Exploring nature and how it is doing—in gardens, on farms and ranches, and throughout the foodshed—links the increasingly overlooked physical and mental benefits of being outside in natural settings to increased awareness, appreciation, and support of healthy ecosystems. HCFS offers three “foodshed field guides” below to help in this exploration.

It’s mid-May, and I’m at the highest point on our farm with a patchwork of snow still remaining on the high peaks above 10,000 feet in the San Juans to our northwest. One of my favorite spots on the farm, it affords a panoramic view of the mountains and valleys that make up what we consider our local and regional foodsheds of the Greater San Juan Mountain Ecosystem. From here, most all I see is an inviting landscape of great diversity and beauty, but how healthy is it up close—the water, air, soils, and plant and animal life of the farming ecosystems and the surrounding wilder ecosystems of the high mountains on which our agriculture depends?

The Extinction of Experience: A few weeks ago, I came across an article, Apathy Threatens the Planet. How Do We Get People to Care? Apathy has become my central focus in our local food work. We need enough people to care about truly good food—and to care enough to act on that conviction. But how to do this? This article explained new research on how getting people outdoors can get them to care—enough, and the term they used, “The Extinction of Experience,” intrigued me.

The Thunder Tree: “The Extinction of Experience” was coined by Robert M. Pyle in his delightful and insightful book, The Thunder Tree, based in part on his childhood adventures many years ago in the semi-wild greenery along the High Line Canal running through the Denver area. Having been able to escape to the High Line Canal trail during a protracted stay in Denver recently, I was drawn deeper into the concept—and was further pleased to see that our Southwest local food colleague, Gary Nabhan, had built upon this idea as well.

In essence, the extinction in question is of our diminishing connection with nature and the outdoors in our everyday lives and the resulting apathy toward nature—as well as the loss of the physical and mental benefits that it can bring. Pyle urged us to escape and pay attention to nature wherever we can find it, as his High Line Canal exploits in the midst of rampant suburban growth attest. This all resonates with my belief that getting people outside in natural and semi-natural settings—from gardens and farms to the broader foodshed and surrounding wilder areas—is critical for people to begin to care enough to step up and support local food and foodsheds and move on to sustainability in all areas of our lives.

The power of curiosity: Interacting with nature seems to be a critical key to greater caring. There is no doubt that just being outside helps us mentally and physically, but I have long felt that time spent outdoors paying attention to nature tends to engage a positive feedback loop of awareness to curiosity to greater awareness, and often—if you believe as I do in a significant measure of inherent goodness in people— to greater caring and taking responsibility to protect and support nature for now and for the future.

Modes of paying attention for people of all ages from unstructured to Citizen Science: In our three “field guides”—Exploring Foodshed Health Field Guide, San Juan Mountain Watch Field Guide, and Wild School Gardens Guide—we explain why and how to pay attention in many ways:
• Unstructured observation—driven by curiosity and aided by quiet time in the setting—perhaps the most critical skill to develop for a lifetime.
• Observations with an objective in mind, such as finding pollinators or birds.
• Measuring or counting.
• Monitoring—observing over time—perhaps from your home or a favorite trail.
• Sharing observations with others—put that social media to good use if so inclined.
• Sharing with scientists and others through citizen science programs to increase scientific knowledge and solutions—a major thrust of our field guides.

The power of citizen science: As Aldo Leopold and others have pointed out, being aware of how nature is doing can certainly bring some disquieting awareness of problems, especially in this age of climate change on top of the biodiversity crisis. Staying engaged and aware can be difficult for many people, but sharing what you see—including the beauty and awe—is a helpful first step. The beauty of citizen science is that you can 1) be working with others and 2) be assisting scientists in seeking solutions—both of which can keep one engaged. Citizen science programs and apps are available for people of all ages and knowledge on a huge number of topics, and you can participate on a national level or on specific issues of local concern.

Dreaming: We have suggested dreaming of—or envisioning, or imagining—what we would like our food system and our local foodsheds to be as a first step to a better future. Getting out into our broader foodsheds—the food producing ecosystems and the surrounding wilder ecosystems with which they are intimately intertwined—can be an opportunity to dream of what we would like those ecosystems, and our relationships with them, to be. Might we come a little bit closer to better understanding our appropriate place in this world.

HCFS Field Guides: To address the “extinction of experience,” our HCFS field guides are designed to help people of all ages get outside to become more familiar with local foodsheds and to understand how the health of these growing areas and surrounding ecosystems depends in large part on our food choices and food policies.

Our free online 54-page downloadable San Juan Mountain Watch Field Guide focuses on the greater San Juan Mountain Ecosystem’s foodsheds.

The similar Exploring Foodshed Health Field Guide can be used in any location.

Our 7-page Wild School Gardens Guide is aimed at kids as local explorers and eaters.

