Over the past four decades, there has been a sharp worldwide increase in aquaculture. In just a few short weeks, some experts project that we will reach a tipping point where half of the fish and shellfish we consume will be raised by humans, rather than caught in the wild.

In an article entitled “Feeding Aquaculture in an Era of Finite Resources” in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Ronald W. Hardy of the University of Idaho and his colleagues argue that we desperately need technological advances to improve the efficiency of aquaculture. In a recent article in the Washington Post, Hardy suggests that without these advances, we may wipe out the forage fish that lie at the bottom of the ocean’s food chain and possibly contaminate parts of the sea.

The Washington Post notes that the ready availability of farmed fish comes with a price: “Consumers will have to accept that they are eating a different kind of fish than the ones that swim wild: ones that might have eaten unused poultry trimmings, been vaccinated, consumed antibiotics or been selected for certain genetic traits.”

In 1970, farmed fish accounted for just 6.3 percent of seafood consumed around the world. Today, that number has increased to 50 percent. These numbers reflect both the consumer demand and the changing face of the fishing industry. In the Washington Post article, Sebastian Belle, executive director of the Maine Aquaculture Association, states that three-quarters of his group’s members are either current or former commercial fishermen. He notes that the average age of Maine residents with a fishing lease permit is 57, but the average for those with a fish-farm permit is 33. He calls them “the next generation of watermen.”

In 2006, an international group of ecologists and economists warned that the world will run out of seafood by 2048 if sharp declines in fish species continue at current rates. Cited in the Washington Post, the experts warned that these declines can be attributed to overfishing, pollution, and other environmental factors. But there will be a ripple effect: when species are wiped out, it will hamper the “the ocean’s ability to produce seafood, filter nutrients, and resist the spread of disease.”

So how do we do this balancing act? If we only eat fish caught in the wild, will we unwittingly be contributing to overfishing? But if we turn to farmed fish that may have been treated with vaccines or antibiotics, what will be the repercussions? Worldwide, half of all the fish that we now eat has been raised on farms (and of those, nearly two-thirds are located in China). As consumers, we need to educate ourselves and make the best decision for our health, our family, and our world.

Meet Devica Urwick.  With her husband, Chris, and children Aubrey and Adam, she operates Spring Run Market in Greenville, North Carolina.  Here, she talks about her experience running a buying club and farmers market and how Local Dirt helped her meet vendors’ and customers’ needs.

How did you get into the local food movement?
I’m a registered nurse, and I have a passion for eating healthy. I’ve long known that eating organic and local is good for you and the economy. But in our area of North Carolina, there were virtually no health food stores or farmers markets. My husband and I would drive an hour and a half into Raleigh just to buy organic food. By starting a buying club and farmers market, I can help people access healthy food. Since I love teaching, I’m looking forward to giving more talks and workshops around this, too.

How does your buying club work?
Our buying club members pay $25 for an annual membership. We work with eight different vendors to provide our members with better deals on locally-produced and organic meat, produce, baked goods, honey, and much more. Since we negotiate directly with farmers and other providers, our members pay a less than they would from buying from the vendor’s website or in their store. They can pre-order online, and Local Dirt helps expedite this process.

Why did you decide to expand to also offer a farmers market?
We began our buying club in December 2008. Soon, we realized that an outdoor, open-air market would help meet our customers’ needs and provide our vendors with more opportunities to sell their goods. Our farmers’ market is currently located in the Arlington Village shopping center in Greenville, North Carolina. There, we have meat, produce, baked goods, canned items, coffee, and more.

How did you find out about Local Dirt?
We heard about Local Dirt through a newsletter, the North Carolina Local Foods Action Plan.

How does Local Dirt help you run your business and meet customers’ needs?
First, Local Dirt makes ordering easy. Before, I was trying to work with emails and spreadsheets and keep track of customers’ orders for my vendors. Local Dirt really facilitates this process, and it’s far less time consuming on my end. By having a more automated system, I can focus on growing our buying club and farmers market and I can offer more classes and workshops.  In the future, I hope promote and network with local businesses, too.

Second, it helps our customers access our services. While we have a website for Spring Run Market, figuring out online purchases and transactions was overwhelming. But with Local Dirt, people can pre-order so much easier, which is essential if they’re ordering meat, but it also helps for all other kinds of produce and goods.

Last week, an editorial in the New York Times opened with some sobering projections: “According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, feeding humanity in 2050 — when the world’s population is expected to be 9.1 billion — will require a 70 percent increase in global food production, partly because of population growth but also because of rising incomes.” As author Verlyn Klinkenborg explains, the Food and Agriculture Organization hopes that this increase can be met by upping productivity on present farmlands and by cultivating land that is currently unsuitable for farming. While these goals are related, they present very different challenges for individual farmers, national infrastructures, and international organizations.

