Where does Alaska’s food come from?

Even if you aren’t a carrot farmer and never plan to grow peonies for profit, if your children play soccer or your husband or wife likes nothing better than a few holes of golf at midnight, you may well have an interest in the research done at the newly renamed Palmer Center for Sustainable Living.

From pins to sweatshirts and potatoes to cabbage, the Alaska Grown logo and the locally grown food it celebrates are a well-known part of summer in Alaska.

Less well known than its research into Alaska food crops is the center’s study of turf that can withstand Alaska’s weather, seasons and changes in daylight hours.

And the center has even found a way to combine its turf research with the Valley’s ever-present need for more sports fields.

It won’t open for a couple more years, but come spring 2013, commuters and other folks will be able to stop by the familiar Trunk Road property to practice their putting or take in their child’s soccer game. The following spring, a nine-hole golf course will open across from the research center. Researchers have found a way to add recreational opportunities to the Valley while providing practical research opportunities.

But here’s the rub. While Alaskans tend to be the independent sort who chafe under government regulations and balk at mandates from faraway, we don’t mind our dependency on other states — and nations — for the food on our tables.

It’s risky business for Alaskans to grow so little of their own food while knowingly living in an area that has produced both the largest earthquake and largest volcanic eruption of the 20th century. In fact, estimates suggest that when the next emergency of Alaska proportion strikes, we will have no more than a three-day food supply in state.

We reside within an area known for its tendency toward super-sized earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. So what will it mean for Alaska’s food supply when the next earthquake the size of the Good Friday quake of 1964 happens? Will food supplies continue to arrive by plane, barge and truck? Will our ports be intact? Will our airports? Will our highways?

What about a volcanic eruption? It’s been almost 100 years since Novarupta blew its ash cloud 20 miles into the atmosphere, emitting 100 times more ash than Mount St. Helens.

Think back to what happened to the airports in Europe in 2010 when the Iceland volcano Eyjafjallajökull blew. Remember the way it paralyzed air travel across Europe and the North Atlantic?

UAF grad student Rebecca Anne Welchman was inspired by that eruption to create a model to look at what might happen in Alaska if a modern-day eruption of similar size were to occur. She presented her research at the American Geophysical Union’s 2010 Fall Meeting in San Francisco.

In her model, she released ash from Novarupta’s vent once a week for five years to measure which airports in the world would be affected. Welchman said most airports in the Northern Hemisphere would have to close.

“An eruption of Novarupta scale in today’s society has the potential to bring the world to a standstill by affecting the majority of airports in North America and Europe for several days at least,” she wrote on her poster. “The worse case scenario … would cost in excess of $300 million just in terms of passengers and delayed flights.”

What price would Alaskans pay — hunger or astronomical prices for imported foods?

As we get ready for Alaska Agriculture Day activities May 3 this is a good time to remember that food doesn’t come from Carrs, Fred Meyer or Walmart: Food comes from farmers’ fields.