CALDWELL, Idaho — As a growing state, Idaho faces challenges to its agricultural sustainability but has a diverse, engaged community that wants to build and preserve it, the American Farmland Trust’s Julia Freedgood said.

The next steps include preparing for change and getting more people to understand and promote food systems, she told a workshop at Peaceful Belly Farm near Caldwell, Idaho, last week.

She is a senior fellow and senior program adviser for AFT.

The myth of a single, monolithic food system that is broken persists, she said. But multiple systems — ranging from small and hyper local to regional and global, each with its own characteristics and needs — play key roles and warrant continued investment.

To achieve sustainability, “it’s really important that we think of the whole agricultural system,” Freedgood said. Urban agriculture is “part of the solution” to food security but not a cure-all.

“There is a mix, and we really need to do it all,” she said. “But we really have to work in rural America,” which “has lost a lot of wealth” due in part to policy decisions.

Identifying individual food systems and their needs can be difficult for policymakers at all levels, Freedgood said. A regional planning approach commonly used for transportation is “a model we can think about.”

Envisioning and identifying food sheds, geographic areas between production and consumption, can help people understand the various systems, she said.

A food shed is similar to a watershed, said David Anderson, AFT Idaho program manager.

Agriculture operating in a “donut hole” surrounded by other uses is not desired, Freedgood said.

“We can do better, so let’s plan together,” she said.

Planning, often focused on urban needs, should consider agriculture and rural communities more strongly, said Freedgood, author of “Planning Sustainable and Resilient Systems: From Soil to Soil.”

Requirements to protect farmland in one place in exchange for developing it in another, agricultural protection areas, conservation easements, community fundraising to protect ground, and neighborhoods designed to include farms are among the tools that are available, she said.

Soil health’s importance is a message the larger community can support for environmental and economic reasons, Freedgood said.

Agriculture is undersold as a local economic contributor and growth source, meeting participants said. For example, though Idaho land used for farming has lower taxable value per unit of space than development ground, farmland produces more revenue than it costs in services.

“More than 100 years of multigenerational family knowledge and labor invested in our working lands” is an asset, Anderson said. Conversion to homes stops or drops these lands’ long-term financial return despite the increase in taxable value, and economically important irrigation infrastructure is affected.

“We have, easily, another 100 years in our infrastructure,” he said.

“Farmland protection really does pay,” Freedgood said.