The local food movement has been building for some time. The number of CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) programs in this country has exploded, from 50 in 1990 to more than 3,000 in 2010. Farmers markets are also becoming more popular as a way for consumers to purchase food grown closer to home. However, the real growth in the local food movement is happening within communities, as individuals develop new models for food production right where they live. They recognize that more of our citizens live in urban centers than rural areas, and we must come up with ways to grow and raise food within cities if we wish to have a sustainable future.

In Denver alone there is a wealth of innovative agriculture projects taking root. We have multiple Neighborhood Supported Agriculture (NSA) programs, in which a “multi-plot urban farm” consisting of donated front and back yard spaces is planted with organic vegetables, which then get distributed through a CSA model, sold at farmers' markets, or sold to restaurants. We have development programs for urban greenhouses that include aquaculture, we have an exploding number of community gardens, we have demonstration vegetable gardens in our city parks, and we have backyard chicken and goat activists persuading our local officials to pass sustainable animal keeping ordinances. While there are certainly people of all kinds involved in these projects, what's remarkable to me about the “urban ag” movement in Denver is that it is largely headed by women. Women are on the forefront of developing these new programs, and – to a large part – it is women who are doing the work on the ground to make the projects bear fruit. I believe this is because the roles of community builder and family chef often fall to women, and these both factor significantly in urban agriculture.

Urban food production has many inherent challenges, but it has one distinct advantage when compared to rural farming – the community. The value of this resource cannot be understated. Urban farmers may not have vast quantities of land or friendly zoning laws, but they do have a wealth of community members who are willing to lend their time and talents, in exchange for participating in a sustainable food system. Within the community are large numbers of women who care deeply about the food they are feeding themselves and their families, and they care about teaching future generations how to produce food in a healthy and sustainable way.

The health benefits to local food aren't limited to the carbon footprint of a tomato, or the fact that backyard eggs won't have salmonella. In my opinion, a large part of what's contributing to the public health crisis is the decline of home cooking. Participating in the work of raising food lends itself to an increase in cooking. It doesn't make sense to spend months starting a squash plant from seed, raising it as a seedling, planting it in the ground, and watering and weeding the garden... only to let the squash rot on the kitchen counter. My experience has been that the participants in local food programs spend a good deal of their work time discussing cooking, and how they like to prepare what we're growing for their families. This further enriches the community aspects, and empowers participants to create healthy meals for their families.