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| The Clinton Garden on September 8, 2010 - the first day of school. |
As the Grow Your Own Food Movement continues to grow, I wonder what impact urban farming will have on our culture and the future of our planet. Urban farming and gardening can be found in the most inconspicuous places. Lush, colorful vegetable gardens in between buildings with peeling paint, fruit trees and tomato vines stretching high to reach the sky as bodegas and tenement buildings watch the miracle of nature. You may have walked right past a whole system of fruits, vegetables, and flowers thriving through the concrete and hardly noticed. In our dense city, this is understandable; you hardly notice the sidewalk when you’re trying to get somewhere quickly, as most New Yorkers always seem to be doing. However, when you look closely you’ll see the window box disguised as simple flowers and greens are secretly a plentiful herb garden for a mother’s kitchen. Urban farming is making our city even more beautiful and it’s making our environment healthier.
To understand the effect of urban farming, first you have to understand what it is. The Grow Your Own Food Movement and urban farming are about taking back the food we eat and becoming self sufficient. Today we have little control over where our food comes from and what goes into producing it. Farming can hardly be called farming anymore; everything is over processed and industrialized. Machines and engineers have taken the place of farmers who know the earth and what’s best for the soil. Now “Food” is produced in labs and factories to be made more cost efficient. Migrant workers are taken advantage of; they are paid the very minimum, sometimes less, and work in harsh conditions. Neither human beings nor animals are taken into consideration in the production of food. Food is a business; in business, profit is the bottom line and everything else is given little thought. The food we eat directly affects our health and when profit is the most important thing to a company, the health of the consumers is the least important. Animals and people aren’t the only things exploited by the food industry; the earth is overworked as well. The way farming is done today strips the soil of vital nutrients to continue growing food. Diversity is what sustains our world and keeps systems in constant motion. The form of farming done by big companies doesn’t allow biodiversity. Instead, one type of crop is planted at a time. The soil is overworked and eventually becomes dead. Traditional farming thrived on diversity, if one crop didn’t survive, another would be readily available for distribution; a concept big company farms can’t seem to grasp.
Animals are brutalized and put in the worst conditions possible. Cows are the new Ford T model, on assembly lines to their death. Chickens are pumped with hormones to fatten them up quicker, their breasts become so large they can’t walk. Pigs are put in tiny crates, where they can’t even turn around. The environments the animals are put in causes them distress. They suffer before they’re packaged, shipped, bought, and cooked. By starting a small garden or urban farm, we can lessen; maybe even reverse the harm done to our bodies and earth by the food that seems to do more harm than good. Urban farming gives you a sense of accomplishment and who wouldn’t want farm fresh fruits and vegetables in every meal?
The thought of growing your own food may sound a little ridiculous at first. You can hardly finish your “to do list” everyday, how will there ever be enough hours in the day to tend to a farm? The sound of a farm may sound foreign to someone who lives in the city, but farming isn’t defined as a large mass of land in NoWheresville with creepy cornstalks and the thick smell of animal. Anyone can be a farmer. Novella Carpenter, author of Farm City, had a farm in a ghetto of Oakland, California. In addition to growing everything from tomatoes to pumpkins, she was also a beekeeper and raised chickens, turkeys, and even pigs. The Edible Schoolyard program, an organization that builds urban farms in schools, has made its way to P.S 216 in Brooklyn, where a garden is being built. A solar powered building, complete with a kitchen classroom, a chicken coop, a composting system, an outdoor pizza oven, a cistern to collect rainwater, and a movable greenhouse will make the garden more than a garden, but a place where children can discover that vegetables can be delicious and nutritious.
You may not have the time to raise and kill livestock or have $1.6 million on hand to build a fantastic backyard utopia, but there are much simpler ways to start growing your own meals. A great way to start off an urban garden is a small window box. It doesn’t cost much or take too much tending to grow an herb garden for fresh seasonings. You can go to Home Depot’s gardening section, Loews, or any hardware store near you. If you don’t like the idea of dirt in your house, you could always start hydroponic window garden. A hydroponic garden is a garden that only uses water to grow plants. For fewer than 30 dollars, you can turn any window in your apartment into a garden. Hydroponic gardening is perfect for small spaces and those who don’t want anything to do with dirt. Another option is a rooftop garden where you could grow anything from small potatoes to broccoli. Like anything in life, tending to a garden or urban farm takes work. However, the hard work will pay off when you and your family are healthier. You’ll be proud to show off your rooftop beehive and lettuce heads. You’ll feel accomplished when you and your loved ones enjoy fresh garden salads and mushroom burgers.
With every innovative idea, there will be skeptics. Urban Gardening is not an exception. There are people who don’t agree with gardening being taught in schools and being encouraged. The argument is that it is taking away from conventional topics like reading and math. However, learning about something new can never take away from what you learn in Geometry or English class. In fact, learning about how to better yourself and help save the environment can only add to what you learn in History or Science. So, whether you grow herbs in your hydroponic window farm or fruit trees in your front yard, you’ll be contributing to preserving mother earth. Every time you don’t fund corporate farming’s gradual destruction of the earth, nature rewards you in small ways; with the sweetest peach, the crunchiest lettuce, or the leafiest greens.
