Scalability of urban farming

[Joseph C. Krause]

A friend of mine points out in his journal that the expectations of some for the caloric and social yields possible from urban farming may exceed the threshold of reality:

Post One:
http://vegan27.livejournal.com/613538.html

Post Two:
http://vegan27.livejournal.com/615808.html?mode=reply

[ordinary]

He makes some good points there. I think the pinet he's making is that self sufficiency would be impossible but it sure is better to see a garden than a trash-strewn lot.

[DetroitDad]

Yeah, but the effort might be better spent on good urbanism, and building something on those garbage strewn lots.

[softailrider]

Yeah, but the effort might be better spent on good urbanism, and building something on those garbage strewn lots.

When you talk to people from other states, or other countrys and you explain this urban farming thing, generally whoever you're talkng to looks at you like you're crazy. For openers, most people can't grasp the idea of farms in the middle of a giant American city.

[DetroitReds]

with all due respect, your friend is quite wrong on a number of assumptions. i'd love to set the record straight on his blog, but i'd have to create add a livejournal account to my 2394823498 other internet usernames and it's not worth the effort.
regardless, two main critiques [[and feel free to direct your friend to respond in a more public forum if he's so inclined).
1. many folks involved with urban agriculture in the city are in no way striving for 'self-sufficiency'. other stated goals include: reduce food cost, beautify neighborhoods, increase property values, decrease crime, work with neighbors, teach children, etc etc etc. we have other plans for transforming the food system in Detroit
2. growing/producing food is just one element of this transformation. urban agriculture enthusiasts [[such as myself) are deeply involved in many other areas of the food system [[i.e. processing, distributing, marketing, etc) as education and production. we're not silly and are trying just to 'grow' our city out of the food crisis.

[English]

Also of note is the fact that Detroiters have been engaged in urban gardening and farming long before the contemporary [[mass) movement. All of my older relatives turned adjacent plots into gardens back in the 60s and 70s. I grew up eating everything from fresh swiss chard to pears from my grandmother's efforts. If I wanted green onions for chip dip, I went outside with a pair of scissors. Cherry tomatoes and strawberries were all you can eat in their seasons. My grandfather always muttered about the days when you could "keep chickens."

There's a great article in the comments section about the segregation in the urban gardening movement:
http://michiganmessenger.com/28476/r...-urban-farming

The article touched on many great points, although I found this comment pretty odd: "Additionally, farming is often associated with white culture while more than 80 percent of the city’s current population is black." Um, what percentage of that black Detroit population is only a generation or two removed from FARMS in the South? Where on earth did they think our grandparents did growing up? EVERYONE except for the small percentage of us that are descended from the upper classes is only a few generations removed from a FARM. Sure, many areas our immediate ancestors worked in were agricultural monocultures [[e.g., cotton, tobacco, wheat), but poor and working people of ALL RACES GREW THEIR OWN FOOD ON EVERY CONTINENT EXCEPT AUSTRALIA for at least the past two millennia.

Urban farming is not a white vs. black thing! Only in Detroit... sigh...

[Huggybear]

Maybe the racial apprehension in the article is driven precisely the fact that many Detroiters are only a couple of generations past being exploited by sharecropping [[or worse) in the south. People came up here for good-paying industrial jobs, not to scrape by at subsistence farming.

A couple of other questions/comments:

1. Did you mean "Antarctica" rather than "Australia?" Australia has indigenous agriculture.

2. The argument that people grew their own food on every continent is a bit of a stretch. The rural/urban divide has been acute for about 5,000 years, and cities [[if not empires) often imported the bulk of their staples from other places. Rome, for example, had no nearby large-scale agriculture and was heavily dependent on Spain [[other end of the same continent) and north Africa [[obviously a different one).

The article touched on many great points, although I found this comment pretty odd: "Additionally, farming is often associated with white culture while more than 80 percent of the city’s current population is black." Um, what percentage of that black Detroit population is only a generation or two removed from FARMS in the South? Where on earth did they think our grandparents did growing up? EVERYONE except for the small percentage of us that are descended from the upper classes is only a few generations removed from a FARM. Sure, many areas our immediate ancestors worked in were agricultural monocultures [[e.g., cotton, tobacco, wheat), but poor and working people of ALL RACES GREW THEIR OWN FOOD ON EVERY CONTINENT EXCEPT AUSTRALIA for at least the past two millennia.

Urban farming is not a white vs. black thing! Only in Detroit... sigh...

