Written by Candace E. Kraft
Industrialized agriculture looms large today as a dominant pillar of the American economy, providing for a basic human need for food within the country and around the world. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), the regulatory agency overseeing the country’s agricultural industry, often touts the overall money-spinning efficiency and productiveness of the modern ag arrangement, and has played a key role in its facilitation through guidance of federal farm policy. Agency officials contend that it allows a larger number of citizens to contribute to the growth of other economic sectors, as well as promotes creation of inexpensive food (Dimitri et al. 2005).
Obscure, ancillary costs of modern food production have ever more shifted to non-economic components of society, however, and are seldom acknowledged or addressed by the USDA. Environmental degradation, diet-related human health issues and social decay of rural communities now undermine the productiveness and efficiency of the United States. Requiring large amounts of money to remedy, these resulting problems have created an interesting paradox which the current ag system proposed to improve (Walter 2009).
In particular, industrial farming practices have led to a host of natural resource dilemmas. Pesticide contamination renders some water sources undrinkable, except with expensive treatment (Walter 2009). Increases in topsoil erosion disturbingly threatens the future of plant growth. Depending on several elements of soil genesis, an inch of topsoil often takes several hundred years to develop in nature (NRCS 2015). Soil erosion rates on national cropland today often exceed federally established tolerance levels of loss (Walter 2009).
In Hog We Trust – America’s insatiable appetite for cheap meat and other animal products, particularly beef, dairy, and pork, have created ripe conditions for the prevalence of confined animal-feeding operations (CAFOs), otherwise known as factory farms (Murphy 2008). The massive amounts of waste generated by these farm-like entities remains very difficult to safely dispose of due to the high concentration of large animals in a relatively small area. Animal waste collected and spread on neighboring farm fields often generates high-nutrient runoff creating hypoxic, or low-oxygen, conditions in surrounding water bodies (Newman and Jennings 2008). Perhaps most disturbingly, nitrate and bacterial contamination of well water in rural areas have spiked to dangerous levels on many lands adjacent to factory farm operations (Rodewald 2015).
Path to Solutions – First and foremost, a cultural transformation related to how Americans view and understand food production processes must take place in order to remediate the wide array of problems caused by industrial ag. However, this may prove to be the most problematic and complex feat of all. Human psychology principles dictate that people seldom change their mindsets unless a significant impetus exists to do so. Also, even if people do change their attitudes, a change in behaviors does not always follow suit right away (Murphy 2008).
Fortunately, the land itself is more predictable when stewarded in a proper and sustainable way. Organic ecosystems possess many dynamic and resilient qualities in healing ecological damage resulting from land abuse and overuse. Urban agriculture initiatives are but one strategy in reducing heavy reliance upon monopolistic industrial ag producers, bringing healthy foods closer to home.
Urban Agriculture – Below are some precise strategies that can be utilized by Midwestern communities to instill resilience into their urban food production systems:
Smart Growth @ City Hall – Most people today live in cities, and the human population is expected to continually increase in the foreseeable future. Municipal governments will have to reduce urban sprawl through utilization of the Smart Growth concept in order to conserve prime farmland on the perimeter of the city (Newman and Jennings 2008). Smart Growth encourages urban revitalization by setting boundaries to which cities should not be allowed to grow past (Randolph 2012).
Home Gardening – Fresh food could literally be at one’s doorstep, enhancing convenience in food preparation and positively influencing eating habits. Many food items can be grown indoors with relatively minimal effort and space requirements. Culinary herbs, like parsley, chives, basil, mint, rosemary or tarragon, can be easily grown in kitchen window boxes. People can also grow fresh mushrooms easily in any dark place within a home. Household organic trash can be composted to use as a nutrient source for plants, if space allows.
Community Gardens – City dwellers can’t use much of their own living spaces for vegetable cultivation, especially if they are not landowners (Newman and Jennings 2008). Publicly and privately-owned land tracts for household food production, otherwise known as community gardens, can help ease this predicament. Typically, community gardens are partitioned into individual plots. Whomever grows and tends to a particular plot also reaps the harvest on that segment of land. Often, garden tools are shared among members.
Originally an English concept, the first American community gardens appeared in the late 1890s (Designing Healthy Communities 2010). As industrialized ag made foods cheaper, however, the number of community gardens nationwide diminished. Numbers of community gardens, particularly in urban areas, have been increasing as of late (Designing Healthy Communities 2010).
Urban areas typically pose a higher risk of soil contamination by hazardous substances than rural areas, from flaking lead paint chips and fallout from factory smokestacks to direct spills and intentional dumping. To compound matters, prior land use is not always clearly known (Randolph 2012). Contact your local agricultural research extension office for your soil health testing options.
If soil on a proposed site is found to be polluted, many strategies exist to continue the proposed community garden project. Depending on the severity of the contamination, the site can move completely to a cleaner area, have tainted soil replaced with fresh growing media or undergo a lengthy bioremediation process (Randolph 2012; London Orchard Project 2015). Oftentimes, the most frugal alternative to complete remediation is to use raised garden beds filled with rich, organic compost from a known, trusted source (Randolph 2012).
