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Growing Food Locally:
Integrating Agriculture Into the Built Environment
This summary is a shortened, condensed version of the Full Article.
Executive Summary
Tremendous energy is expended transporting food from fields around to world to our tables. Large-scale, centralized food production is vulnerable to disease and other threats, and there are health benefits to more local food production. In this context, there is growing interest in producing food closer to home, even in urban areas.
There are two broad approaches to more localized food production. First, the vacant land around buildings—which comprises about 15% of urban land nationwide—can be turned into productive gardens and farmland. There are thousands of community gardens and hundreds agricultural enterprises (both nonprofit and for-profit) that are converting this unused, urban land into productive land for vegetables, fruits, and other crops. In some urban farms, isolation from contaminated soils is provided with a layer of clay.
Second, there is a tremendous amount of commercial roof area in urban and suburban locations, and some of this space is suitable for productive green roofs or rooftop greenhouses. With greenhouses, soil-based growing is practiced by some, but most growers have turned to lighter-weight hydroponics (growing in which nutrient solutions replace soil). The innovative field of aquaponics marries aquaculture (fish farming) with hydroponics to permit ecological systems in which fish waste provides the fertilizer for plant growth.
Both of these approaches offer challenges to architects and farmers alike. Finding plots on the ground that are uncontaminated and receive enough sun for vegetables can be difficult in dense urban centers, and rooftop systems can easily overload existing structural supports if not carefully planned.
DISCUSSIONSReader-contributed comments related to Growing Food Locally: Integrating Agriculture Into the Built Environment - EBN: 18:2. Comments are listed with newest at the top.
The local food cycle is broken if we send food waste to the landfill. Illinois is (finally) contemplating legislation that will make composting easier by redefining food scraps. If the law is changed, food scraps will no longer be defined as garbage and will be able to be dealt with inside the rules that currently apply to landscape waste composting. A link to the proposed bill (SB99)is http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/billstatus.asp?DocNum=99&GAID=10&GA=96&DocTypeID=SB&LegID=40422&SessionID=76#actions. This is needed legislation. If you are interested in supporting it, please contact one or more of the sponsor.
I thoroughly enjoyed the article on Growing Food Locally:Integrating Agriculture Into the Built Environment.
I did want to mention one potential source of land for locally produced food integrated into the built environment, church property.
I have been involved with "greening" my chruch in suburban Richmond,Virginia,for almost four years. One of the aspects of our plans is to plant a vegetable garden on part of our property and plant fruit trees as well. While we are just now implementing this part of our overall plan to make our chruch more sustainable and reduce our carbon footprint, I believe the potential is great for church/congreation gardens for many reasons that enhance the missions of our faith communities. Karl Bren,LEED AP, Richmond, Virginia
I do have a successful example of bringing edibles into the town landscape. Until recently I served as environmental program manager at Alys Beach, a traditional neighborhood development under construction on the panhandle coast of FL. I was able to work with our landscape architect to introduce the concept that our landscapes should not only be beautiful but should feed us too. While vegetable gardening needs more intensive inputs, fruit and nut trees/shrubs are really easy. Last spring we planted 220 rabbiteye blueberry bushes of four different varieties (best for cross pollination and extended fruit season) in a park area so that every June-July residents and visitors will enjoy a fresh harvest. We hope to later add more edibles that are well-adapted to North Florida--cold-hardy citrus, figs, loquat--and others. Every part of the world has wonderful, easy-to-grow fruit and nut trees that should be included in our landscapes as one more statement for local food production, while providing the expected benefits of shade, beauty, etc.
You noted in the "Permaculture landscaping" section that you had no examples. there is a co-housing example in Northern California that almost all of their landscape is edible. kids go play and if they are hungry just pick fruit and eat it. kind of cool.
http://www.cotaticohousing.org/
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Information on the Resource Center, one of the organizations featured in the article, can be found at http://www.resourcecenterchicago.org.