In the United States, market interest in locally-grown food has increased [
1]. According to one Congressional report, 7.8% of U.S. farms sold food through local food marketing channels from 2002 to 2007, and the number of farms with local direct-to-consumer food sales increased by 32%; this growth subsequently continued by 6% during 2007–2012 in the aftermath of the economic recession [
1]. The literature typically defines “local food” as foods sold directly by farms to consumers, e.g., via farmers markets or roadside stands, or through intermediate marketing channels such as grocery stores and restaurants [
1,
2]. The growing demand for local food provides an important opportunity for small farms to increase their income [
2]. The sales of retail “organic” food, especially fruits and vegetables, have similarly boomed from
$17 billion in 2006 to
$40 billion in 2016 [
3]. Small farms tend to be heavily reliant on local sales; farms with gross cash farm income below
$75,000 accounted for 85% of all farms selling locally [
1]. In addition, in light of the growing demand and a desire for healthier food diets, the successful marketing of local produce enables it to command a price premium over conventional produce.
The local food movement is also driven by broader concerns with respect to food security, nutrition, and sustainable community development. Across the United States, local food systems typically deliver smaller amounts of crops to local market centers where they are able to compete with conventional large-scale, long-distance agriculture and enhance the self-reliance of local food systems. However, because of the relative fragility of family farms, planning of the American food system has focused on strengthening the capacities of smaller-scale, often family-based, local food systems [
4,
5]. Small-acreage farms are of particular concern from a food system planning perspective and have also been studied in the context of rapid urbanization [
6].
The question of how to increase food security and community wellbeing may find an answer in local food. An examination of the “foodsheds” of New York state indicated that local food could conceivably supply 69% of the food needs of the population of New York on an area of 2.7 million ha, or 6.7 million acres [
7]. Other studies suggested potential for feeding populations with the surrounding farmland, including Galzki, Mulla, & Peters [
8], which, building on the foodshed methodology of Peters et al. [
9], found that southeastern Minnesota, with its prime agricultural land, requires relatively small-size foodsheds to supply each of its larger cities and towns such as Rochester. Dundar, Costello, & McGarvey [
10] used a robust optimization model to calculate that the population of Boone County, Missouri, numbering 170,000, could be supported on its farmland. Overall, a meta-analysis of foodshed analyses found a “significant opportunity for food system re-localization across North America” [
11], and a nationwide analysis finds that local food systems could provide all of the food needs of most areas of the United States, with the exception of high-density population centers such as the northeastern megalopolis or southern California [
12]. Foodshed maps and related land-based assessments are not only of great help for leaders of local food movements in the United States, but also are widely used internationally [
13]. For example, Karg et al. [
14] found that although food provided within the city region assisted the provision of fresh perishable crops, a larger geographical diversity of foodsheds appeared to strengthen the resilience of local food systems in West Africa. In Europe, drawing upon the concept of urban resilience, foodshed maps were constructed to help policymakers develop the food self-sufficiency scenario in the cities of London, Berlin, Milan and Rotterdam [
15]. However, with a few exceptions [
8,
16], little is known about the additional ecological benefits derived from local food production, especially those deriving from land use change. Beyond areas surrounding larger metropolitan regions, more work is also needed to better understand agricultural land capacity in proximity to fast-growing resort or college towns.
In this work, considering the case of Northern Idaho, foodshed models were operationalized to assess agricultural capacity while addressing locally important ecological issues such as soil erosion. Besides the baseline theoretical scenario, an alternative scenario was explored by considering key environmental concerns in Northern Idaho including the Palouse region. Moreover, the study echoes recent efforts to bridge the gap between theoretical foodshed analysis and the reality of the local food movement. As shown in Galzki et al. [
17], the theoretical foodshed would be better calibrated using those data that can represent real-world situations, e.g., survey data that can represent food dietary habits in different regions. In this study, we employed a logistic regression analysis to better understand the current spatial distribution and spatial determinants of local food production. Furthermore, we integrated a variety of data sources including land use, soil, diet, and population distribution, to estimate and map the potential spatial extent of local foodsheds in the context of the Mountain West and in areas centered on college and resort towns, which may provide a useful comparison to cases in other areas.