According to the report, less than three percent of Rhode Island’s food comes from the region

Less than three percent of food, beverage and alcohol spending in Rhode Island goes to local and regional products, according to the latest Regional Food Count 2022 report.

The report, released earlier this month by the New England Food System Planners Partnership, is part of a broader initiative to increase local and regional food consumption in New England.

“We hope to show that choosing local and regional foods over products from far away…helps New England build a more equitable and resilient food system,” Ellen Kahler, executive director of the Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund and a spokesperson for the project, wrote in an email The Herald.

To conduct the study, researchers sent surveys to more than 160 food retailers in the state, including grocery and grocery retailers, educational institutions and correctional facilities.

However, only 8.8% of recipients responded to the surveys, reflecting the fact that the study is “necessarily a work in progress,” the report said.

For example, full-service and fast-food restaurants were excluded from the survey due to “resource limitations.” Data on certain foods (e.g. milk) were also not available to the researchers. Combined with the survey’s low response rate, these factors mean local food spending was “likely underestimated.”

“These challenges are not uncommon in food consumption research,” said Dawn King, director of undergraduate studies and lecturer at the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society.

Private food retailers such as restaurants and grocery stores — which account for more than half of the state’s food spending — are less likely to report data, King explained. Smaller grocery stores and restaurants are also less likely to have comprehensive data, while larger stores, although they often keep accurate records, “like to keep that information private,” King said.

Exploring alternative methods to foster partnerships based on “mutual trust” between researchers and grocers would greatly benefit the field, King said.

However, building “trusted relationships” to collect local sales data “takes time,” Kahler said. She pointed to Vermont, which has been able to collect more reliable and comprehensive data with each iteration of its local food census.

Although food accounts for 20% of Rhode Island’s GDP, the state is not often known for its agricultural production, said Alison Macbeth, food strategy project manager for Rhode Island Commerce. For this reason, there has been limited research into the state’s local food production in the past.

According to Macbeth, the partnership behind the report aims to reach 30% of local and regional food consumption by 2030.

Previous drafts of the project plan included a goal of increasing local consumption to 50% by 2050. But those ambitions would require Rhode Islanders to make drastic dietary changes, such as cutting out beef while increasing seafood consumption. The original plan also assumed that these changes would result in a 30% increase in deforestation due to the lack of farmland in the state.

“That’s why we need to start thinking about it regionally,” King said. She emphasized the need for different neighboring countries to specialize in different products and industries. “Sometimes we need to work together as a group,” King added.

King also emphasized that the successes of Rhode Island’s food systems should be amplified, calling local food cooperative Farm Fresh Rhode Island “one of the first successful food hubs in the country.”

However, increasing local food consumption also brings other problems. The most important of these are economic equity and accessibility, the report emphasized.

While farmers markets may pose financial hurdles, King said, SNAP benefit programs at food centers like Farm Fresh have partially alleviated the problem.

“It is clear that sustainable and collective action as well as significant and coordinated resource investments will be required to achieve (our consumption) goal,” Kahler wrote. Although much progress is still needed, she is confident that such developments are possible in a short time.