The 50-mile diet could be brought closer to reality if we find a way to grow locally adapted oil crops. Thus, I’d like to suggest taking a look at camelina as an oil and food crop for our area. There’s a post at Oil Drum here http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5726 followed by several interesting comments. This post is the first I’ve heard of camelina, so if anyone is growing it in our region please let us know how it does here.

The thrust of the Oil Drum post by HO is using camelina as a biofuel. I’m more interested in its food value, because it’s especially difficult to get productive oil crops in a cool maritime climate. Hazelnuts are one possibility, and I’m sure there must be others (maybe meadowfoam?), but this camelina, which is part of the mustard family, also looks promising.

Your thoughts?

–Tom

I’m a regular follower of “Grow the Change” as well. I’m so impressed with Freija and the work she does, she keeps me motivated.

You wrote exactly what I was thinking…but better.

I don’t know how many acres total are in production around here. Numbers are hard to come by, as many farmers prefer to work off the info-grid, if you know what I mean. But in 2007/08 we fought to preserve 547 acres of ALR land in the city proper, which is still in the ALR and now on the market. (Whether or not it’s good for legumes or grains is another matter: this land is pretty rocky, dry, and topographically challenged.) So there is the potential for some mid-scale production within city limits. The thing is to get started, unless it’s clear that we can never reach the end point. There is currently a lot of untapped potential, but the hitch comes in making additional agricultural activity worth people’s time. Right now it’s s stretch, especially when the primary business model is for each farmer to carry her/his risk in isolation from the community of other farmers and consumers. I’m convinced that we need to explore cooperative approaches, even though they can be harder to work out, since people’s opinions vary so much (and farmers are notorious for not even agreeing with themselves!).

More discussions like this one — and questions like the ones you’re asking — are exactly what we need.

Best,
David

I ran some quick numbers for curiosity’s sake… Looking at legumes, since as you say, the local climate is more conducive to legume production than cereal grains…. On average, you can expect about 1500 lbs of legumes per acre (lentils, soybeans, beans, peas, chickpeas), this is a rough average. And let’s use an average of 1 pound of legumes a week per person, some may eat more, some less. That works out to 1 acre feeding 30 individuals for an entire year. If Powell River has about 25,000 people, it would require 866 acres in legume production. Does the Powell River area have that much land in agricultural production?

Of course these numbers are pure excersise, not everyone is eating locally, and eating habits are highly variable, but… it does give one a scale for perspective.

A small farmer/gardener could easily work perhaps 4 acres of legumes into the vegetable rotation, which would require 216 of these small farmers in the Powell River area. A cooperatively run processing facility, and cooperatively owned appropriately scaled machinery would cut the costs of legume production to a scale that a small farmer could afford, and a CSA could feasably support.

But how many people in Powell River are currently and actively interested in locally grown legumes, for instance? Perhaps a few hundred, maybe a thousand? So really, a few intrepid small farmers/gardeners could supply this immediate demand. And there’s always room to grow.

Anyway, I find it helpful to work the numbers when talking about grain production. We tend to think of grains on the scale of Prairie farms, 10,000 acres at a time. But an acre of wheat will feed 20 people for a year, averaging 2 lbs wheat per week.

All told, a population the size of Powell River would need 3-4,000 acres in grain and legumes to feed itself. Is this possible, it is an important question to ask.