[English]

Maybe the racial apprehension in the article is driven precisely the fact that many Detroiters are only a couple of generations past being exploited by sharecropping [[or worse) in the south. People came up here for good-paying industrial jobs, not to scrape by at subsistence farming.

Beyond that, judging from conversations that I've had, some Detroiters feel that there is an element of white [[liberal) paternalism involved. The notion of idealistic whites overseeing young blacks and Mexicans as they learn how to grow "organic produce" makes some people antsy. I certainly don't feel that way, but others do.

The argument that people grew their own food on every continent is a bit of a stretch. The rural/urban divide has been acute for about 5,000 years, and cities [[if not empires) often imported the bulk of their staples from other places. Rome, for example, had no nearby large-scale agriculture and was heavily dependent on Spain [[other end of the same continent) and north Africa [[obviously a different one).

Until relatively recently in human history, the majority of humanity wasn't urban. My post wasn't meant as a treatise on growing fields of wheat in the middle of a city. Urban populations prior to the last century engaged in forms of animal husbandry and small-scale gardening to supplement their nutritional needs.

Did you mean "Antarctica" rather than "Australia?" Australia has indigenous agriculture.

I could be wrong about this. What I learned in school was that indigenous Australians altered their environment to make it more favorable for hunting and gathering, but never engaged in what specialists consider agriculture. But I'm happy to be corrected.

[maxx]

I think the most important info from the vegan blog was about brown fields and their potential to harm people. Aren't there grasses that leach out some poisonous substances?

[Danny]

Detroit does need urban farming since real estate values worth its weight in lead. Most folks in the ghetto are still buying those 'Soylent Green' processed foods and there are fewer organic markets. It's time to return Detroit back to farmland until property values go up.


WORD FROM THE STREET PROPHET

Because healthy food is a birthright as air and water for Neda's sake.

[Huggybear]

Beyond that, judging from conversations that I've had, some Detroiters feel that there is an element of white [[liberal) paternalism involved. The notion of idealistic whites overseeing young blacks and Mexicans as they learn how to grow "organic produce" makes some people antsy. I certainly don't feel that way, but others do.

No kidding, patronization. People have always had backyard gardens - but this latest discourse goes over the top. "Sustainability" is the magic word that allows people to rationalize imposing their way of thinking on others.

[Joseph C. Krause]

The point I wish not to be lost in posting this article in the first place, is that there is *no way* to be completely self-sufficient in terms of food production even if every inch of the entire city were cropland with no buildings. I don't have a cynical view toward urban gardening as long as people understand that it is *supplemental* and will not one day be the new economy of the city or that we will feed ourselves only from it.

It's like the mid-century study on automobile traffic influx downtown. Its conclusion was that even if every building downtown were razed for parking, the projected demand for the then-current populationwould not be met.

Cities are not built for parking lots or farms. They can be replaced with either, but "city" then comes only in the sense of the state's municipal recognition.

All that said, community and educational gardening and farming practice are good to have around, just like every single parking lot is not the embodiment of evil, but the chatter over "urban farming" is really at such a fever pitch right now that I think people have some very curious ideas about what it will actually accomplish.

[English]

Huggybear - interesting thoughts. Thanks for the exchange. You've made me think.

To the original poster - hasn't some of this been spurred on by people's fear of an oil collapse? Without readily available sources of fossil fuels, we can't produce enough food for everyone alive today. Mass starvation, pandemics, and social unrest will supposedly follow and only those who can manage to return to 19th century living conditions will make it. [[Or at least, that what I'm reading on all the [[scary) peak oil blogs...)

[Joseph C. Krause]

Yes, some of it is spurred by those thoughts. I happen to think that peak energy is a real thing that is going to hit the world very hard and should be taken seriously, but that people are burned out by all kinds of other "scares" that never came to pass. As a result I think when the energy supply chokes that the cards will mostly fall where they may, because nobody will really have done much of anything in preparation. If this happens soon, or in my lifetime, I would love Detroit to be a place where I could still call home, but nobody can predict how this place will go.

Detroit's best possible preparation for a peak energy catastrophe happens to be one that will be good for all parties even if everybody is wrong about such a catastrophe ever happening, which is to implement good urbanism, reactivate our waterways and install and maintain rail transportation.

Having knowledge and resources regarding growing food will be very helpful in such a situation. This is why I don't believe that I'm cynical about it. I just intend to point out that it's not some cure-all.

If a serious threat such as peak energy hits us, I think the best mental preparation is to feel that our home is worth continuing to cultivate. Good decisions, rather than a new technology, are the most likely to save us. Urban gardens will play a role just as they did in the 19th century, but they will not be our "next economy".

