Lately a great deal of my free time has been spent online learning about how different areas are approaching the challenges of building their local food moments. I was watching this video tonight and I liked a lot of the things he had to say.

Utah is in an interesting place right now regarding it's local food movement. I think this article written a few years ago makes some interesting points.  The local food movement is young here and behind in someways, at least compared to my experience living in the Northwest and Midwest. Some questions I keep asking myself are what does the local food movement need here? What would help Utah local/organic farmers? What would help the people connect with Utah local food? What needs to be done to build the local food movement beyond the stage of just having farmer's markets? 

My quest has been to get out and connect with people involved in the local food movement and talk about the state of Utah's local food movement and how we can continue to build it. There is so much potential here, but we need to build it more so that it will be strong enough to last. Otherwise farmers will continue get burned out and the people will just become complaisant with sub-optimal food choices.  

I think its good to look around and see what others are doing but in the end, Utah's local food movement will be all it's own and hopefully someday TED will come around here looking for "ideas worth spreading". It's lofty goal but weirder things have happened in Utah.