A Simple Back-of-the-Envelope Exploration of Foodability

Foodability—which can be taken to mean the degree to which a community or region could be self-reliant for its food—is at the heart of the local food movement. It is a pursuit; we don’t know how far we can go in that direction, but we know that we have a long ways before we need to worry about trying to go too far. If local food is to live up to its promise of better diets and health, thriving farmers and ranchers, solid economic development, environmental restoration, biodiversity preservation, and a livable climate, we know we must ramp up this effort dramatically and soon.

20% local? A while back we posed a challenge in our high, short-seasoned, water-challenged community located in Southwest Colorado to pursue an initial goal of 20% of all our preschoolers’ meals and snacks coming from local producers. The idea was to think big, challenge ourselves, start with a very important age group, and have a more concrete goal than just “growing as much of our food as locally as possible.” We still, as most all communities, aren’t even close to this goal, so I think it deserves another, more specific yet expansive look. Let’s start with carrots for preschoolers and go from there.

The virtues of the carrot: Not a perfect food nor perhaps a super food, carrots are yet one of our favorites. They are relatively easy to grow in most areas, can be eaten raw, store very well, come with handles (if green tops are left on as kids like), and are in the food group that almost all of us need much more of—vegetables! What if we grew all the carrots our preschools need?

Can our foodshed do this? We start by looking at our foodshed—do we have the land, water, and climate to even consider this? Carrots do grow well here—I have seen a modest-sized field of them here in fact that would go a long way toward this goal. They also store well—local producers here supply carrots to our schools well into the spring. So how much land would this take?

In our case, we happen to have about 1000 preschoolers in La Plata County. A reasonable serving is one medium-sized carrot (about 0.2 pounds or half a cup). A review of yields from seed companies, ag researchers, and local carrot growers leads us to estimate a conservative yield—for back-of-the-envelope purposes—of 16,000 pounds of carrots per acre. This is a very rough estimate taking into account variations in climate, soils, grower skill, field layout, etc. As we will see, it is a good enough estimate though to answer this basic question.

To provide all our 1000 preschoolers one medium-sized carrot each day of the school week through the year would take just three acres! (Depending on yield, it could be closer to 2 acres or more like 4 or 5 acres—but a conservative estimate of just three.) We have the needed climate in our area, and finding three acres with water is quite doable, so our foodshed’s agronomic foodability for preschool carrots looks quite good.

How significant is a carrot a day? For perspective, eating the equivalent of a medium sized carrot each day of the school week is a big deal—in the neighborhood of a third of what USDA recommends daily for veggies for most preschoolers (double that for adults)—and more wouldn’t be bad. We actually need a variety of veggies, but average yields per acre of a diversity of veggies is still in the neighborhood of that for carrots, so do mix and match those colors, tastes, and shapes. And don’t forget that carrots come in different colors, tastes, and shapes as well.

You do the math: Now pull out those envelopes and adapt this to your community. Have 2000 preschoolers?—just double the three acres mentioned above. Carrots just one day a week to start?—divide that three acres by five. Want to go all out and grow enough for all three veggies a day (not just carrots of course) at school and at home seven days a week?—multiply that three acres by four for each 1000 kids.

Can our food system do this? The food system looks at all the factors, so we must consider having 1) a distribution system (not too hard in a small community), 2) the preschools’ ability to purchase, prep, and serve these carrots (not too hard for carrots), 3) kids willing to eat these carrots (not too hard, especially with the green tops on from our experience), and 4) enough producers receiving a market price that will keep them in business (not too easy these days!).

Keep in mind, these three acres of carrots could come from a single carrot farm of three acres or 15 market gardens with 1/5 acre of carrots each or a healthy combination of farms, market gardens, preschool gardens, and parents’ backyard gardens. Three acres of carrots is a lot of work, but this could provide these preschoolers with a third of all the veggies they need (as a minimum) during the school week. Is supporting farmers, ranchers, and gardeners to do this too much to ask of our community?

Tackling producer viability: It’s truly a whole community effort. Many preschools are financially strapped, but if those families, restaurants, retailers, and institutions who can pay what it takes to keep local producers in business actually do so and help scale up the local food economy, that food could become more affordable for those with fewer resources. For those families with limited incomes, we need to push for livable wages and find a place in food assistance programs for products from local growers and subsidize them rather than industrial/corporate ag. Policy and financial support for preschools, beginning and struggling farmers, and local food development efforts should increase in order to keep local producers in business.

Looking ahead to a vibrant local food future, as producers continue to encounter more and more problems with extreme weather, a warming climate, more frequent and severe and long lasting drought, pollinator and other biodiversity losses, we all must work to help them adapt to these changes, keep things from becoming worse, and double down on our overall producer support. To help the general public see the need to help producers in all these ways, we believe getting involved in growing some of their own food (and keeping an eye on nature in the garden) will open their eyes. This will be essential to ensure an increasing supply of carrots—and much more—in our children’s future.

Three acres of carrots is admittedly a lot of work, but a feasible and very significant start toward the 20% goal for all our preschoolers. Let them eat carrots—local that is!!!