Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Co-farming in the Cities

[Wayne Tyson (landrest]

Sounds like the right way to progress--one tiny step at a time rather than 
trying to drag politicians and bureaucrats and other lawyers forward into 
the Age of Self-Sufficiency and away from over-regulation of people (and 
under-regulation of concentrations of power).

Decades ago, I worked a bit with Rosemary Menninger, a truly energetic 
pioneer in community gardens who made it happen in California and elsewhere. 
She would be worth searching for some of her writings, such as 
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2245&dat=19780513&id=pWozAAAAIBAJ&sjid=xTIHAAAAIBAJ&pg=4689,5867627 
which cautions about contaminants. She has extensive experience.

When I worked with her, I was emphasizing the fact that a lot of food goes 
to waste in waste places, but one must be cautious about where such food is 
gathered. Some plant are apparently better at accumulating contaminants that 
others, the spinach family being a notable example. Actual concentrations 
and dosage levels require analysis and study, but as far as I know, little 
of this is done. Planting an area before starting a garden and getting the 
actual materials to be consumed analyzed might be a good idea.

Not all "contaminants" are necessarily bad, however. Iron, a heavy metal, is 
poison at certain levels, but a vital element in the diet. Eat your spinach, 
right? Yeah, well, that depends . . .

It's not my purpose to stimulate an OVER-abundance of caution, but to say 
that reasonable caution is worth paying attention to, especially in vacant 
lots. I live on one, and I garden on it, and I eat the food without testing. 
But that doesn't mean that everybody should, especially younger people. When 
I forage, I tend to pick higher elevations and more remote places. Knowing 
something of the past land uses can provide some useful, if preliminary, 
hints about contamination potential. Even if a bit of land has been 
contaminated, that doesn't necessarily mean that it will end up in the food 
at harmful levels.

There's a lot more work to be done on this subject.

WT



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Thomas Lofft" <tlofft [at] hotmail.com>
To: "Cohousing Network-L" <cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org>
Sent: Thursday, May 10, 2012 6:55 AM
Subject: [C-L]_ Co-farming in the Cities


> Here's an inspriring article about households working together to create 
> urban farms.  With a little stretch of the imagination, people could work 
> together to develop clustered residential communities together :-) 
> (NaturalNews)
> You won't see cornrows stretching into the horizon or amber waves of grain 
> as
> far as the eye can see, but there's a growing phenomenon in urban 
> America -
> agriculture is "growing" in our big cities, and as a result, lawmakers and
> policy chiefs are taking notice.
>
> And perhaps nowhere is the trend more
> evident than in Buffalo, N.Y., where, in 2003, a group called the
> Massachusetts Avenue Project turned a vacant lot on the city's West Side
> into a sizeable vegetable garden.
>
> Some 10 growing seasons later, the
> neighbors there no longer think of it as "weird," says Diane Picard, 
> executive
> director of the organization. And neither do scores of other Buffalo 
> residents,
> because urban agriculture is, in a word, flourishing in the
> city.
>
> A growing number of residents who, as the Buffalo News
> reports, "a taste for local food, a passion for living sustainably and a
> devotion to ensuring everyone has access to healthy, affordable food," 
> have started urban farms in several once-empty lots on both
> the city's East and West Sides. And this growing season, the level of
> city farming is reaching new levels.
>
> A group of young folk thereabouts in
> Buffalo took to buying vacant lots on Michigan Avenue and Peckham Streets.
> They've teamed up with others from yonder across town to form a farming
> cooperative, in fact. They aim to poll enough resources and skills to grow
> enough food to feed them and sell the excess at market stands they will
> establish.
>
> Nobel, ingenious and entrepreneurial. All from the fruits
> (vegetables?) of a little labor of love.
>
> Government catching on - and
> catching up
>
> Normally, having government get involved in much of
> anything spells doom for the project, but in this case it might actually 
> be a
> good thing. And, as it turns out, a necessary one at that.
>
> In response to
> the growing numbers of urban farms, city officials have developed a "Green
> Code," which is a total revamp of Buffalo zoning regulations that deal 
> with
> everything from beekeeping in one's backyard to selling produce grown by
> locals.
>
> "It's amazing actually," Picard told the paper. "It's so exciting
> now to see it start to be paid attention to. Policy makers and the movers 
> and
> shakers are getting a handle on how this can be an economic development 
> driver,
> a way to solve food security issues, a way to employ young people, and how 
> it
> brings people together."
>
> And like taters on Wilson Street, Picard's
> project has grown exponentially from its humble, ahem, roots, nearly a
> decade ago. Lot after vacant lot is being transformed into, well,
> productive land. Moreover, the concept is expanding into education as
> well.
>
> One group, PUSH Buffalo, through its Growing Green
> youth initiative, young people are taught agriculture as well as business 
> and
> job skills. In fact, the initiative has employed more than 400 young folks 
> since
> it began.
>
> "It also runs a farm stand and a mobile market in the summer
> and has ventured into tilapia farming," said the paper.
>
> A real
> growth industry
>
> Like weeds in the onions, the effort is
> spreading.
>
> In fact, more and more city residents are applying to
> Grassroots Gardens of Buffalo, a group that helps facilitate community
> gardens on city-owned vacant lots, so they can grow veggies like zucchini,
> tomatoes and peppers instead of just flowers and shrubs.
>
> Indeed, those
> who are transforming the city into a huge farming community - if that's 
> even
> possible - often see themselves as rebels with a cause. They call
> themselves Farmer Pirates (as in, Arrrrrr!) because they see themselves
> as fighting against the corporate food system.
>
> They even have a song.
> Sung to the tune of "Home on the Range," the first stanza goes like
> this:
>
> Home, home in the 'hood. There are things that I'd change if I
> could. Like taking the waste in this limited space and growing a product 
> that's
> good.
>
> Nothing like vacant-lot corn on the cob to spruce up a
> mid-summer barbeque.
>
> Sources for this article include:
>
> http://www.buffalonews.com/city/communities/buffalo/article812819.ece
>
> http://www.urbanfarm.org/
>
> http://theurbanfarmingguys.com/
>
> Learn more: 
> http://www.naturalnews.com/035738_urban_agriculture_New_York_cities.html?goback=%2Egde_1758727_member_112246621#ixzz1uTTVCrxq 
> Thanks for reading,
>
> TOM LofftLiberty Village, MDwhere local community agriculture is thriving.
>
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