Ultimately, my journey to discover the holy grail of urban and sustainable farming was largely disappointing.  From my research, I found that the reason that farming has not moved more towards smaller, more local operations is that it is not economically feasible.  Although many people would be willing to pay the extra dollar for locally grown, sustainable food, the majority of Americans simply can’t afford fresh fruits and vegetables as it is.  Farming has been strategically designed to be as cost-minimizing as possible (like most large-scale operations in the country).  Although I went into this project with really high hopes, I quickly realized that in order to provide as much produce as possible, the environment suffers.  I feel that perhaps the niche market of locally grown food will still gain popularity among the upper-class individuals who can afford to pay more for better quality.   I would advocate that consumers consider locally grown food whenever possible, but I understand that for most people, they simply cannot budget for it.  For the most part, farming will continue to cut as many corners as possible.  After all, large-scale farming as it exists now has been around for less than 100 years, so we are still in the relatively early stages of developing technology and methods which allow for more efficient growing and harvesting.  I ended up not using my summer reading book as much as I hoped to, because I realized that it demonstrated just one man’s story of how he started a local farming system, and did not provide the insight that I was looking for from his book.  In the end, I am disheartened by how difficult sustainable local farming turned out to be, but I hope to continue to explore alternatives to large-scale factory farming in the future and throughout my time at Colorado College starting this fall.

My plan from here is to continue to explore local farming programs, particularly CSA’s, or community supported agriculture programs.  I work at a local garden and home improvement store called Milaeger’s, which is starting up their own CSA this summer.  Also, I am doing my interim this year with Kat Neubauer, the founder of the Neu Root Farm, another local CSA.  Through both of these experiences, I hope to gain a better understanding of alternative methods for providing local foods, directly to the consumer, in the hopes that perhaps CSA’s are a feasible solution.  After all, the consumer participates in the CSA by contributing a set amount of money to the farm to assist in paying for their fair share of crops.  If the harvest is especially bountiful, they receive more produce and crops than if the harvest is poor.  I feel that this method helps the farmer more, because they are not directly penalized and they do not suffer as much if they are plagued by poor growing conditions.