Permaculture: A Revolution in Food Security

This is a topic I posted on one of my other blogs at “Are We Green Yet?”. I feel the subject is topical enough to post here as well. I was going to rewrite it to take out some of the political aspects of it but reconsidered when I realized that a little politicizing is good for gardeners now and then. And after all many of us are part of the new food revolution, so here goes.

A new term has entered our lexicon, peak oil. What the everyday consumer is supposed to envision upon hearing this term is that the world has already extracted half of the planet’s natural oil resources and from this moment on the rate of production has entered a terminal decline. What this means to us of course is that the price of oil will only go higher due to its increasing scarcity and our ever increasing population size and our continued dependence on fossil-fuel-burning industry. British Petroleum (BP) claims we have not reached this ‘peak’ point while other oil companies say we have. And the debate continues without any clear way of knowing if we have reached peak oil because no one knows exactly how much oil is available under the planets surface.

Personally, I don’t know who to believe because I am not an expert, so I, like the rest of us, am at the mercy of those who are, or claim to be, experts. I do, however, believe we should aggressively research alternative energy sources no matter how much oil remains to be extracted. The longer we wait to actually adopt an alternative energy source(s) the more money we are throwing at big oil who clearly have no real interest in pursuing an alternative to using their product and the more environmental damage we are doing to the planets surface, air and water.

In the meantime, while we watch our government drag its feet in setting token and ineffective attempts at environmental policy while agribusiness and oil executives suck every dollar out of our pockets, there is a movement underway that has, unwittingly, been developing for years by individuals covering a wide spectrum of people who call themselves home gardeners, urban farmers, weekend garden ‘hobbyists’, and lately, locavores.

Permaculture and the increasing desire to become self-sufficient and sustainable is a lifestyle whose time has returned. Farming communities survived quite well for many, many years before we became industrialized and traded our independence for the convenience of having such things as: out-of-season fruits and vegetables every day of the year, and someone else to grow and can our foods.

With the emergence of recent issues concerning food safety, food and gas prices, genetically modified food, greenhouse gas emissions, transportation of food over great distances, and food freshness and quality, more and more people are becoming painfully aware of the dangerously vulnerable position we are being forced into. The continued reliance on agribusiness, government, big oil and even financial organizations to provide for our daily necessities is in jeopardy.

I am convinced that communities everywhere need to create local, sustainable, community gardens to supplement each individuals home gardens for the purpose of creating community food surplus in case of national emergency. I realize I may sound alarmist, but our nations cupboard is bare.

I recently discovered a group based in Nevada City, California, called Alliance for a Post-Petroleum Local Economy. APPLE is a grassroots group striving for a more self-reliant, sustainable local economy (as opposed to global economy that the world’s money changers are pushing for). They produce locally what they consume locally, as much as possible. It is an intuitive idea that I believe many people have been craving as an answer to our need for food safety and community activism. It is a means of re-establishing our own control over what we eat and how it is grown.

They have produced over 100 videos, they call them conversations, featuring everyday individuals who adopted permaculture and have taken the step towards sustainability in their own yards. Be sure to watch #51 “An Experiment in Back Yard Sustainability” and #100 “Suburban Permaculture with Janet Barocco and Richard Heinberg”.

One such video, entitled “How Much Food Can You Grow in Your Yard?”, shows an urban lot, measuring 75’ by 125’, in Port Townsend, Washington. The home owner, Judy Alexander, takes us through her self-sustained property re-educating us on how it is possible to grow enough food to sustain your family and have excess for neighbors, friends, or community storage.

Whether you agree or disagree with the narrators assessment that we have reached a peak of human innovation, information, wealth and health, check out the videos for some very educational insight to what it can be like to regain our independence and get back the satisfaction that being in touch with land brings.

There are of course many other groups out there creating their own sustainable eden. One of my personal favorite experiments in permaculture is taking place at the “Little Homestead in the City”. They call themselves eco-pioneers living a homegrown revolution on a sustainable, real-life original urban homestead. They have set an excellent example of how anyone can create an environment that reaches out to the community at large and can therefore inspire others fulfill their own need for independence. It truly is a revolution.

Our dependence on oil is becoming more and more expensive in terms of cost of extraction and production which gets passed on to the consumer, and in the cost of damage to the environment in terms of exploration, extraction and burning of oil which is felt by everyone. We are being forced to accept higher food prices as the result of short-sighted use of food crops for the production of bio-fuels instead of using non-food crops. In our rush to sever ties to foreign oil we are made to believe that the only immediate answer is to damage the environment further by increasing the number of offshore oil wells.

Through the use of the internet and our increased access to each others gardens and skills, through blogs and websites as educational tools, we are all becoming more empowered to take the course of our future into our own hands, to grow our own food, and share the excess with neighbors in an attempt to get this food revolution off the ground.





Further reading:
Instant permaculture for the suburbs

Are we running out of oil?

