If you live in an urban area, a farmers' market will probably be held near you this coming Saturday morning. Farmers will be out with their produce on display in stands with signs advertising their food as "locally grown", "fresh" or "sustainable". This local food movement is emerging in Dallas and has boomed in other U.S. regions within the past two decades, but it is not a new movement. Many would argue that it began as part of the countercultural movement of the 1960s when hippies across the US began digging up backyards and empty lots to grow something that didn't come out of a factory. That movement is still alive and well today, but for many producers, the focus has grown from ecological sustainability to include the quality and taste of the food product. According to one Dallas local food producer, "the biggest compliment someone could give me is that my food tastes better and fresher".

Picture 1: A Dallas dairy rancher's flock of milk goats taking a break from the heat.

Martin Aucoin, an undergraduate student in the Geography Department, has been studying the Dallas local food movement as part of his Honors College undergraduate thesis since early 2012. Curious about what exactly makes people think of local food as "better and fresher", Martin has spoken with farmers, ranchers and farmers' market organizers in the Dallas metropolitan area, including Fort Worth, Denton and McKinney. What Martin has found is that people are talking about a lot more than just the food itself.

"The food is from around here"

"I've been to the farm where it was grown"

"I know where it was grown"

"There's such a great community at the farmers' market"

While seemingly simple, these phrases cut to some of the core concepts in human geography: place, space and community.

Picture 2: Creating Community at the Denton Community Market

What Martin has also found with his research is that these ideas of place, space and community are not constructed uniformly among Dallas food producers and farmers' markets. The idea of community is largely dependent on the surrounding physical and human geography. People's ideas about the community of local food are different in Denton, a city with a "small college town" feel, than in Coppell, a suburb of Dallas inhabited largely by commuters.

Can these different notions of place and community across the space of Dallas be mapped using Geographic Information Systems? Are there identifiable and mappable "foodsheds"? Like a watershed, the foodshed is the physical area where food comes from to be distributed at the node. The "nodes" in the food systems typically exist in the form of farmers' markets or grocery stores. Martin's next steps are to create foodsheds for each of the major Dallas farmers' markets and to create a map of "consumer draw", or the physical area where consumers come from to purchase food at the markets.

Martin recently presented this work at the Southwestern Division of the Association of American Geographers Conference in Nacogdoches, Texas, where he won first place in the student paper competition. He also received a Raupe Travel Grant to present this work at the Association of American Geographers National Conference next April in Florida.

To learn more about this research, contact Martin Aucoin at MartinAucoin@my.unt.edu