We'll never "go back" to the 19th century, nor should we. But we will need some of its knowledge to take the place of the 20th-century stuff that won't work anymore.

[mwilbert]

In the sense of being able to be scaled to feed the city that isn't possible; optimistically you might be able to feed 500,000 people who only ate potatoes if you used the whole 143 square miles.

If you wanted to feed everyone in Detroit a pound of broccoli a day from May through October, you should be able to do that with less than the current amount of vacant land at reasonable Michigan yields. And while broccoli is healthy and delicious, it isn't a particularly high-yielding crop; you could grow a lot more carrots or zucchini or even somewhat more strawberries on that much land. I doubt that the average Detroiter eats a pound of fresh produce/day, so in the sense of providing Detroit's seasonal fruits and vegetables, it could be pretty scalable. Obviously there are other constraints.

As I pointed out in some other urban agriculture thread, the value of the crops you could expect to get even with very good practices wouldn't provide employment for more than maybe 10,000 people at the most, so this isn't the next economy.

[DetroitDad]

Yes, some of it is spurred by those thoughts. I happen to think that peak energy is a real thing that is going to hit the world very hard and should be taken seriously, but that people are burned out by all kinds of other "scares" that never came to pass. As a result I think when the energy supply chokes that the cards will mostly fall where they may, because nobody will really have done much of anything in preparation. If this happens soon, or in my lifetime, I would love Detroit to be a place where I could still call home, but nobody can predict how this place will go.

Detroit's best possible preparation for a peak energy catastrophe happens to be one that will be good for all parties even if everybody is wrong about such a catastrophe ever happening, which is to implement good urbanism, reactivate our waterways and install and maintain rail transportation.

Having knowledge and resources regarding growing food will be very helpful in such a situation. This is why I don't believe that I'm cynical about it. I just intend to point out that it's not some cure-all.

If a serious threat such as peak energy hits us, I think the best mental preparation is to feel that our home is worth continuing to cultivate. Good decisions, rather than a new technology, are the most likely to save us. Urban gardens will play a role just as they did in the 19th century, but they will not be our "next economy".

We'll never "go back" to the 19th century, nor should we. But we will need some of its knowledge to take the place of the 20th-century stuff that won't work anymore.

Maybe, but I'm not sure we will have a problem with food or water. Detroit's problem might continue to be violence.

[Joseph C. Krause]

Yes, what I meant to say was RUN! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!!!

[DetroitDad]

Yes, what I meant to say was RUN! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!!!

LOL, right!

No, seriously, the best results would probably come from facing the oil problem head on, right? All in my opinion; peak oil by itself isn't that different from the Millennium Bug, and other crisis that never happened. The crisis were often very real, but the answer to those problems was not to run, or start building bunkers and urban farms, it was $300 billion and a whole lot of ideas and work from an army of people.

Right now, economists and leaders are saying [[publicly) that they are worried about "lost decades" more than a double dip crisis or recession; meaning many small recessions or crisis in a single decade [[or possibly decades) with little to no growth in between [[for Detroit, it could easily feel like a constant decline). So it's a long slide or decline they are saying they are worried about.

This is the bigger risk, and what most seem to be worried about. We may have many crisis happening too close together, all of which may be solvable on their own, but are a real challenge after we've been lying to ourselves and putting off solving issues for years or decades. The worry of multiple failure [[even temporary) of large systems is that it will cause a domino effect, and the possibility that it will cause isolation for enough societies. People unable or unwilling to work together leads to regression, that can lead to more isolation, more system failures, and then more regression, causing a feedback loop; a downward spiral; a period of one or more lost decades; the start of a modern dark age.

Urban gardens just aren't the answer to that problem, but may be solutions for other issues, I suppose.

[fryar]

Urban gardens just aren't that answer to that problem, but may be solutions for other issues, I suppose.

Like unused land that's lying fallow. But mostly, I'm just looking for ways to control peoples' lives.

There must be all kinds of talk about this urban farming notion in Detroit for people to be bringing up peak oil and subsistence farming. Really, I just thought it made for an interesting idea for un- and underused land. If the city can collect even a small amount of property tax, it can avoid putting up those toll booths on Belle Isle.

[DetroitDad]

http://www.detnews.com/article/20100...-gets-the-boot

An Emmet County circuit judge ruled that Beaker the rooster has to leave his comfortable perch at a suburban home. During a 16 month legal fight, neighbors stopped talking, a Facebook page sprang up, and anonymous threats were made. All this over a nearly blind chicken with a club foot. It was a clucking mess.