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They require very little (sun, water, regular care). In return, they offer fresh, organic, local, inexpensive produce and a tool against climate change. The urban garden is experiencing a renaissance. | ||
By Kirsten Dirksen and Nicolás Boullosa |
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No longer predominantly retirees or experienced "green thumbs", today's city gardeners run the gamut from global warming activists to young trendsetters. In downtown Vancouver, a fashionable condo complex offers personal garden plots to residents. For an additional $2,800 (Canadian) over the buying price of a unit, a buyer can purchase one of the 1.5-metre-square rooftop plots and a small tool locker. The sales team of the Freesia uses this extra amenity, like a gym or rooftop pool, to help sell the units: "Have the luxury of growing your own vegetation: ripe tomatoes, fragrant basil, fresh strawberries - or freesia, perhaps?" In Chicago, well-known chef Rick Bayless supplies all the salad greens for his Topolobambo restaurant from his home garden and at his Frontera Grill, the menu's chiles and tomatoes grow on the roof. In Barcelona, stylish planters- created by three small businesses (Horturbà, Leopoldo Group Design and Vaho Works)- filled with vegetables, herbs and spices line terraces, balconies, porches, patios and urban roofs. The Leoboldo is aimed at novice urban farmers (it's accompanied by seeds and a planting calendar) who are interested in the environment (it's made of recycled material) and who have a bit of disposable income (it's priced at 68 euros, or about 100 dollars). Brave new world The creators of the 100 mile diet advise starting a garden as a way to reduce food miles, no matter how small your home: "Self-sufficiency feels good, and greens up our cities and towns. We live in a one-bedroom urban apartment but grow vine beans, tomatoes and herbs in pots on our balcony. We also have a 3′x12 plot in a community garden." Those at Chicago's True Nature Foods market have planted crops like buckwheat, burdock, comfrey, and artichoke on their roof to ensure a "food supply that does not rely on fossil fuel for transportation that is dwindling in availability, and growing in expense." And in Berkeley, California, Jim Montgomery and Mateo Rutherford grow all the food they need in their 6,000 square foot backyard garden: a move they compare with the backyard gardens in the US and UK planted during World War I and II to bolster the wartime food supply. "We're growing a victory garden against having to use so much oil." The director of the Vancouver nonprofit organization City Farmer, Michael Levenston, sees this movement toward urban agriculture as a "brave new world". While he says most North Americans still garden for recreation, not food, this is changing as concerns over climate change and food safety are propelling the local food trend. "You can't get more local than your own home. We're going to see more of this in the future, no question." Edible cities Jac Smit, president of the Urban Agriculture Network, has been studying urban agriculture for several decades. Smit credits such unrelated elements as the Internet and breakthroughs in drip irrigation as helping drive the current trend, but he told faircompanies what we’re seeing now is only the beginning. "Nutritionally self-reliant cities, metropoli, micropoli and megapolitani will increase as global warming reduces rural agriculture and as technology and systems improve." Our cities are rich with potential. Smit cites a 2004 NASA study found that the 3% of the mainland US that was urbanized (seen from space as night lights) had the agricultural capacity of the 39% currently being farmed. It's not all hypothesis. Currently, some of the largest cities in Europe and North America have extensive urban gardens:
10x10 meter plots to feed a family According to Smit, government, private and institutional studies all show that the intensive production methods typical of urban agriculture produce 10 to 15 times as much food per square meter or acre as typical rural agriculture. “Studies in Russia following Perestroika found that the small Dacha Gardens produced ten times as much per acre as the State farms with one-tenth the capital investment.” Even in colder climates, personal gardens can flourish. Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon, founders of the 100-mile-diet and Vancouver residents (where the average temperature in January is 0-5 °C), grow a winter garden. "We keep garlic, kale, mustard greens, turnips and cabbage going throughout the winter. Spinach and Swiss chard are other good winter greens. Friends as far north as Whitehorse, Yukon, have extended the growing season with a backyard greenhouse." Mandatory urban gardens In 2004, San Diego (California, US) city planner Nancy Hughes began pushing to make San Diego America's first "edible city". Her vision includes setting aside tracts of land inside city limits for organic urban farming as a way to combat her city's reliance on well-traveled food. “Why are San Diegans eating tomatoes from Florida when we’re blessed with a year-round growing season?" While traditionally city officials haven't given farming the attention they do housing, crime and transportation, this is changing, according to the Worldwatch Institute's State of the World Report 2007. "Fortunately, urban politicians, businesses, and planners are beginning to regard urban agriculture as a tool to help cities cope with a range of ecological, social, and nutritional challenges—from sprawl and malnutrition to swelling landfills and the threat of attacks on the food chain." Gardens against climate change Bill Clinton has touted the beneficial effects of rooftop gardens on the overall greening of cities. Greener roofs can provide a source of rainwater capture, as well as, help control temperatures of cities- the heat-island effect- and buildings, thereby reduce heating and cooling needs. The rooftop garden on Chicago's True Nature Foods market "helps regulate temperature making the inside naturally 15 degrees warmer in winter and 15 degrees cooler in summer." Smit lists other ecological benefits of urban agriculture, including:
A place for waste For Berkeley’s (California) Jim Montgomery and Mateo Rutherford, it all works as a closed loop between them, their animals and their backyard garden. "What we take from the garden and animals goes into the kitchen, and garden waste goes to the animals", says Montgomery. Rutherford adds: "And the animal waste goes into the garden." In Brisbane, Australia, Scientist Vivienne Hallman feeds her worm-farmed compost to her fish farm and harvests rainwater for their tanks. The fish waste, in turn, fertilizes her plants. "As water is fouled by fish excreta and decomposing food waste, it is used to irrigate vegetables and fruit trees, which also gain from additional fertiliser from worm castings." Each of her five 4,000-liter, unheated tanks “is capable of raising 17 to 20 kg of silver perch under the non-stressful growing conditions I favour. It's a total potential output of 80 to 100 kgs - more than enough for my family's needs, plus the potential of a small saleable surplus." $1 invested = $6 of food This even seems more productive if you consider that the alternative is often quite costly. Americans spend 30 billion every year maintaining their lawns, according to Heather Flores who started the guerrilla gardening group Food Not Lawns (she gave us a tour of some of the fruit and vegetable gardens she has planted in Eugene, Oregon. See the video Food Not Lawns). "The lawns in the United States consume around 270 billion gallons of water a week—enough to water 81 million acres of organic vegetables, all summer long." According to Flores, lawns also use ten times as many chemicals per acre as industrial farmland. As an added bonus, while gardeners are saving "food dollars" by harvesting their own produce, they also become more aware of what they eat and their diets improve. Several studies have shown that "the fruit and vegetable intake, as measured in terms of recommended servings per day, is higher among gardeners than among non-gardeners". As Jac Smit told Brian Halweil for his book Eat Here (we have a video with Halweil explaining the local food trend): "It's a no-brainer. In contrast to pure greenspace or parks, which taxpayers generally have to finance, urban agriculture can be a functioning business that pays for itself." Walls and windowsills
Space should never be an impediment to getting started. Vallès even has a recipe for the smallest garden possible. "A 2 liter bottle, cut in half: turn over the upper portion, with a rag in the neck, place it on the inferior half… fill the upper portion with earth and plant lettuce. In a month, eat it. It’s a microgarden, a portable garden!" Urbaculture tech Columbia University professor Dickson Despommier envisions a 21-story vertical farm that could be as productive as 588 acres of land. Not only would sky farming cut food miles, but given that transport costs are one of the most expensive parts of traditional agriculture, it could prove a successful business model. Currently, The Sustainable Agriculture Initiative, with member companies including Coca-Cola, Kraft, McDonald's, and Nestlé, has expressed interest. The tipping point is close |
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Dirksen, K. & Boullosa, N. (n.d.) Why we all will be gardeners. FairCompanies Sustainable News. Retrieved January 16, 2008, from http://www.faircompanies.com/main.aspx?uc=notampl&id=331&sec=1 | ||
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