The Conundrum of local food and/vs. sustainability

Most plants grown for food require significant amounts of water - water that Los Angeles doesn't have. How does one identify the point at which local isn't sustainable?

1 minute read

February 11, 2013, 10:56 PM PST

By Lisa Feldstein


I spotted this poster at a weekend cheesemaking class a couple of weeks ago. Later that week, a policymaker from Los Angeles with expertise in food, water, and sustainability talked about the food advocates' desire to plant food along medians in that city. The difficulty, from the policymaker's perspective, was that officials had spent years transitioning those medians to drought-tolerant native plantings. Most plants grown for food require significant amounts of water - water that Los Angeles doesn't have. How does one identify the point at which local isn't sustainable? Is it a bright line? Or is it a very long, slippery slope?

Grow your own food


Lisa Feldstein

Lisa Feldstein is a Doctoral Candidate at the Department of City and Regional Planning at UC Berkeley. She is a 2012 Robert & Patricia Switzer Foundation Fellow, a 2012 Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Societal Issues, the 2010 recipient of The Robert A. Catlin/David W. Long Memorial Scholarship, and the 2009 recipient of the Friesen Fellowship for Leadership in Undergraduate Education. Lisa is formerly the Senior Policy Director with the Public Health Law Program, in which capacity she directed the organization's Land Use and Health Program.

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