Survey finds that 98% of Utah residents favor being self-sufficient and growing more food in state

Earlier this summer a study released by the University of California, Merced said that most areas of the U.S. could feed between 80 to 100 percent of the local population with food grown or raised within 50 miles. Self-sufficiency is something most Utah residents favor, with 98 percent of the 50,000 respondents to the "Your Utah, Your Future" survey saying they’d like more food grown in state, Judy Fahys reports for KUER 90.1 at the University of Utah. (A farmers market in Utah)

Respondents also said that "as Utah’s population doubles in the next few decades, they want to stop the trend of seeing buildings sprout up where furrows and orchards used to be," Fahys writes. "People responding to the survey don’t want water taken from agriculture or land. The survey also found that Utahns are willing to water their lawns less to ensure there’s enough water for farms."

Ari Bruening, COO of Envision Utah, the organization that conducted the survey, told Fahys, “When Utahns weighed in on agriculture, I think they were saying we would like to grow more food that we can eat here. So maybe that’s shifting some crops in some places. Maybe that’s adding more cropland. And maybe that’s protecting some of our best cropland that we have.” (Read more)