When people talk about Alaska’s reliance on imported food, they nearly always cite the same number: 95%.
The figure has been around for decades – appearing again and again in executive orders, media reports, state-commissioned analyses and speeches. But food systems experts can’t trace the number back to a verifiable, data backed source – or crunch it themselves.
“I think it is a very useful thing to just note that it is made up,” said Rachel Lord, policy director at the Alaska Food Policy Council, a Homer based nonprofit.
That’s not to say the figure is totally off base. It’s well established by now that the vast majority of food Alaskans purchase is imported from elsewhere. And Lord is among those who have said 95% is a reasonable ballpark estimate.
But uncertainty around the figure underscores the complex nature of tracking whether Alaska is becoming less dependent on imports over time – even as the Dunleavy administration seeks to push the state in that direction.
“How do we know if we're succeeding, if we don't actually have any metrics?” said Lord, who also spoke to the challenge in a recent High Country News article.
Glaring red flags
So where did the 95% figure come from? A web of reports and academic papers point in a few different directions.
A 2023 report prepared for Dunleavy, for instance, says the figure hasn’t been “substantiated, nor updated” since a journal mention in 1987. Another paper, published in 2010, says it dates back to the 1970s – and also nods to uncertainty around its precision.
“In 1977 it was estimated that 95 percent of food in Alaska is imported, despite our seemingly large number of avid gardeners, hunters, and fishers,” the paper says. “This figure has been used by many sources since then but research to verify it only began recently.”
A third report, published in 2014, attributes the statistic to speeches made by two different people, one in 1977 – and the other in 1998.
Original source aside, the figure has a few glaring red flags, said Mike Jones, a food systems economist at the University of Alaska Anchorage.
“Our biggest warning with something like this 95% statistic is that there are no units attached,” he said. “Is it 95% of the dollars we spend on food? Is it 95% of the weight of the food we have? Is it 95% of the calories of the food that we have?”
On top of that, it’s almost never framed consistently. In many instances, people will say 95% of Alaska’s total food supply is imported. But that doesn’t account for the significant role that hunting, fishing, farming and foraging play in local food systems.
“It's [95% of] purchased food,” Lord said. “In rural Alaska, and a lot of communities, a huge amount of food eaten is subsistence, wild foods.”
Still, the figure abounds. As recently as March of this year, the Dunleavy administration included it in a video caption on Facebook, in which the governor announced his plan to create a Department of Agriculture.
“Alaska imports 95% of its food, but we don’t have to,” the caption reads.
A data challenge
As Jones sees it, the figure seems to have been repeated so often, for so long, it’s become conventional wisdom. But he’s not convinced it should stay that way.
“I think we search for numbers in describing the scope of a problem. And it's appropriate to look for numbers,” he said. “I think if we're using a number, then it's important that it definitely comes from a verifiable source.”
So why isn’t there a verifiable source? The short answer is that it’s a complex math problem that’s made more difficult by major data gaps around both imports, and locally sourced food.
The point of doing that math would be to pinpoint a figure that would help track progress over time. But for the time being, Jones said, it might be better to rely on adjectives, as opposed to percentages.
“I tried very hard to use publicly available, particularly federal statistics, to be able to infer that for the state. And I found it to be a very, very difficult exercise.”
A spokesperson for the governor’s office nodded to Dunleavy’s plan to create an agriculture department as a potential solution.
“An additional benefit of the Department is that it will be able to facilitate collecting more detailed data that will allow for more precise, Alaska-specific food system measurements moving forward,” Deputy Press Secretary Grant Robinson wrote in an email.
Lord, of the Alaska Food Policy Council, said her organization is working on a grant-funded database with the same goal.
Lessons from Vermont
The challenge isn’t isolated to Alaska. David Conner is an economist with the University of Vermont who led the state’s efforts to count local food.
Conner and his team relied on some of the same datasets Jones has worked with. But he also built on that data by reaching out to grocery stores, schools, hospitals, distributors and more to get a sense of how much local food they purchased in the previous year.
From there, the researchers did their best to avoid counting any sale twice, and asked important questions like – is beer food?
“We have a fairly vibrant local brewery scene,” Conner said. “Do we count that?”
There’s also the reality that many agricultural products aren’t ultimately consumed by humans – or consumed locally. Like hay, which is used for livestock. The same is true in Alaska, where hatchery activity and floraculture – namely, peonies – make up for a substantial chunk of the agricultural production.
Back in Vermont, the researchers ultimately estimated that the state had likely surpassed its own goal to ensure local food accounts for 10% of total consumption.
Still, they wrote, “local food consumption estimates such as ours should not be taken at face value to the large data gaps.”
It all underscores that Alaska isn’t alone in importing the vast majority of its purchased food. That’s the case given that different areas are better suited to different crops – and that the U.S. food system hinges on long and winding supply chains. It’s true even in states with booming agriculture sectors.
“In many, many cases, food-producing regions are also the most food insecure, because the food is grown for export markets, not for local consumption,” Conner said.
Jones, with the University of Alaska, said it’s a good thing that Alaskans can access foods grown really far away. It’s necessary from both a nutrition and financial standpoint.
“I'm sure you could grow a mango and a Conex in Alaska. But nobody is trying to buy a $100 mango,” he said.
Still, many states think very hard about boosting local food production – and for good reason, Jones and Conner said. Doing so is good for the planet and yields fresher food.
“Maybe more importantly, when you buy locally grown food, the money tends to circulate more times in the economy and generate more wealth and more income before it leaves,” Conner said. “So it can really be an instrument of economic development.
