Soup to nuts
Erika Fredrickson set out to test Missoula’s burgeoning local food network. What she found might turn even you into a locavore.
By: Erika Fredrickson

Once upon a time, we grew food here. In the early 1900s, Missoula earned the name “Garden City” because of its bountiful irrigation and farms. In 1950, 70 percent of the food consumed by Montanans was grown in-state, according to a study by Grow Montana, and up until about 1940 food processing was the state’s number one employer. The Wal-Mart Super Center on N. Reserve Street, for instance, sits on what used to be a large beet field, and a few blocks away was once a sugar beet factory; now it’s a computer software complex.

Those buildings are indicative of a larger shift. More than 90 percent of our food today comes from outside Montana, according to the same Grow Montana study. Cooler climates limit our food choices, certainly, but access to land, economic conditions and cultural norms also affect what and how we eat. More recent obstacles to food procurement, including the rise in fuel prices and housing sprawl, have also made an impact.

A movement within the last decade has brought local food networks back to prominence. It’s been the subject of best-selling books like Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma and Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Locally, we’ve witnessed an expansion of farmers’ markets in Montana from five in 1990 to more than 30. Every week, food columnist Ari LeVaux touts the local food network in this paper.

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