If shoppers switched 5% of their grocery budgets to local foods, it could add roughly $36 million to the state’s GDP. According to a new study from the University of Wyoming (UW) Extension, that would more than double what the local food sector currently brings in.
Anders Van Sandt is an assistant professor in the Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics at UW and is the author of the recently released study.
“When we buy local, that dollar stays in the economy,” he said. “It just has a higher chance of bouncing around in that economy rather than immediately leaving and going to a foreign country where we've imported some food that can be grown domestically.”
Van Sandt researches rural economic development and said he experienced the decades-long trend of farm consolidation first-hand while growing up in a small rural town in Oregon.
“I saw our farms get bigger and bigger, but they're owned by fewer and fewer families as well,” he said. “That negatively impacted my local rural economy. It's just less economically diverse.”
Van Sandt is also a community development specialist with the UW Extension. He said that while large-scale farms and ranches are needed to keep food prices down overall, there’s also a big place for more small-scale agriculture in the state.
“ We want affordability for consumers so that they can eat fruits and vegetables, but we also want these businesses to stay in rural places where they provide jobs and income for our rural residents,” he said.
According to the National Agricultural Census from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the number of farms in Wyoming has decreased by 12% between 2017 and 2022, dropping from 11,938 to 10,544 farms in that five-year period.
Van Sandt said more jobs in the local foods sector can both combat a lack of economic opportunity in rural places and support culture connected to the world of agriculture.
“ We want our means of production back in our local communities, because we recognize that it's not just about the value and the income that they generate for us, but it's also about the identity that they give us,” he said.
Using data from the National Agricultural Census, the UW study emphasizes that the local foods sector is already growing in Wyoming. Retailers and consumers have purchased more local foods directly from producers in recent years, with direct-to-consumer sales increasing by 35% and direct-to-retail sales increasing by 24% between 2017 and 2022.
According to Van Sandt, those numbers are likely to be on the more conservative end because the USDA data doesn’t include people who are creating products from their home kitchens through the Wyoming Food Freedom Act.
The report also makes the case that local food systems can create redundancy and buffer potential instabilities in larger-scale supply chains.
“You're looking down the street five [or] twenty miles rather than looking across the nation or world hundreds or thousands of miles,” said Van Sandt. “There's a lot fewer places for that supply chain to break down when you buy local.”
Building up the local food sector in Wyoming isn’t without its challenges. Van Sandt said transportation costs are one of the biggest barriers for smaller-scale producers, but more government investment in centers where farmers can combine their goods for distribution could help lower those costs.
“Local farmers and ranchers can bring their goods and [they] get aggregated there, shipped on the same truck,” he said. “That lowers everyone's transportation costs and it basically mimics the economies of scale that we see for larger producers.”
Creating a state local foods brand, like Made in Montana or Idaho Preferred, could also help strengthen Wyoming’s food systems, according to the report. Van Sandt said the hope is to turn the Wyoming Business Council’s Wyoming Table online directory into that statewide brand to help consumers identify local foods more easily.
“There's a lot of players involved, so there's a lot of relationships that need to be built and maintained and a lot of trust that we need to build,” said Van Sandt. “We're hopeful we can launch this over the coming years.”
