best waste principle.

It dawned on me today that there are only eight weeks of school left. Not surprising is that this next phase of studio is also our last. The class was broken down into three groups urban agriculture, the regional food hub and the regional food shed. The first and second use Syracuse and begin to step out into the CNY as their focus for design. The regional food shed, the group I am part of, is looking at what the food shed boundaries are considered, what type of existing network is in NYS, finally the potentials of the NYS food shed.

While I am a pragmatist, I think it would be ideal for NYS to become food secure. Meaning that all facets of the food shed production, distribution, marketing, consuming, and waste be taken care of in state. Looking at the definition of food shed that I found on here, according to the 110th Congress local food is either produced within the state boundary or for where it may apply 400 miles from the origin of production. As represented with the graphic to the right there is a huge difference in one from the other, NYS is nowhere near 400 miles across at any point in its geography, for one and for another maybe it would not be so bad to have a better cooperative agreement with the surrounding states. If we continue with the 2008 Congress definition of local food, a NYC resident would be eating local food if it was imported from Ottawa and a Syracuse resident would be eating local food from  around the middle of Ohio. If we take it a step further and consider geography and past glacial activity the soils a crop is grown in in Ottawa or Ohio are similar to the soils of NYS.

A portion of my part of the food shed project is looking at various commodities agriculture, aquaculture, livestock, dairy, wine, beer- and seeing how NYS, as well as outside precedent uses best waste principles through these sheds.  Industry standards put out by the Hiwwasee River Watershed Coalition, out in North Carolina, are rotational grazing. Which is having livestock graze one portion of the field as you let another recover and repeat the process. If done correctly this can have benefits to all involved- the land, the livestock, and the farmer.  HRWC also suggest having a buffer zone between grazing lands and general water sources. To take this standard to another level sites for grazing can should be sloped and well drained to collect runoff.