Will your farmer be here to feed you in the future? A rather obtrusive question at first. However, one must consider that America farms only 27 percent of the acres, on a per capita basis, compared to 1900 and has lost 70 percent of its farmers since 1935. In addition, the challenges of getting to market with high fuel prices and export demand for certain foods, often exceeding domestic production, may shed new light in asking the question.

When La Montanita Food Co-op, with a 35-year history of working with regional farmers queried its 8,000 members about where the co-op sources its food, the response was pretty unanimous – focus on sourcing food locally and regionally as much as possible. Out of this direction from its members, the co-op embarked on a new venture to build on its base of farmers and develop a regional food shed. A food shed is the area closest to your location that could logically provide food.

Located in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the co-op broke food retailing tradition by creating a regional trucking and warehouse operation to serve primarily local food producers and making that food available to any other food store or restaurant that wanted to source food closer to home. Even more unusual is that the co-op hired a full time field-man to cultivate new farm relationships with local and regional farmers and help those farmers market their produce to not only the co-op, but other retailers in the region.

The co-op’s vision of developing regional farmers by developing a regional food shed is one of the first examples in America where a food retailer took steps to insulate itself and its customers from the perils of industrial food including food safety and shortages that can emerge from the global food crises.

To learn more about how the La Montanita Food Co-op is changing the future of food, purchase the July/August edition of Touch the Soil magazine at a retail outlet or from the back issues online.