Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>]

   "Jason Mark, editor of the Earth Island Journal, also writes at Change.org 
that most urban farms, so far, are not supporting themselves financially."

I have to talk about that one line from that article. I located the original 
piece behind it at  
http://food.change.org/blog/view/can_urban_farms_make_it_in_the_market_dig_deep_farm_thinks_so

This is a concern I've brought up before on this list, and a concern of mine 
in studying market growing. Mark explains the problem, and for the same 
reasons I tried to explain. More from it below:

paul tradingpost@lobo.net
~~~~~

Urban farming, as you’ve probably heard by now, is pretty cool. The press 
can’t seem to get enough of the trend. Philanthropies are excited about the 
potential of transforming concrete places into green spaces. City farms are 
swamped with volunteers.

There’s just one hitch: Although popular, urban farms aren’t exactly 
profitable. Every city farm that I know of depends in some way on the support 
of foundations and private philanthropists. Urban farms might aspire to 
ecological sustainability, but most of them are a long way from financial 
sustainability.

In the Spring edition of Earth Island Journal (the quarterly environmental 
magazine that I edit), Sena Christian wrote a great piece exploring the 
challenges urban farms face in reaching economic self sufficiency. Christian 
wrote:
“… These urban farms haven’t yet found a way to thrive in the market economy. 
Most rely heavily on volunteer labor and grant funding. … And that’s a 
problem because they are unlikely to fulfill their aspirations and make a 
meaningful dent in the problem of food insecurity if they are forever running 
on the treadmill of foundation funding.”

The estimable Tom Philpott at Grist.org then wrote a thoughtful response, 
pointing out that if urban farms struggle to succeed in a market economy, 
well, so do almost all farms in the US. Many farms only make it because one 
spouse works as a teacher or lawyer or nurse and brings in vital, off-farm 
income. In this country most farms — even huge ones that enjoy some of the 
best topsoil in the world — only survive thanks to generous government 
subsidies. As farmer-and-writer Philpott put it, corn and soy farms “are 
wards not of the foundations, but rather of the state.” Well said.

This isn’t just an academic debate between a bunch of writers with a bit of 
soil beneath their fingernails. The question of whether farms can become 
self-sufficient has major implications for the larger drive to create a green 
economy. Because if we can’t find a green-fair way of feeding ourselves 
without philanthropy support, how are we going to create a green-fair economy 
for clothing, transportation, construction, or information technology? We 
need to figure this out — and fast.
~~~~~~

paul tradingpost@lobo.net


*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 10/31/2010 at 10:42 AM Tradingpost wrote:

>China-Mart local?
>
>Weekly Mulch: Local Food—Where Sustainability Meets Self-Reliance
>Posted Oct 21, 2010 @ 6:10 pm by Sarah Laskow
>http://www.themediaconsortium.org/2010/10/21/weekly-mulch-where-sustainability-meets-self-reliance/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+MediaConsortium+(The+Media+Consortium)
>
>Last week, environmentalists and food advocates warily welcomed the news
>that Walmart plans to expand its local, sustainable food program. The
>company announced it would double its sales of locally grown food by 2015
>and, in new markets, would source from small and midsized producers. Given
>Walmart’s market share, this announcement is generally understood to be a
>positive development for the sustainable food movement.
>
>Sustainable food, however, has grown beyond the dictum to eat simply
>locally and organically grown food. Farms have sprung up on rooftops, home
>canning of fruits and vegetables has taken off, and composting is de
>rigueur. A common thread runs through this movement, one with a long
>tradition in American life—a preference for self-reliance.
>
>“Independence is for Neanderthals”
>
>In her new book, The Resilient Gardener, Chelsea Green author Carol Deppe
>writes about her garden not just as a local, sustainable source of food,
>but as a tool for building a sustainable community.
>
>“The resilient gardener knows we have our ups and downs, as individuals,
>families, societies, and as a species,” she says. “The resilient garden is
>designed and managed so that when things go wrong, they have less impact.”
>
>Deppe argues that growing staple crops like potatoes, corn, beans, and
>squash, and learning how to store vegetables and save seeds will help
>communities thrive, even in times of erratic climates.
>
>“I aim for appropriate self-reliance, not for independence,” she says.
>“Independence is for Neanderthals.”
>
>Communal eating
>
>Yes! Magazine’s Vicki Robin has been feeding herself only with produce
>from a friend’s farm and a handful of other necessities sourced within a
>10-mile radius of her home—which is on an island in Washington State.
>She’s been documenting her “10-mile diet” since the beginning of
>September, and as it came to a close in early October, she wrote: “The
>overall news is that we are actually on our way to at least partial food
>self sufficiency on the island, and could get closer with some changes—if
>we eat what we can grow here and not insist on what cannot grow here….”
>
>From the farm to the city
>
>For Robin, eating locally often meant eating food grown by neighbors. For
>city-dwellers, “local” is much more flexible. In New York City, for
>instance, local food at the city’s Greenmarkets can come from more than
>two hundred miles away, as farmers make weekly drives from upstate New
>York, Vermont, or southern New Jersey.
>
>Although urban farms have drawn attention as a innovative solution for
>localizing food production, no one is arguing that a city could feed
>itself entirely from its rooftops or empty lots. It may not even be wise
>to dedicate large chunks of city space to agriculture, as Daniel Nairn
>argues at Grist: Cities need to be dense to promote energy efficiency.
>Jason Mark, editor of the Earth Island Journal, also writes at Change.org
>that most urban farms, so far, are not supporting themselves financially.
>
>Sustained by subsidies
>
>For American agriculture across the board, subsidies are a key to
>financial sustainability. The USDA has funded the growth of corn and soy
>megafarms in the Midwest, and earnings from outside jobs supplement the
>incomes of many small or midsized farmers. So far, outside support for
>urban agriculture has come primarily from private foundations, although
>earlier this year Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-OH) introduced a bill that would
>create an Office of Urban Agriculture within the federal agriculture
>department.
>
>Still, increasing outside funding for urban agriculture may not be the key
>to sustaining it. “The question of whether farms can become
>self-sufficient has major implications for the larger drive to create a
>green economy,” Mark writes. For the green economy to work, it has to be
>self-reliant.
>
>Mark highlights Dig Deep Farm in the suburbs of San Francisco, CA, as an
>example.
>
>“To reach profitability, we have to reach a lot of people,” Hank Herrera,
>one of the farm’s owners, told Mark. “Our goal is to have enough
>productivity to reach scale, to have the poundage to really feed people.”
>
>To that end, Herrera and his partner, Abeni Ramsey, are looking for more
>corners of land in the vicinity of their farm to convert into growing
>space.
>
>Farm ecosystems
>
>Communities sustained by good food practices extend beyond humans to the
>natural ecosystem of worms and insects that lives in the dirt, helping to
>enrich and clean it. As Sara Rubin writes at Campus Progress, “A farmer
>attentive to natural systems will often rejoice over a handful of soil
>packed with the tiny squirmers, but mostly because it’s packed with
>microscopic critters, too. An entire ecosystem of beneficial fungi and
>bacteria and tiny insects can be active below the soil surface.”
>
>That community of underground wrigglers contributes to the resilience of
>human communities, too. Healthy bugs and bacteria crowd out dangerous
>pathogens that have led to food-related outbreaks of salmonella, for
>instance, in the past few years.
>
>Environmentalists should welcome Walmart’s new-found dedication to local
>foods. It shows that the first battle for a sustainable food system has
>been won, freeing up time and energy to develop new, exciting projects
>that will ultimately strengthen communities, not corporations.
>
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