Stuff you can grow in your backyard in ChicagoI feel like I've been bombarded lately by commentary on our food production system. I can't say that I'm surprised because it's becoming pretty common knowledge that the way our society mass produces food is all messed up. So it's a no-brainer that, for the betterment of the environment and our general well-being, we should start to ask more questions about where our food comes from and the methods used to produce it. This has become a national issue, in large part, due to the growing momentum of the Locavore movement, which advocates buying locally grown food items for environmental, political, and health reasons. It's foundations are grounded in common sense, and hearken back to the simpler, agrarian days before industrialized agriculture, GMO's, antibiotics, growth hormones, and all that nasty stuff. I think this is a big reason why this movement has gained so much traction, and it's influence is starting to show even in corporate venues like the Dominick's I shop at, which advertises "local" produce that's grown in Michigan, Wisconsin, and of course, Illinois. But the more legitimate ways to buy local are through farmers' markets (with around 40 in Chicago now), produce shares, and a growing number of farm-to-table restaurants.
Locavorism (if I may) seems to have spawned a new economic niche, as well, along with some creative business models. My friend, Jeff, recently told me about a grocery delivery service called Irv and Shelly's Fresh Picks that will bring you just about everything you need to stock your fridge and pantry from local or organic sources. It's more expensive than I could afford on a regular basis, but it still sounds like one of those classically brilliant small business ideas that could become an institution. You order online from a regularly updated list of what is currently available (or pay a flat rate for a pre-chosen box) a few days prior to delivery, and your order is delivered to your door. I would hope that, as locally grown food becomes more mainstream, the prices become more affordable, making a service like this more economically accessible (not just for my own sake).
The fact that, on the whole, lower-income communities have less access to produce and healthy food has motivated a wave of urban agriculture projects across the country. I've heard a great deal about this lately in the urban planning geek community, in conferences and discussions, and in the press. There's no doubt this has brought out a lot of creative ideas on how to address problems in cities, and it has the potential to bring people in neighborhoods together around a common effort. Interacting with nature and producing food are the kinds of acts that get inside you and stroke those "dawn of civilization" instincts, so I won't argue with that or the need to solve the "food desert" problem, but there are a few things that make me skeptical about all the attention that urban agriculture is getting - and I think they're big things.
To get down to it, our country's economy is very seriously in the crapper - not as horrific as when the very fabric of society seemed to be unraveling in 2008, but now we're just hovering somewhere around historically bad. We're also facing stiff competition from rapidly developing nations whose students are outperforming our students at a frightening rate, particularly those in our large urban school systems (see Chicago). Major economic recoveries don't happen overnight, and that's why educating today's youth is key to making our economy more competitive and innovative in coming decades (see Obama's State of The Union). Now...taking kids from a rough neighborhood and recruiting them to work on an urban farm may promote a solid work ethic, keep them out of gangs, and teach them how to eat healthy along with some other life lessons, but will it really make them competitive in a globalized job market? Or even allow them to compete with students in suburban school systems? I don't see that happening without innovation and reform in the public education system.
Most often, the types of places where I hear urban agriculture projects proposed are struggling urban neighborhoods that traditionally suffer from high unemployment and poor educational opportunities. They're easy targets for these kinds of projects because they often have a lot of vacant land. I think urban ag works well as a strategy for using the surplus of underutilized land you find in a lot of Rust Belt cities with shrinking populations (though dealing with contaminated soil can get complicated). But let's be real, here...turning blighted communities into farms is ignoring the elephant in the room: the urban poor are being left behind, and the disparity in wealth and quality of life is widening. While it may take a magic bullet to get to the point where children of low-income families have the same level of opportunity as those of middle and upper middle class families, it seems way more crazy to seriously consider asking them to go work on a farm as a means of subsistence (it also might dredge up some unpleasant moments in our country's past).
Putting those issues aside, the economics just aren't there to justify agriculture on a large scale in cities - and if you're thinking about Detroit, that's an anomaly because of the huge amount of land it encompasses and the extreme economic losses its suffered. Cities exist because of high concentrations of jobs, businesses, and services on relatively compact parcels of land. Agriculture is the antithesis of this, with huge tracts of land capable of being farmed by a handful of employees, or seasonal workers who are only needed for the limited harvest season. It also relies on cheap land, which is not readily available in the city, and even in blighted neighborhoods with low property values the cost of farming is driven up by soil remediation.
We need our cities to be cities. The era of suburbanization is over and people are slowly but surely repopulating the urban cores that were previously hollowed out by cheap gas, government subsidies, and economic boomtimes we may never see again. If we're going to be successful in making cities more sustainable, and less reliant on car travel, there will have to be adequate population density to support public transit. Setting aside significant portions of land for long-term agricultural use could pose a serious obstacle to accomplishing this. For example, there's only so much acreage within walking distance of a transit station, and that should be devoted housing, mixed use, and other uses necessary to serve that population.
If cities are going to be serious about agriculture as a land use, then it should only be after an in-depth analysis of where it can be viable without impeding other goals. I think a better alternative to growing food locally is preserving the farmland that already exists on the edges of the metro area, like the Portland Urban Growth Boundary. Edge counties like McHenry, Kane, and Grundy have plenty of half-completed, failed housing developments built on corn fields. It seems like now is a great time for making the argument that this is not a smart pattern of development, and that land in the collar counties can serve an important function by growing the food so needed in communities all over the city.
