Can Concord grow its own food?
. By Betsy Levinson, Globe Correspondent
Concord is at the center of a study by a group of graduate students from the Conway School of Landscape Design to assess the town’s readiness to provide its own food.
Given the town’s deep agricultural heritage, said Brooke Redmond of the Concord Community Food Report Project, Concord is well suited to developing its arable land to reduce its dependence on food from far-flung places such as Asia and Australia.
Conway student Christina Gibson said peak oil is driving the need for self-sufficiency, as well as the threat of natural disasters that could cripple the food distribution system.
The Concord Community Food Report Project is a three-month-old endeavor started to “move the needle” on food self-sufficiency, Redmond said.
“We have an embarrassment of riches in Concord,” said Redmond. “We want to optimize what we can produce, reinvent cooking from scratch in our homes and have more local food distribution outlets such as schools, hospitals and nursing homes.” She said the Northeast Correctional Center, or prison farm, in Concord has a canning facility that is little-used.
“With this report we want to build both supply and demand,” said Redmond. She said No. 9 salsas and other foods are manufactured in town. “Concord could be a model community.”
The meeting room at the Harvey Wheeler Community Center was filled with farmers, cooks and shop owners as well as interested residents. They divided up into four focus groups to tease out ideas about where plots of land are; how it could be maximized; backyard gardening; how locally grown food could be distributed throughout town; and how families could be educated in cooking and preserving food.
Betsy Levinson, Globe Correspondent
Laura Elizares, left, from the Conway School, and Bernie Jenkins Andrews prepare for a small group discussion.A follow up meeting is scheduled for March 8 at the Willard School from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. The normal $6,500 fee that Conway charges was donated by a woman from Concord.
Gibson and Jamie Potter from Conway said the hope for the study was to “leverage the data and make a more efficient system in town, plus contribute to the regional food supply.
Gibson stressed the need for food resilience, or how well the town could weather the loss of imported food.
“It’s about connections,” she said as the participants broke into small groups to talk gardening, canning, farmers markets, and other ways of eating local.
For more information, see www.concordfood.ning.com.
Betsy Levinson can be reached at betsy.levinson@gmail.com.
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