Resources · The Local Food Calculator
What would it take to feed your community from its own ground?
Answer a few questions and get a quick read on the land and animals, the dollar gap, and where to start moving local food numbers. You can edit the details later.
A one-minute read
Let's start where you are.
You'll walk away with:
- A realistic local-food target
- The land and herd it would take, worked out food group by food group.
- The yearly dollar gap between today and that target.
- Where the pressure points are, and the honest place to start.
Nothing is saved or sent. Every assumption is shown and editable. This is just an estimate.
Step 1 · Your place
Where are you?
A town, city, or county — enough to find you on the map. We'll pull your area's population from public Census data.
Step 2 · Your foodshed
How far is "local" for you?
Pick the radius you want to feed from. Tighter is more ambitious; wider pulls in more land and people. There's no wrong answer — it just sets the boundary.
Step 3 · Your goal
How far do you want to push it?
The share of food dollars you'd like to keep local. 30% is the ceiling and is genuinely ambitious — many places start at 10–20%. Not sure? I'll set a conservative target you can move later.
Step 4 · In your words (optional)
What's your food system like right now?
A line or two — what's working, what isn't, who's already doing the work. It frames the read. Skip it if you'd rather just see the numbers.
Your analysis
Start over ↺Land & production, by food group
| Food group | Animals / yr | Cropland (ac) | Pasture (ac) |
|---|
The dollar gap
The distance from today's local share to your target, in new local food sales per year — the demand-and-revenue shift to build.
Adjust the assumptions
Every number the model used is here, and every one is yours to change — the whole read updates live. No number enters without a row. Flagged values are the ones most worth replacing with local data.
Community & target — population, spend, baseline, target
The diet — edible lb/person/yr (biggest lever)
Beef finishing — drives the land
Other livestock & dairy — conversions, feed, yields
Crop yields & land available — the county denominators
Your analysis, in Qorner Consulting's voice
Where should we focus investment? A couple of quick questions first, and I'll write you a plain-language read of what your numbers mean for your place.
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