STORY AND PHOTO BY KAREN BOSSICK

The Sun Valley Institute’s vision of food in the future has advanced to the semi-finalist round among those vying for the Rockefeller Food Vision Prize.

Its SVI 2050 Food Vision proposal was one of 79 visions selected out of 1,319 that were submitted, Sun Valley Institute Founder Aimee Christensen said Monday night. The Institute now has six weeks to refine the vision and resubmit it for the final round.

The proposal envisions “a food system that regenerates natural resources, the resilience of all plants and animals and communities throughout our region.” It encompasses the Magic Valley, as well as the Wood River Valley. Also, Boise and Idaho Falls.

It proposes ways to create a resilient, regionalized food system that will uplift rural communities throughout Southern Idaho, while providing quality jobs and biodiverse nutrient-dense food to residents and visitors alike.

The Institute reached out to more than 60 stakeholders, including ranchers and The Hunger Coalition, Trout Unlimited, the Sun Valley Culinary Institute and the Rock Creek Ranch research center. The study notes that modern, industrial farming has taken its toll with fertilizer and pesticide runoff feeding toxic algae blooms and hydroelectric dams decimating the wild salmon runs.

Mid-sized farms are rapidly declining in number, while large industrial farming operations replace them, the proposal adds.

Idaho is the seventh largest food and agriculture export state per capita in the country with such players as JR Simplot, Chobani and Glanbia, yet hunger and poverty remain persistent social issues, the proposal notes.

The refinement phase asks the team to deepen its collaboration with diverse stakeholders, create a narrative showing a day in the life of a food system stakeholder and further identify key opportunities in the realms of technology, policy, economy, environment, culture and diet.

The Sun Valley Institute was founded in 2015 to protect and enhance local quality of place for future generations of residents and visitors and to serve as a resource for other communities. To that end it has focused on such things as local food resiliency and energy resiliency.