MISSOULA — University of Montana students and faculty conducted a big assessment of Missoula County’s food system in 2004 and now as 2025 approaches, some say it is time for an update.
“A lot has changed in 20 years,” said Margiana Petersen-Rockney, an assistant professor of environmental studies at UM.
Missoula has grown in just about every measure since 2004 and the influx of population and development has changed how residents get their food.
The food system is like a giant web that connects everybody, from agricultural workers picking produce to diners eating at restaurants to the customers and clerks at the grocery store.
“Not just thinking about food security, or the ability to get enough calories, but about the ability to access culturally appropriate food and for communities to have some autonomy and control over their food system is a really important issue. Especially as we see these trends of corporate concentration that ultimately limit people's choices and make it harder for small-scale producers and regional producers to keep that food locally,” Petersen-Rockney said. “You know, we might be in a community and see a lot of cows but not be able to access local beef, for example.”
For the month of December, Petersen-Rockney’s food justice and sustainability class took over a hallway at the Missoula County Department of Ecology and Extension. Student work lines the walls, from posters on family connection to agriculture to data-based projects on climate change.
The exhibit opened with a panel discussion exploring Missoula’s food system, the joint City-County Food Policy Advisory Board and the experience of local producers. Panelists included Dave Prather of the Western Montana Growers Cooperative, Bonnie Buckingham of Farm Connect and Greg Price of Garden City Harvest.
The event focused on the impacts of climate change, land access and affordability and food access and affordability on Missoula.
“Of course, the conversation has moved a lot on those three topics in the last 20 years with the impacts of climate change already here. As we saw this summer with this incredible drought, where the entire state of Montana, every single county, was in the highest, most intense drought designation,” Petersen-Rockney said. “Then, of course, there's been a lot of development pressure, which has increased the cost of land, which is already a huge barrier for farmers and people who want to work the land.”
While the exhibit was mainly focused locally, research done in Missoula can impact far beyond the local area. In many ways, Missoula is a microcosm of the West, where issues of affordability, land access and increasingly unpredictable weather abound.
“Being able to understand and think about proactive planning at a local or regional level can allow us to implement, potentially, some measures that might not just be beneficial here, but that could be models for other places moving forward,” Petersen-Rockney said. “Of course with climate change, a lot of the impacts that we're seeing in Missoula are the same impacts that we're seeing across Montana and across the West.”
The exhibit is part of a wider call to update the 2004 Food Systems Assessment. Looking ahead to 2025, when the Food Policy Advisory Board aims to secure funding for a new study Petersen-Rockney sees an opportunity for her students and members of the wider community to get involved.
“As this planning and assessment process moves forward over the next year or so, I hope that people will become engaged because we're all stakeholders. I think that's something that is really exciting about working in food systems is everybody is connected,” she said. “There's a lot of opportunity to farm and create regional food systems that foster biodiversity, that help sequester carbon in the soil and that make access to healthy, affordable and culturally appropriate food possible for everyone. So it's an exciting place to work because there's actually a lot we can do.”
