Like a watershed, where the idea of the foodshed takes its inspiration, a foodshed measures the reach of the local landscape in terms of its food production capacities. A foodshed’s size is determined by its “structures of supply,” the regional, economic, political and transportation systems that determine how food gets from farm to table.
The Los Angeles Urban Rural Roundtable, convened by the Roots of Change in 2010, defined the Los Angeles foodshed as the two hundred mile radius around the LA urban core, from which the region draws much of its food to feed the local population. The map below from the LAURRT shows rings of 100 and 200 miles around Los Angeles, generally the measurements used to distinguish a regional foodshed and the local available productive capacity that is within moderate travelling distance of local population centers and markets.
This concept continues to evolve. As a starting point, we refer to the 200-mile threshold as the Los Angeles regional foodshed.