Alaska celebrates Ag Day ’08 with great promise

How will fuel costs affect what we buy in Alaska? Amy Pettit, who helps coordinate the Alaska Grown program at the Division of Agriculture, says she hopes it means more people will be eating locally grown foods. On Tuesday, May 6 — Alaska Agriculture Day — it’s food for thought.

“I hope it’s going to make people more aware,” Pettit told me last week.

The fuel price increase has hit during a new national fervor to buy local foods. On the surface, the two forces — increased energy costs and the movement toward local foods — seem to bode well for Alaska’s agriculture industry. In few places in the world does such a high percentage (at least 95 percent) of the populace’s food travel so far to meet needs.

The Organic Consumers Organization estimated in 2002 that food for the average Thanksgiving meal traveled 1,500 to 2,000 miles. That was likely a study confined to the 48 contiguous states.

The Leopold Institute for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University looked at the average distance food traveled within the Continental United States by truck to the Chicago Terminal Market. Grapes and broccoli each traveled more than 2,000 miles. It is no wonder the prices at the grocery stores are on the rise.

Local food options are sounding better all of the time. But…

Alaska producers have been hamstrung for years by an inadequate infrastructure. While efforts are ongoing to strengthen the ways Alaska’s farmers can successfully get their products to market and produce value-added foods, it is a slow process hampered by limited funds and a seeming indifference by many Alaskans to the value of having a strong Alaska agricultural industry.

“There’s a disconnect,” Pettit said. “They have not been touched by a farm. It’s a deeper thing when you want to support local [grown foods].”

In 2008, Alaska farmers may have an unprecedented opportunity to reach an interested market — heightened consumer awareness and a negative market factor (fuel costs) having positive implications here — except it just isn’t that simple.

First, the same rise in energy costs hitting you at the pump is hitting the farmers. Add this year’s late spring weather, and the equation may not yield a positive number. Greenhouse crop farmers who normally have spring sun to help heat their beds in April had to rely more on artificial heating sources. Some operators delayed planting their greenhouse crops for weeks, knowing they could not afford to heat their greenhouses the extra days or, more to the point, that consumers would not pay enough extra for their produce to cover the costs incurred during the cool spring.

Secondly, as in many businesses, farmers cannot simply throw more seeds in the ground in a year when it looks like consumers MIGHT have a increased interest in their crops. Farmers are professional actuaries, or gamblers. They have to hedge their risks against uncertain market trends.

So, as we approach Alaska Agriculture Day on Tuesday, where does that leave Alaska’s agricultural industry and Alaska’s hungry populace? On the brink of great possibilities.

“There’s capacity for more production,” Pettit pointed out.

Alaska consumers need to take a serious look at what they buy.

When Alaska products are available, they are competitively priced, remarkably fresher, more flavorful and usually safer because of the limited pesticides and herbicides used here, even on crops not certified organic. Some of the vegetables are readily available in your local large supermarket — watch for the Alaska Grown label. Others are available at the 19 Alaska Grown farmers’ markets around the state from Haines to Dillingham to Fairbanks, including in Wasilla (Wednesdays) and Palmer (Fridays), and at roadside stands.

If you’ve been disappointed at a farmers’ market because the fresh vegetables and fruits sell out quickly, as long as you supply the demand, one of Alaska’s intrepid farmers will provide the supply. But it can’t happen overnight. It is this upward spiral of consumers demanding more product and producers responding that makes Alaska Agriculture Day 2008 one of renewed hope for the state’s small but vital and resilient agricultural industry.

Victoria Naegele is director of Alaska Agriculture in the Classroom, an agricultural literacy effort sponsored by the Alaska Farm Bureau. She can be reached at akaitc@alaskafb.org.