Can urban farming feed the world?
"On one rooftop in the El Cerro neighbourhood, a single farmer raises 40 guinea pigs, six chickens, two turkeys and more than a hundred rabbits. His 68 square-metre system incorporates closed-loop permaculture principles, where he grows vegetables, recycles organic animal waste, collects water and exploits a number of inter-species synergies. He has built his own machines for drying and preserving feed, which allows him to collect abundant waste compost from nearby markets and stores and put it up for leaner times. His small rooftop enterprise produces meat for area restaurants and markets; he is one of more than a thousand small livestock breeders in Havana"
The Architectural Review
And here he is at one end of his amazingly productive little farm.
This morning I read a brief little article in the Australian Financial Review, about how people were redeveloping abandoned houses in Detroit into farms - or more properly a kind of greenhouse I think. Which made me think about urban farming in general.
So I started looking into it, and dredging my memory as well, and of course was immediately overwhelmed by masses and masses of information on the net. So I sort of revised my thoughts about what I might write because I really don't want to repeat what they all say. If you really want to know about particular projects (some of which I am about to mention), just feed in 'urban farming' to Google and then you can spend hours and hours reading all about it. What follows is just some random information that took my eye, and some ramblings about the whole issue.
According to the United Nations 15% of the world's food is produced in urban farms. That's huge really - and I confess I feel a tiny bit doubtful about this. But then I confess I do not know a lot about the undeveloped world and I guess that many people may well grow their own food in urban environments in those third world cities. Though you would have to wonder where, as the pictures you see inevitably seem to be of shanty towns and concrete jungles with little or no space in which to grow anything. But then I guess you can grow bean sprouts on a shelf and keep a few chickens anywhere if there is no regulation. Anyway it's an astonishing amount 15% and they predict it rising to 25% in a decade or so.
I think you can probably divide urban farming into two or three different categories.
First there are places like Havana and Detroit, and wartime England, where necessity has been the mother of invention and food production has been small-scale but essential.
In wartime England food was in very short supply and everyone was encouraged to grow their own. Allotments grew up on the edges of towns, and in vacant plots. The government had massive advertising campaigns, and everyone was encouraged to grow food wherever they could.
The allotments still exist and there is fierce competition for them, but they are now a leisure activity rather than an essential means of producing food for the nation.
Havana too - an exemplary example of urban farming - was forced into it by necessity. The loss of its export markets and the refusal of the United States and others to trade with it meant a massive dislocation of the agricultural industry. Cubans were encouraged to grow food where they could and now it is able to feed large numbers of their citizens with produce grown within the city boundaries, and just beyond. I remember Monty Don, in one of his television programs visiting Havana and its urban farms. I was so impressed by it - how every tiny bit of space was turned over to agriculture.
And now in Detroit - a city devastated by the GFC - there is a major urban farming movement. The city once had a population of 2 million - now it is less than 700,000. There are masses of abandoned houses and plots falling into decay. The City owns 1/3 of all the vacant land and has demolished over 10,000 properties. Apparently it has been difficult for citizens to purchase these blocks for agricultural purposes - mostly just due to bureaucracy, but this is improving. It is estimated that there are now over 14,000 people involved in urban farming within the city limits. The projects range from corporations - the Hantz Corporation has a massive timber farm - very controversial this one - to not-for-profit community groups, to individual entrepreneurs (for lack of a better word) - individuals who grow and sell food - and councils and other organisations. The benefits are enormous - revitalising neighbourhoods, educating, developing a sense of community and giving people a purpose, not to mention making those neighbourhoods safer, greener and more beautiful places in which to live. And did I mention providing the people with food? Then there's the conversion of the abandoned houses into greenhouses and urban farms. Doubtless there are other cities with similar distress which are working at this.
Then there are commercial enterprises - I did a post on this earlier on. So I won't go into that here. These are large-scale, highly technological and very commercial.
And lastly there are the greenies, for want of a better word. The people who are setting up community farms - either through the local council or elsewhere. Schools do it, councils do it, all sorts of local groups do it and individuals do it too. As in Detroit the aim is to develop a sense of community, to educate and to sustain. Farmers' markets are a direct offshoot of this. I'm willing to guess that most cities now have lots of these groups - some of them are tourist attractions even - like CERES in Melbourne which encourages visits from schools and mothers and children - or our local council Community farm which does the same. People keep bees on roofs, grow herbs in window boxes and green stuff on walls. Rooftops are turned into productive gardens - and they should be - what a waste of space you could say. And nature strips too are put to good use. But look out for anyone taking your produce here. Which is fine.
And lastly there are probably some poor, even rich people who just grow their own food in their back garden. I remember a lady in the playgroup to which my children went, whose garden was completely given over to vegetables. She said that she had no need to buy anything in the way of vegetables. It all came from the garden - and it wasn't a particularly big garden either. Indeed I have a friend, also with not a huge garden, who yet manages to have so much produce from it that she is always giving it away. So it can be done. We can feed ourselves.
Though I don't think I can. My attempts at food production have been less than sensational. I could blame it on our not very good soil - but then there are ways of improving soil, from worms, to compost, to manure and to chemical fertilisers. I just can't be bothered I guess. Now if I had to I might.
We've lost a lot of our self-sufficiency haven't we? Time was that almost everyone had a few chickens or rabbits, and a small veggie plot where they at least grew tomatoes. But we've got a bit over-protective here in the west, and there are now a host of regulations about what you can and cannot do in your own backyard. And we have also got lazy and addicted to digital entertainment - like me tapping away here on my computer. So all praise to those good people who are trying to get us back into it. And perhaps I should try harder with my veggie garden.
