UAF administrator urges more business, technology support for food producers to grow, sell more products
Despite years of efforts, Alaska farmers only grow a fraction of the food needed to feed the state’s population. The head of University of Alaska Fairbanks’ agriculture program says the state could learn a lot from how other circumpolar nations address food security.
Ask anyone involved in Alaska agriculture about how much food Alaska imports and you’ll hear something like:
“Somewhere between 92 and 98 percent of our food is brought in from Outside.”
Jodie Anderson, who directs UAF’s Institute of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Extension, questions that generalization.
“That’s not a heavily substantiated statistic. But yet, it’s one that’s in every paper about food systems in Alaska,” she said.
Despite that uncertainty, Anderson says Alaska has a long way to go before it can feed itself, and the state could learn a lot about food self-sufficiency from other circumpolar nations -- like the Faroe Islands, an autonomous territory of Denmark located north of Scotland.
They, too, face challenges like encouraging a new generation of farmers to take over, and incorporating sometimes costly environment-friendly practices. But most of much more productive than Alaska, Anderson said.
The Faroe Islands “are 22 percent efficient. They’re 100 percent self-sufficient in dairy – they do not import any dairy,” she said during a presentation she gave Tuesday at UAF on food security among circumpolar nations.
The talk was based on a conference she attended last month in the Faroe Islands. Anderson said Norway, Sweden and Canada ranked among the top 10 in last year’s Global Food Security Index compiled annually by The Economist Group, a London-based think tank. The United States was 13th on the list. But she can’t say how Alaska factors into that, because the U.S. Department of Agriculture doesn’t provide that data.
“You can’t find those self-sufficiency percentages of any states,” she said. “The USDA does not have these statistics.”
Anderson says that data could help Alaskans identify deficiencies that hinder food security. She says other takeaways from the conference include a need for greater energy efficiency, and more technology, research and multidisciplinary expertise to help farmers meet multiple challenges.
“A food system is incredibly complicated,” she said. “We need economists, to help us with all this data that’s missing. We need energy specialists, to help us with all these opportunities that are out there, that we’re not really looking at. We need social scientists.”
Anderson adds that Alaska needs elected leaders to support agriculture. She says Governor Mike Dunleavy’s formation of a food security task force last year was a good step in that direction. But farmers need other kinds of support to grow, like help getting their products into big grocery-store chains.
The inability to access those outlets results in some hard choices, like the state’s only dairy having to dump of some 800 gallons of milk every week, because it’s unable to get it on those stores’ shelves.
“We got that going in Delta Junction,” she said, “in a dairy that cannot sell its milk to Fred Meyer or Carr’s, so they have too much, so they dump milk every week.”
Scott Plagerman, the owner of the Alaska Range Dairy, says he’s been working on that since he began operating.
“We’ve tried very, very hard, for over two years now a couple of different places, Fred Meyer being one of the main ones,” he said.
"Y’know they act interested. ‘Yeah, we want it. Send us this information.’ We send it to them. They send us a few things back to fill out. We don’t hear anything. I call, I email. No response. ...”
Plagerman says he finally convinced a Walmart state manager to give him a chance, and last month he began selling dairy products at that chain’s Fairbanks store. He says access to those outlets is essential to producers and Alaska’s food security.
“If these bigger chain stores will not carry our products," he said, "agriculture will not grow, and it will not be more sustainable. Period.”
State leaders need to step up and help farmers break through that red tape, says Alaska Farm Bureau President Scott Mugrage.
“… And a little twisting of the arm by our governor or some legislators can make that happen,” he said.
Mugrage says food security will be one of the topics that’ll discussed during the Alaska Farm Bureau’s annual conference, to be held next month in Anchorage.
In Delta Junction, I’m Tim Ellis.
