Kspitz’s Weblog

A recent article entitled “Urban Farms Revitalize City Neighborhoods” from Nuwire Investor describes a relatively new trend in America – urban farming. They are not talking about a few community gardens here, but actual “for-profit” vegetable farms within cities. The executive director of the Kansas City Center for Urban Agriculture says this type of farm will not only provide a source of food for urban dwellers, but will become a “small, but meaningful generator of economic activity”. Last year the 2.5 acre Kansas City Community Farm employed six workers and sold over $100,000 in fruits and vegetables. Not bad for a garden.

The article describes urban growing spaces right next to office buildings, inside of skyscrapers, and even inside a former bank vault (using grow lights, of course). Urban farming goes a step beyond home gardening or even community gardening in that it creates an opportunity for earning an income from the garden. Urban farming is the perfect set-up for someone who loves to garden, yet also prefers to live in the city.

The article also brings up an interesting point having to do with population growth and the earth’s capacity to provide food for the future. It states, “by 2050, demographers estimate there will be an additional 3 billion people on this planet. If current farming practices are maintained, extra landmass as large as Brazil would have to be cultivated to feed them.”

Brazil? Do we have that much available land?

It is true that we would need considerably more food for that many more people (and what about the 800 million that are already starving?), however, the key phrase in that statement is “current farming practices”. Current industrial farming practices in the United States are very wasteful in terms of human food production. Most of the farms in the Midwest, for example, produce commodity crops for export, not food for people living in the nearby region.   

Consider my home state of Iowa where approximately 80% of the tillable land is used to grow corn and soybeans. The majority of the harvest is fed to animals on factory style farms, or, in the case of corn, it is used to make high fructose corn syrup or ethanol. Feeding grain to herbivorous animals in order to produce protein is an incredibly inefficient use of natural resources. High fructose corn syrup is a cheaper form of sugar used to sweeten nearly all processed foods. It has NO vitamins or minerals and therefore contributes only empty calories to the American diet. And using a food crop to produce fuel leads to higher prices for animal feed which, in turn, means higher food prices worldwide. Growing corn for the production of ethanol will soon turn into a competition between hungry humans and ethanol-guzzling cars.   

With these points in mind, it makes sense to consider changing current farming practices. Within the very near future, urban farming is likely to become much more than just a novelty practiced by a few 21^st century food activists. Urban farming will be considered a necessity. Many countries and cities of the world have already recognized this; Cuba has an extensive urban food system as does China, The Netherlands, and Singapore. The cities of the United States would be wise to take a few cues from other parts of the world and start working towards food self sufficiency instead of remaining food dependent. Trucking in the majority of our food from hundreds, even thousands of miles away is unsustainable. Eventually the earth’s ecosystems will reach the point of no return and, at the rate we are going, that point is quickly approaching. 

But take heart! It does not have to be this way! We do have enough land to provide food for all if we simply start thinking a little differently about how we grow food. Instead of using the entire yard to grow inedible grass, city dwellers can go out into the back yard and start scoping out the place for that urban farm.