Of course, this blog envisages a
future in which urban density is replaced by an agrarian model community farm
coupled with high density living having a neutral impact on true land
availability to agricultural applications and resident’s needs. Thus work like this is a great initial step
that addresses the jungle of anti agricultural regulations that have sprung up
willy nilly over the decades. The same
hold true in the rural environment.
Optimization of agricultural
potential does mean the optimization of the available human potential, not that
of one large tractor that operates for a net month of the year. The world is slowly waking up to this. A lot of
the difficulty is both cultural and economic design, but both are fixable. History has left us with some nasty legacies,
but change for the better attracts political and popular support so we can be
optimistic.
It is all about a natural community
managing a land base without gaming the weakest but providing all with as much
work as they can handle and desire. Such
a system needs to be managed with an internal currency system to allow full
disclosure to all. Yet it can be done
over and over again until everyone on Earth is participating.
New San Francisco legislation will jump-start
urban farming
By John Upton
Bay Area locavores and caterpillars rejoice: An edible urban jungle is
poised to sprout in San Francisco .
City supervisors approved legislation Tuesday that will help grassroots
farming groups replace barren concrete and forests of weeds on vacant land and
rooftops with veggie gardens, chicken coops, and honeybee hives. And the
move cements San Francisco ’s
role as a national leader in urban food production.
“[San Franciscans] are thought of as foodies, and environmentalists,”
said Laura Tam, a policy director at the nonprofit San Francisco Planning + Urban Research
Association (SPUR), which helped
push the new rules forward. “This is a marrying of our sustainability
objectives with the reputation that we have in the world.”
The
legislation [PDF] follows zoning changes last year that made
it easier to operate small farms and legal to sell food grown in San
Francisco. This new set of laws will take it further by removing additional
bureaucratic barriers for hopeful gardeners and actively searching for land
they can use while providing them with seeds, tools, and advice.
A major focus of the bill is community gardening — neighbors coming
together to organize, till, and cultivate plots of land in mini-farms that are
managed cooperatively.
Aided by $120,000 in city funding in its first year, the Urban
Agriculture Program will hire a city official or nonprofit organization to
oversee all community gardening within San
Francisco . The city’s utility agency will also provide
additional funds to support two farms on land that it owns.
The program will audit city-owned land and rooftops in a quest to dig
up potential new public gardening sites. It will also develop incentives for
owners of vacant lots to allow their land to be used for community farming.
Passage of the bill follows a rise in
popularity of urban farming nationally, which has been fueled by the
locavore and organic food movements, and by the recession, which has left lots
vacant and families hungry.
A handful of urban food gardens have popped up in recent years
throughout San Francisco .
Some are on public land and others are on private
lots in high-density neighborhoods that are slated to be developed after
the economy improves.
But hopeful gardeners still wait for years to be assigned a plot in
many of the city’s community gardens. Meanwhile, some urban farmers have
complained about having to seek approval and support from as many as seven
different city departments. (The new program is designed to cut through that
bureaucracy by creating a central office dedicated to urban farming.)
“We’re not going to be growing wheat in Golden Gate Park — that’s not
why we have cities,” said Jason Mark, a co-manager at Alemany Farm, a three-acre growing co-op
in San Francisco, which is cheering on the new program. “That said, there’s
very real potential for backyard food cultivation and for community gardens and
community farms to boost our organic fruit and vegetable production and egg
production,” he said.
The co-op grows several tons of carrots, beets, kale, strawberries,
plums, and other organic goodies every year that are shared among its members,
among residents of nearby housing projects, and sold for low prices at farmers
markets in poor neighborhoods.
But the benefits of urban gardening extend beyond food security and
health. Local agronomists say that allowing more people to get their hands
dirty will help residents of the city reconnect with their environment.
“Our most important harvest is really education, toward the goal of
culture change,” Mark said.
San Francisco Supervisor John Avalos, whose district includes Alemany
Farm, co-sponsored the legislation. He said he’s noticed a real spike in
interest in urban agriculture in recent years.
“This will make a big difference in my district. I think it’s really
this ‘back to the earth’ mentality, if you will,” Avalos said. “I think there
was a belief that agriculture was something that happened outside of San Francisco . We’re
seeing now that there is a real way of making it happen in San Francisco .”
San Francisco’s adoption of the new urban farming programs follows a
trend that has seen Detroit, Portland, Baltimore, New York, Seattle, Oakland,
and other major cities craft programs and laws in recent years to encourage
agriculture and gardening within city limits.
Robin Shulman, author of a new book about urban agriculture in New York
called Eat
the City, praised San Francisco’s program for its emphasis on community
gardening — as opposed to private backyard gardening or commercial, for-profit
harvests .
“This San Francisco
initiative seems to go a bit further,” she said. “The legislation mentions
specifically that these are to be community gardens with multiple plots and
that people would be working together.”
John Upton studied ecology in tropical northeastern Australia and he has spent the past six years
working in California
as an environmental journalist.
1 comment:
So the solution is social engineering with $120,000 of stolen funds, and government getting out of the way a little bit (zoning changes)
Sounds to me like government being a disease and acting as if it were the cure. What would happen of government just stayed out of the way?
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