The findings of a recent student-run UVA food study have finally been compiled– and it’s big news. We mean that literally. It’s 172 pages long! The product of a class of both graduate and undergraduate students in urban and environmental planning, called “Healthy Communities, Healthy Food Systems (Part III): Global-Local Connections,” the study examines our local food system, the local food movement in general, and according to its executive summary, is “the next step in a longer-term community project to foster better links between local farms and community schools and organizations, food stores, restaurants and residents.” Indeed, the study profiles Feast!, Blue Moon Diner, UVA dining services, Chipotle, a number of local farms– even a single family– in exhaustive fashion.

Conclusions? Well, considering it would take us about a week to read, here’s a quickie overview.

“The desire for a completely self-sustaining local food system is desirable to many; however, in the contemporary globally connected world, this is nearly impossible. A balance between local entities and its respective global ties work to provide a healthy system that most closely resembles the completely idealistic self-sustaining system.”

In other words, how the heck can small farmers feed millions of people?

“Local, organic food may seem phony, even elitist. The luxury of owning a share of Community Supported Agriculture for a weekly box full of unusual produce or paying $2.99 for a pound of ground beef sold at Kroger for $0.99, sets the local movement outside the reach of the everyday citizen.”

Which is the reason some folks call that grocery store on 29 North “Whole Paycheck.”

Still, the study profiles the noble efforts of area farms, restaurants, and organizations to make locally grown food more readily available, and even presents a number of strategies for improving the local food system, such as Feast! owner Kate Collier’s (pictured left) idea of establishing a publicly owned Community Food Center, a kind of local food grocery and distribution center. In particular, it examines Chipotle’s effort to make its Charlottesville franchise the first chain restaurant to use 100 percent locally grown produce.

Of course, there’s much more to the study than we’ve presented here, and co-creator of the UVA class, Tanya Denckla Cobb says the study will be available on the class website within the next week.

Write a letter to the editor