Urban agriculture is not a new phenomenon, yet in recent years it has been gaining momentum as a favored topic and booming industry across the nation. This is probably because, in May 2007, the world’s urban population finally surpassed the population found in rural regions throughout Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas. As the population crisis continues to threaten an already stressed reserve of global resources, communities in major metropoleis are finally looking inward, rather than outward to distant lands, for solutions.
It is no wonder that New York City, as the most densely populated city in the United States, is often a major trendsetter in green initiatives. Backyard chicken coops have always been legal here, and March 2010 was marked by the legalization of urban beekeeping. With a growing concern for colony collapse syndrome and the inability for natural crop pollination, apiaries are finding residence in the most unlikely of places: apartment rooftops and neighborhood balconies. But the honeybee and its hive are not the only things calling NYC home of late. There has been a resurgence of do-it-yourself gardening techniques, and container-friendly crops are taking root around the city. Aquaponics – which merges the science behind both aquaculture and hydroponics – allows everyday home dwellers to grow edible fish in a symbiotic system with soil-free plants. Once only a fashion amongst the culinary elite and subsequent locavores, it has become increasingly evident that the urban food movement has revitalized almost every demographic in each of the five boroughs.
Urban agriculture in the United States first sought success stories during the major world wars. In the early twentieth century, governments encouraged and rewarded non-farmers (mostly woman) to grow food in so-called Victory Gardens and in their own backyards. Supporting the rural areas, this initiative aimed to reduce the pressure on large-scale food producers who had lost many farmhands due to mandatory military conscription. In turn, many city-dwellers were able to prevent food shortages at home while supplying the troops abroad. Still, this method of community gardening differed greatly from the gardening philosophies promoted today. Environmental sustainability is a key issue not only for advocates in the field, but also for politicians, corporations, and the general public, which was simply not the case decades ago. Whereas the protection (versus stabilization) of the populace was the main concern of the past, people are now realizing that human security can only be achieved through food security. And, not surprisingly, food security can only be achieved through ecological equilibrium – a term that suggests human life does not surpass in value the life of any other species on the planet.
Unfortunately, the Green Revolution of the late 1960s did not yet follow this principle of environmental harmony. Born out of the remnants of World War II and the fight against communism, the Green Revolution did, however, welcome prosperity and a temporary alleviation of poverty and hunger throughout the world. It also welcomed unfathomable population booms and unregulated advancements in technologies. Pesticides, herbicides, and genetically-modified crops were disseminated across borders and disparate ideologies. Rural farmers ultimately lost autonomy over their crops and seeds as external sources imposed a reliance on chemical fertilizers, petroleum byproducts, and trademarked intellectual property (such as new and inadequately researched discoveries in plant breeding.) As farmers scrambled to maintain an edge in the evolving international marketplace of modernity, subsistence livelihoods and plant diversity were ultimately sacrificed and abandoned. In the end, a monoculture of crops developed in the agrarian world, and the disastrous repercussions are yet to see an end in the twenty-first century.
As more and more exposure is warranted to the fall-out of the Green Revolution, an informed audience is demanding change in agricultural legislation and its inherent practices. Not only is NYC (and the rest of the world) demanding change, it is making change as well. The proof of this can be best witnessed in schoolyards and playgrounds across the city. Environmental awareness is at the forefront of curriculum planning in universities as well as in the educational systems of children and teenagers. Here, students are further exposed to experiential learning: they not only read about horticulture and botany, they also experience it. With childhood obesity on the rise as well, nutrition and healthy eating habits have become a standard priority for educators. School gardens are now the status quo rather than the exception, but school boards and districts have rushed to write appropriate regulations for this relatively unchartered territory. Fruit trees are mostly banned from elementary school gardens due to the attraction of the affable honeybee as bee sting allergies (and their potential causes of death) are still a top concern among alarmist parents. Disease and contamination of the plants are yet another topic of discussion, so most school gardens require edible vegetables to be cooked prior to consumption.
Disease and contamination are not restricted to schoolyards, either. Soil contamination from vehicle exhaust, run-off from mismanaged waste, and remnants from construction sites threaten any urban farm. Quality control and soil standards are not implemented in most community-run gardens, a fact that has yet to be fully explored by the city’s legislators. There can be severe legal (and social) ramifications for wide-spread illnesses that originate from these communal spaces. Even though they are feeding more people than not, we cannot forget the root causes of food scarcity and insecurity in the first place: soaring birth rates; bloated standards of living; rampant consumerism and manufactured demands in the marketplace; unmonitored scientific technologies; continued exploitation of the countries on the lowest end of the human development index; water scarcity; and dwindling energy resources with questionably sound solutions for so-called renewable energies. This is just an abbreviated list that is too easily buried underground when the comprehensible benefits of urban gardening are growing before our very eyes.
Life on a farm used to connote social isolation and economic limitations. It used to suggest an uncivilized, uneducated or lower-class upbringing. It used to be something worth escaping for the bright lights of an industrialized and prosperous city. Today, though, this misconstrued elaboration has been replaced with a new ethos of respect for agricultural cultivation. People are beginning to regain ownership of their food system. With the unveiling of the corporate factory farm and its abuses or degradations against animals and the environment, people want to know where their food originates. They want to shrink their carbon footprint by decreasing the transport of their food from farm to market to plate. Ignoring the profitability factors and imminent commercialization of urban farming, it is easy to analyze the benefits of small-scale and grass-roots gardening. It is therapeutic, and it has offered rehabilitation to many marginalized or disadvantaged populations. Vertical living and farming prevents further encroachment on arable or marketable real estate. It also detoxifies highly polluted indoor and outdoor air spaces. The advantages do not end here, but, as expected, neither do the critics. If we have learned anything from our own ambitions in urban farming, it is that no garden is without its weeds. And, if left untended, we will eventually be left right where we started: with nothing.
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