Urban farms should be considered a critical part of green infrastructure in cities plagued by decades of decline and a boon for the people left behind. But it’s not a panacea for food deserts and the underinvestment plaguing poor communities left to fend for themselves.
Exactly, not even our "best" GMO crops being grown in optimal conditions can match that kind of yield per acre, that's why I just threw that number out as junk data. Now that I look back at it, it's more like "provides 'some' food for 2000 homes from this 3 acre plot" but that doesn't get clicks!
"Puts free food on the tables of 2000 local households". Something like that. When you accidentally express things in a misleading way, someone will always use that against you. This is really awesome though and we need like 1000x as much of it.
You're omitting a significant part of the phrase yourself, there. It also has 200 fruit trees. I point this out to try and ensure the bad faith assholes who would point it out for asshole reasons look dumber when they do so.
That helps, but even if we're talking 200 mature fruit trees, one tree can fulfill the annual fruit need of about 5-10 people (which is an awesome stat btw). They have a densified acre-ish of fruit trees that's about 10 years old which will limit the size of each tree. Maybe enough for ~500 people?
This is instructive though for how we need to redesign urban and suburban land to transition to mostly mass transit, convert wasted car throughways to usable land, and locally source foodstuffs for urban citizens.
Yeh, we need to expand this. Heck, I'd use my family's land to help with this, but I don't live in an urban area- the ability of those in need to reach the food I grow here is limited.
Since this is trending
If anyone is up to helping me
I recently left my abuser and me and my 4 kids trying to rebuild.
Currently trying to get a bed a small couch and basic household needs and food for survival.
Ca: $unicornmama69 https://PayPal.me/moodybeth
Nah, at least communism housed people instead of running bullshit liberal hippie self-congratulatory vanity projects on land that should be public housing.
I wouldn’t call urban agriculture a liberal hippie thing. Cuba moved to urban farms to deal with a food crisis and it saw success as it reduced the amount of food that had to be shipped long distances.
That's because Cuba lacked food sovereignty and the government wasn't prepared to adapt to the loss of massive exports of food from the Soviet Union. The US produces more than enough calories to feed everyone - it is NOT a production problem, it's a logistical and distribution problem.
Food prices are going up quickly due to high gas prices and it’s likely the price will continue to increase. Transportation is of food is going to be a growing problem. If people can’t afford food, they can’t eat.
Food prices for prepared foods only are increasing rapidly because wages are increasing - Baumol's cost disease. Also, food prices in America are still orders of magnitude lower than the rest of the world.
Urban farming in America is absolutely hippie shit if you're trying to emulate Cuba for "aesthetic communism" rather than actually addressing the real material conditions of the precariat.
I wrote something earlier which was wrong, correcting with the right data.
Looks like in MI you get ~20 tons/acre of things like potato or cabbage. So 3 acres, 2k households, 2.6 people/hh => 23 pounds of cabbage or potato a year. Not nothing!
The city, for whatever reason, closed down projects in my area YEARS ago. The more prominent one, which has its own loop, has been turned into an urban farm that can support the locals. It's still a work in progress, but I'm THRILLED that we're doing this with land that's been otherwise abandoned.
As nifty as community gardens are, they are still just gardens.
This would realistically feed a few dozen people when factoring in crop loss and seasons.
Farms are massive and require machinery for a good reason.
People have to eat a lot. 😅
I don't. Detroit has the 15th highest homelessness rate in the US. This land could have been public housing, not some inefficient hippie vanity project.
The people need housing, nearby sources of fresh food, and government benefits to pay for it.
Hippy Vanity project? A lot of the families it feeds are ones who fall between too much for SNAP but not enough to eat on. The two don't have to be mutually exclusive. There are plenty of other empty lots this caseworker who has been homeless show you how to organize.
Yeah and this caseworker now disabled SNAP user will tell you that isn't going to happen any time soon. Considering how pre pandemic they cut 30%. So how about we focus on helping people and yeah work towards expansion but people need help now.
Comments
they might not meet the full needs of the community, but every little bit of community support helps undermine capitalism's grip on the people's lives
If anyone is up to helping me
I recently left my abuser and me and my 4 kids trying to rebuild.
Currently trying to get a bed a small couch and basic household needs and food for survival.
Ca: $unicornmama69
https://PayPal.me/moodybeth
https://gofund.me/d3b69917
Housing is a much bigger need right now.
Looks like in MI you get ~20 tons/acre of things like potato or cabbage. So 3 acres, 2k households, 2.6 people/hh => 23 pounds of cabbage or potato a year. Not nothing!
https://www.nass.usda.gov/Quick_Stats/Ag_Overview/stateOverview.php?state=MICHIGAN
This would realistically feed a few dozen people when factoring in crop loss and seasons.
Farms are massive and require machinery for a good reason.
People have to eat a lot. 😅
which is also a free quarterly listserv
The people need housing, nearby sources of fresh food, and government benefits to pay for it.
There's a ton of work involved.
You harvest once a year and eat it then or find a way to preserve it.
People don't realize that you're can't just walk up daily and pick dinner.
It's not producing food year round.
This is nice, but not a solution.
There will be edible fruit for a brief period of time and without a lot of care, it's all just rotting on the sidewalk.