreased the amount of food that is now grown in the fertile Willamette Valley for the people of this state. Not long ago, in the 1950s and 60s, Willamette Valley agriculture produced a wide array of grains, fruits, and vegetables; wheat once represented almost a third of what was harvested. Barley, oats, snap peas, and sweet corn were also significant crops along with many other fruits and vegetables. Only fifty years ago, farmers in this valley were providing about half of what the residents were eating.
Today, that number has decreased to about five percent as the number of acres in grass seed has doubled in the last thirty years, and less than 20% of what is grown in the Willamette Valley is food.