Why peak oil is probably about now

Permaculture Institute

Homesteading Today

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Wal-Mart is Going to Stick It To Us Again

I grew up in a family that shopped regularly at local farmers markets. I married a woman whose family also shopped regularly at local farmers markets. Together we raised children who now shop at local farmers markets. So when I read recently about how Wal-Mart, of all places, announced they are going to begin selling produce raised by local farmers, I instantly grew suspicious.

Here’s what I am concerned about. If a business the size of Wal-Mart begins buying up all the local produce will there be any left for those of us who don’t want to buy from stores like Wal-Mart?

It seems to me that since they are in this to make money that I may soon have to start buying my local produce at Wal-Mart and paying more for it for the same produce I now get at the roadside stands.

This turn of events will probably be very attractive to the farmers because they can sell all of their stuff without having to maintain road side stands and they won’t have to pay someone to sit there every day selling their stuff. So once again Wal-Mart is disrupting another local tradition. This time instead of putting local businesses out of the market they are subjugating buyers in yet another way.

I am all for cutting down the number of miles my food has to travel for reasons involving both freshness and greenhouse gas emissions. And I applaud Wal-Mart in doing their part to cut down on fuel usage, but, let’s be honest, this latest endeavor will only benefit Wal-Mart, again. And ii is going to cost us more, again.

So, I guess it's time to begin expanding my raised beds and start growing more in my own yard.

Am I wrong about Wal-Mart? Does this sound like a good idea to anyone out there? What’s your opinion?

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Urban Farming: A Local Food Revolution

Excellent example of how ingenuity and necessity come together to turn unused, wasted space into a healthy money making venture.

From the Urban Farmers’ file: cultivated plots are appearing in the least likely of places, such as a New York City vacant asphalt-covered ball field. A community group called East New York Farms sold fruits and vegetables grown by locals in small plots within their own neighborhoods. Last year the group sold more than $25,000 in goods.

A nonprofit project in Philadelphia grows salad greens in a half-acre plot and sells them locally raising $67,000 last year.

The Milwaukee nonprofit, Growing Power, grossed over $220,000 from a one acre farm selling lettuces, winter greens, sprouts and fish to local restaurants and consumers.

Local nonprofits have been providing land, training and financial encouragement in urban areas of Detroit, Oakland, Milwaukee and other cities and those people who have the courage to exhibit their ‘farmers gene’ are making it work.

This is a great illustration of how locals working through community groups in cooperation with local governments can raise awareness of where our food comes from, how food is grown, develop the entrepreneurial spirit as well as teaching self-sufficiency.

The fact that many of these city-farmers want to raise their produce organically is very encouraging. It shows that our tolerance for chemical fertilizers and pesticides is fading to the point that people who rarely garden are not falling for their false promises. City composting programs are helping too. Trucking home decomposed leaves from the Starrett City development in Brooklyn and ZooDoo from the Bronx Zoo’s manure composting program is helping teach healthy habits for maintaining a healthy environment.

This whole process is cultivating pride in their community which is a priceless commodity.

Attitudes toward urban farming have come a long way. John Ameroso, a Cornell Cooperative Extension agent who has worked with local farmers and gardeners for 32 years, said that when he first suggested urban farm stands in the early 1990s, city environmental officials dismissed the idea. ‘Oh, you could never grow enough stuff with the urban markets,’ he said he was told. ‘That can’t be done. You have to have farmers.’

Holly Leicht, an associate assistant commissioner at the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development, helped provide two half-acre parcels of city land last year. One became Hands and Hearts and the other is in Ocean Hill-Brownsville, Brooklyn.

With more training and incentive programs like the Farmers’ Market Nutrition Program, a supplement to the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) and senior nutrition programs urban farming is bringing food closer to our tables. It not only tastes better, it saves huge amounts of oil, keeps money in your local economy, and makes us less vulnerable to large-scale food contamination. Eating local is the easiest way to eliminate suspect food from your diet. It's also the easiest way to cut processed foods with added fat and sugar out of your diet, since you'll be buying more fresh fruits and vegetables.

Urban farming, such as these small-scale isolated examples, is a part of the growing phenomena of the local food revolution. But, small-scale isolated examples is exactly what the local food revolution is about.

In the last 10 years, interest in eating local has exploded, whether you count the growth in farmers' markets (roughly 3,800 nationwide, more than twice the number a decade ago); membership in Slow Food U.S.A. (13,000 members and 145 chapters just since 2000), the American arm of an international movement to defend our collective “right to taste” as well as local specialty food producers who bring us distinctive flavors; or the number of schools stocking their cafeterias with fresh food raised by nearby farmers (400 school districts in 22 states, in addition to dozens of colleges and universities).

It’s a winning situation for the environment and inner city dwellers.

For further information:

New York Times article

Urban Farming

City Farms

Urban Jungle

Beyond the Bar Code: The Local Food Revolution

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