Garden, Plant, Cook!

Tuesday, April 01, 2014

How Old Buildings and Prisons Can Build on Sourcing Food Locally.

Dear Folks

Old buildings and prisons present opportunities for more sustainable food systems.

As I'm sure you know by now I am passionate about growing some or most of your own foodAlong side community garden projects, I've been reading about re-use of existing infrastructure (empty buildings) and accessible labor (prisoners)

Are you in a true urban city with old industrial areas composed of large brick buildings, or shopping and strip centers with big box retail stores which sit empty for months or years at a time?

Are you a city resident or know some/many who think farming needs to be moved out away from the city to make way for more houses?

Or, in the alternative do you wish there were more fresh food resources close to home, what is commonly called "food deserts"?

Are you interested in prison and prisoner reform?

Here are some things to ponder:

In this 14 minute video Sustainability guru Geoff Lawton features the rustbelts - abandonded factories in America's Northeast and ponders the revitalization possibilities, noting that nature 'wants' to take it back and how citizens can use that concept to reclaim the areas for food production.

. . .

A Washington State professor needed some readily available help/labor to study moss.

"Activities got underway when
Dr. Nalini Nadkarni, a forest ecologist and Evergreen faculty member, met Dan Pacholke, then superintendent of Cedar Creek Corrections Center. Several Cedar Creek staff, offenders and Evergreen students were recruited to participate in the Moss-in-Prison Project. Using prison facilities as a controlled environment, the project explored how to “farm” mosses for the horticulture trade."

From there the project expanded into an amazing partnership which benefits the prisoners, local community, and the college.

The Washington State model is completely applicable here in Arizona, and elsewhere.

With the privatization of prisons, along with its controversies, partnering with colleges is a win/win option to take advantage of labor and at the same time creating an environment that gives prisoners skills and goals during and after prison, all while ultimately benefiting the entire surrounding community.

. . .

Geoff Lawton's vision for reclaiming rustbelts was already started by a project called "Plant Chicago."

The re-use of industrial and retail buildings for hydroponics and aquaponics is always a potential but requires planning and initial costs of equipment along with any upgrades to the buildings.

Approaching the whole project as a sustainable one with reuse of all or most components would make them more cost effective.

Several similar projects to Plant Chicago started off great but failed due to factors such as getting the audience and customer base.  But the failures led to more information and better production systems.

You, my reader, are a potential audience and customer base.  What buildings in your area could be re-used for food production?

Maybe an unused building at a school or church?  Strip center nearby?  Look for possibilities and create an additional food source for your group or community.

. . .

I started this post with the note "Are you a city resident or know some who think farming needs to be moved out away from the city  to make way for more houses?"

I was amazed at an event, where I was to give a lecture on desert edibles, when I heard a young couple ask an SRP representative why so much water was being given to farms instead of used by cities, the idea that farming was taking water from city residents.

I sat with them after that and hopefully helped them understand connecting the dots of food-production-location to things like cost, nutrient density, and healthy options.

In a far-fetched, but troubling scenario, I could envision this kind of mentality as thinking that it would be okay if most or all of our food was imported, since so much is non-seasonally imported now.  Hey, what the heck, we can get peaches in the winter and pears in the summer, or any other food item from other countries regardless of the local season.

The primary problem with that scenario is the loss of control over food quality and resources.  Ask any community in third-world countries substituting an outside sources for their food.  In other words - Food Security.

In addition to growing food in your backyard, increasing the local production of sustainable food resources only benefits the community.

Traditional farming, hydroponics, and aquaponics are all farming techniques - they simply use different media for the growing.

To learn more about aquaponics and hydroponics check out the Valley Permaculture Alliance group.  You can read all posts without signing up.  Sign up is free and allows you to post and answer questions.

The group focuses on the relationship of growing both fish and plants, but the information is helpful to learn more about simply growing plants in water.  AND, if you decide on aquaponics - the fish can be simply for viewing pleasure, you don't have to eat them!

Our recent recession was a real wake-up call to many folks who found themselves out of work and out of money.

Unemployment is capitalism's way of getting you to plant a garden.” -- Orson Scott

Naysayers will likely point out all of the logistic challenges, and one "educator" famously stated a couple of years ago in reaction to LocalFirst efforts - focusing on local producers amounted to "protectionism"!!!!

Encouraging and supporting locally sourced food is protectionism?!?!!?  My foot!

What is clear from an economic standpoint is that shopping with corporate chains means most of your shopping dollar goes out of state, while locally sourced by locally owned companies keeps more of that dollar IN your community.

Shopping at Arizona-based businesses keeps within the state 43 cents of every dollar spent, instead of only 15 cents per dollar spent at national chains."  --"

. . .

Food security is also about the impact of  seemingly opposite problems:  Hunger and Obesity addressed by Ellen Gustafson in the TedX video below.

In her 2000 TedX talk she makes the case for reviewing just how these problems are related, and that simply making crops like corn and soy more high yielding does not address the issue.  In reality the nutrient density of food crops DROPPED over a 43 year period according to USDA statistics sited in an article published in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition which charted the decline.  This period included the rise of GMO crops along with the myriad of hybrids created in more traditional methods.

To sum up, access to food is all about who controls YOUR food sources.  You can take control by growing some or most of your own; you can become involved in community gardens; you can join together to form food growing projects like re-using old buildings or even vacant lots for traditional gardening/farming, aquaponics or hydroponics.

It should not take a recession or loss of a job to learn that food does not come from the shelf of a store, subject to economic considerations which have nothing to do with how hungry you and your family might be.

A current political hot topic is Venezuela's issuing of Food ID cards to prevent hoarding and as a probable step toward food rationing.

-- Catherine, The Herb Lady