by Delores Broten
Sometimes everything just falls together in one simultaneous movement. In the case of urban farming, it’s hard to unravel the factors that have melded. Health, politics, maybe even evolution, all meet and point to one simple conclusion: It’s time to grow food in the city.
Gardening, especially decorative gardening and landscaping, has been steadily growing over the last few years, along with the housing boom. In 2005, almost 100 million households in the US participated in one or more types of Do-It-Yourself indoor and outdoor lawn and garden activities, according to the National Gardening Association (NGA). In 2006, American homeowners spent a record $44.7 billion to hire professional lawn and landscape services.
Alongside that trend, fuelled by younger generations joining what had been considered a pastime for older people, organic food sales have been booming for the last two decades, growing in the US at a rate of 20% a year from 1997 to 2004. That growth is fuelled by a social acceptance of the dangers of pesticides, after miracle chemical after miracle chemical has been recalled and sometimes banned after years of use on our food. Uneasiness about the lack of testing of genetically-modified organisms has added to that market growth. (Organic meat producers should brace themselves for a huge leap in demand now that cloned animals are allowed into the food supply in the USA.) Mainstream labels now often offer an organic GE-free variety in baby foods, coffee, and cereals, and the big food conglomerates are buying up small organic producers.
But the local food movement responds to that corporatization. Politics of several varieties enters the picture, from the fair trade movement against corporate globalization, to local economic development issues, and the caloric impact of “fast foods.” In response to the Iraq wars I & II, the US dependence on foreign oil becomes obvious to all. And industrial agriculture depends heavily on foreign fossil fuels, to run the machinery, to produce the fertilizers, and to ship the produce. Cuba pioneered the production of local and urban food supplies without petrochemicals in the wake of the fall of the Soviet Union, when the Russian supply of subsidized oil to Cuba suddenly stopped. People went hungry, but now have learned to use all those urban spaces, patios and former lawns, for beans and squash, melons and greens. Now the Americans too have entire organizations devoted to encouraging “Victory gardens” to produce urban food, as was done during World War II in Great Britain and the USA.
Then there is the evolution-in-action theory. More than one half of the human population now lives in cities, but after 10,000 years of dependence on some form of agriculture for our existence, it is hard for most of us to give up all connection with the soil. Could be that we are just not hard-wired to live without touching and feeling the growing cycle or the infinite variety and movement of the green world.
Whatever the explanation one chooses, the time of local and urban farming has arrived. The forms are myriad, from community gardens to container gardens to living roofs, not to mention the proposed “Sky Farm” concept. On a more immediate level, farmers’ markets and sales of local food are thriving. Governments everywhere are beginning to support it, from the food security programs on Vancouver Island to the Green Culture Singapore program supported by that island nation’s National Parks Board. As enthusiastic young people around the world jump on board, the future is growing!
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