Can you envision the lush, deep green of pumpkin leaves occupying every median in the Boogie Down? How about heavy bobbing heads of sunflowers on every sidewalk in Brooklyn? Tomatoes and zucchini on every south-facing balcony in Manhattan? How about fruit trees, flourishing in container gardens, in every cemented yard in Astoria and Jackson Heights?
It may sound unrealistic, or even impossible, but it’s more than merely possible. De-centralized, for-profit urban farming has already been successfully implemented in San Francisco, CA.
As you can see for yourself, it works. There is a catch, however. Have a look at the MyFarmSF website to see if you can spot where the model can be improved to benefit all the participants in keeping with their inputs.
Improvement #1: Decentralize the profits with the veggies. People who contribute land for gardens should be reimbursed for their contributions, if they wish, rather than made to subsidize the profit of the boss who sells boxes of vegetables grown on their property.
Improvement #2: Appoint the laborers and land contributors to become owners of the venture. That way, worker-owners have a stake in how well the business fares, and a voice in company decisions. This improvement can include the local council as a single voting worker-owner and profit-earner, if community gardens are located on city land.
Improvement #3: Generate organism-rich soil locally, instead of importing manufactured soils. While this may be a long-term aim of MyFarmSF, as they compost on-site, the original imported soil has the typical grainy look that soils of low organism density have. Healthy soil smells like the forest floor and is comprised largely of fungi and micro-organisms. In SF, where the city collects compost separately from recycling and from trash that goes to landfill, healthy soils could be generated with very low scrap mileage. In NY, you could save a local Chinese restaurant significant amounts of cash per month on their garbage bill & get them to bring you free compost material in the bargain.
The San Francisco model can be modified for NYC use — to benefit all of the participants for their input, rather than just benefitting the bossman. The result will be a thriving community run market, and importantly, food security that comes of independence from distant agricultural products. Imagine if our beautiful bridges ever did get bombed. How long would the food supply on the shelves of your local grocer last? A few days, tops.
Below, we outline a 5 aspects of a process to put the love & the community back into the garden, and to provide food security. These aspects are not linear in time, but rather overlapping and iterative.
Aspect 1: Find & Authorize Sites.
Aspect 2: Permablitz & Appoint Mentors.
Aspect 3: Magic Box & Rotating Market Days.
Aspect 4: Educate worker-owners & do outreach.
Aspect 5: Downsize & spawn.
Love, community, and the security offered by local, decentralized gardens are the 3 elements of food justice. Like the gardens, food justice must be home grown.