Klinkenborg then relates these goals to biodiversity aims. What is biodiversity, exactly? As the United Nations Environment Programme explains, “An estimated 40 per cent of the global economy is based on biological products and processes. Poor people, especially those living in areas of low agricultural productivity, depend especially heavily on the genetic diversity of the environment. The effective use of biodiversity at all levels – genes, species and ecosystems – is therefore a precondition for sustainable development. However, human activities the world over are causing the progressive loss of species of plants and animals at a rate far higher than the natural background rate of extinction.”

Just six years ago, 123 countries proclaimed their support for the 2010 Biodiversity Target to significantly reduce the rate of biodiversity loss. But as Klinkenborg points out, scientists are now saying that this goal will not be met. He raises a key question: How can we respond to growing population needs by significantly increasing food production without further threatening the world’s biodiversity?

In terms of land size, the Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that agricultural land will need to increase by 297 million acres (or about three times the size of California). When this increase in agricultural land is coupled with the sprawling residential areas and deforestation, a crisis is not far off. While the United Nations and its member countries think in terms of policies and initiatives (and we’ve seen how successful that has been), Klinkenborg suggests instead that individuals need to look at their own activities.

What does he mean, exactly? Well, he says that Americans may need a less meat-focused diet and that the world needs a “fairer and far more balanced way of sharing and distributing food to reduce the devastating imbalance between the gluttony of some nations and the famine of others.” Above all, it means achieving a delicate balance between maintaining or increasing biodiversity while localizing and intensifying food production.

This month, we talked with Ryan Pesch of Lida Farm. Located in Otter Tail County, in Minnesota’s lakes district, Lida Farm is family-owned and operated.

How did you get into farming?
While I was raised in a small northern Minnesota town, my wife Maree grew up on a farm. I first became interested in the local foods movement when I was a student at Gustavus Adolphus College. That led me to work as a farm apprentice at Foxtail Farm in Osceola, Wisconsin. That experience was invaluable, and I learned all the nuts and bolts of farming and running a CSA there.

After college, Maree and I rented one acre to farm on in Lake Elmo, and we sold our produce at farmers’ markets. However, the cost of land in Lake Elmo made it difficult to afford a farmstead. When I was offered a full-time position with the University of Minnesota Extension, we jumped at the chance to move north to Otter Tail County.

We soon purchased a 20 acre farmstead. This afforded us the opportunity to come into a new market in the lakes district and start growing from scratch. For me and Maree, this started as a dream in a college dorm room. Today, we’re in our sixth growing season.

Describe your farm.
At Lida Farm, we have 1.5 to 2 acres of produce. We’ve always had a flock of sheep, too. They’re good for manure, but this is the first year that we’re going to have lambs to sell. We also have chickens, and we sell our eggs.

Maree and I have two children, Sylvia (4) and Willem (2). Our kids love getting involved in farm projects. For Sylvia and Willem, they’re part of the operation. At the farmers’ market, they’ll even talk to the customers and handle the produce.

Over the years, what have you learned about customer service?
For years, we have sold our food through our CSA, on-site farm stand, and the Lakes Area Farmers Market in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota. We offer home deliveries, too. Today, we have 21 CSA members and many repeat customers at the market.

Since we are a smaller operation, we have been very intentional about what we can take on and we have steadily grown our business over the years. Market gardening, in comparison to other types of farming, is all about time management and logistics. With market gardening, there may be 40 or 50 crops over the course of a growing season. Unlike single-crop farms, this allows us to spread out the work and offer our customers a variety of produce.

We want to offer our customers fresh, locally grown food and other goods. We now partner with other businesses to do this, and we offer dairy products, flowers, honey, and chickens, including broilers, fryers, and roasters. Since Lida Farm is well known in the area, this has been a way to promote other local sellers.

How did you find out about Local Dirt?
I heard about Local Dirt from Paul and Chris Burkhouse of Foxtail Farm. Like them, I’m interested in issues of aggregating supply in order to make a variety of food (including produce and meat as well as quiches, pies, and other goods) available on a greater scale. We joined Local Dirt in May 2009, and we have been actively listing our produce and other food for a couple months now.

What does Local Dirt offer your farm?
In markets like the Twin Cities or Madison, co-ops and CSAs have been growing over decades rather than just years. For those of us with smaller farms in rural areas, it’s not cost effective to tool around the county trying to sell small amounts of produce. There needs to be an easier way to connect sellers to buyers, whether they’re families, café owners, or grocery store managers.

Right now, we’re starting with a group of pre-defined customers, and our goal is to use Local Dirt to add new customers and to allow all of our customers to customize their order. To do that, we offer multiple delivery and pick-up options and we are partners with nearby businesses to offer even more selection.