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Want to Shrink Your Carbon Footprint? Think Food.
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This is not such a novel idea. From the time that humans first began to live in settlements about 10,000 years ago until the Industrial Revolution, most people lived near their food sources, if not right next to them. It's a model that bears reconsideration, and one developer is doing exactly that.
Codding Enterprises of Rohnert Park, Calif., is in the final planning phase of its Sonoma Mountain Village, a "one-planet" community for 5,000 people about 40 miles north of San Francisco. A central concern has been devising a way to meet the new town's food needs with the output of local farmers, according to Geof Syphers, Codding's chief sustainability officer. In this case the challenge was not a need to build on productive farmland. It was how to encourage local farmers to provide the food.
Syphers said his team concluded that local farmers could supply 25 percent of local food needs by the time the development is completed in 2021 if Codding made some unusual arrangements. To guarantee the farmers a steady market and a stable income, Codding's leases for grocery stores and restaurants will stipulate that the tenants purchase locally-grown, organically-raised food. Codding also expects to have a daily farmers' market and a subscription service that will deliver local produce directly from the farmer to a homeowner's doorstep. An additional 65 percent of Sonoma Mountain Village's food needs will be produced within 300 miles, Syphers said.
The project's location in California made this monumental task only marginally easier, Syphers said. Although California does supply much of the nation's food, most that is currently sold in the Sonoma area is raised 1,500 miles away, just as it is in the rest of the country.
Katherine Salant can be contacted via her Web site, www.katherinesalant.com._
© 2008, Katherine Salant