Food Forests & Edible Parkway Landscaping – Food forests, also known as communal orchards, and edible perennials can be easily incorporated into existing city park design. Creating communal foraging spaces in existing public places reinforces accessibility with a sense of ownership (Newman and Jennings 2008). Plum, cherry, pear, apple, peach, chokecherry and apricot trees could be planted, as well as interspersed fruiting perennials, like blackberry, blueberry and raspberry bushes. However, municipal employees would have to care for the plants until they reached a maturity level where they could fend for themselves.
As with community gardens, food forests have to be sited in an area relatively free from contamination. Unfortunately, with trees, the soil excavation or remediation tends to be more extensive due to the fact that trees must be planted directly in the ground. However, raising the soil pH with charcoal amendments, horticultural lime or organic compost helps slow heavy metals uptake with many tree varieties for mild contamination scenarios (London Orchard Project 2015).
Rooftop Gardens, Garden Towers & Edible Trellises – Edible rooftop gardens will become more prevalent in a sustainable, urban food production system. Preferably, these gardens should contain a few seating areas to incorporate comfort and encourage people to spend time there. Parapets or railing systems for all roof gardens should be about waist-high to ensure safety for visitors and workers of the garden. All buildings would have to be reinforced to handle the additional weight of elongated planters, a soil layer and/or the extra gardening infrastructure necessary for plant growth (Rhoades 2015).
Garden towers are small-scale, vertical structures filled with a growing medium; plants are grown in them through cutout holes along the sides. Typically, they are in the shape of a cylinder, but larger constructions are often pyramid-shaped to achieve more stability. The towers can really be of any three-dimensional shape, however. Garden towers resourcefully maximize finite surfaces on rooftops, tiny terraces and small urban plots in general through utilization of empty, vertical space. Pumpkins and squash would grow well in these structures, in particular, since the towers are close to the ground. The fruiting yields of those plants are typically quite heavy (Edible Landscape Design 2015).
Trellises, or wooden webs adjacent to walls that assist climbing plants, can incorporate edible plant varieties on southern faces of urban buildings. Planted crops will vary between agricultural zones. Beans, peas, tomatoes, cucumbers, strawberries, grapes, sweet potato, and wild rose are all climbing plants that do relatively well in temperate climates (Edible Landscape Design 2015).
A variation of edible trellises are “living walls,” or pocket netting filled with soil that cover the entire length of outer walls of buildings. The best type of material to make the netting out of is linen, a type of fiber made from the flax plant. This material gets stronger when dampened and also is naturally antibacterial, two properties abetting plant growth (Brahms Mount 2015). The mesh doesn’t have to be linen per se, but can be made of another durable, renewable material like hemp or cotton canvas.
Hospital Gardens – Hospital gardens can provide healthy food for the sick and elderly people that these healthcare facilities provide services to. As city land becomes scarcer, rooftop expanses can even be converted into food-producing garden areas. The hospital would also be providing additional employment opportunities to the community since workers would have to maintain rooftop infrastructure and more people would be needed to tend to the plants.
School Gardens – School gardens hold a lot of possibilities for long-term success as an urban ag strategy. Not only do these endeavors provide fresh food to the cooks for student meals, they allow for an unrivaled educational experience. Hands-on, agricultural learning through a sustainable lens can remedy the disengagement of modern children from the land, instilling in them a concrete understanding of where their food comes from. Also, training the next generation of farmers in sustainable agriculture will allow a more seamless shift into a new dawn of food production (Newman and Jennings 2008).
An ecological curriculum centered around school gardens can teach kids, kindergarten through grade twelve, specific fundamentals of food production, storage and preparation. Math, communication, business and other practical skills are to be gained by students partaking in school garden programs. This educational platform could likewise revive the fading home economics curriculum in the public school system, and correspondingly provide valuable adaptation skills for an oil-depleted world (Newman and Jennings 2008).
Greenhouses & Hoop Houses – Use of greenhouses and hoop houses are useful ways for residents of colder climates to obtain fresh greens, tomatoes, and other vegetables during the off-peak growing season. Greenhouses are typically a fixed structure with electrical outlets; hoop houses possess a movable frame design. The power it takes to run a winter greenhouse can be cost-prohibitive, so care should be taken to maximize solar capacity with proper greenhouse placement and design.
Aquaponics – A technique, known as vertical farming, can be incorporated into the greenhouse design. It is essentially a synergy of vegetable and fish production using the power of gravity. Aquaponics entails using nutrients from fish waste to grow vegetables and vice versa within a closed-loop cycle. Common fishes used in aquaponics are warm-water species, such as yellow perch, channel catfish, and tilapia (Growing Power 2014).
To recap, here are proposed urban ag initiatives currently practical within the Midwest:
| Reduction of Urban Sprawl – Smart Growth Policy | Community & Home Gardens |
| Rooftop Gardens, Garden Towers & Edible Trellises | Food Forests & Edible Parkway Landscaping |
| School & Hospital Gardens | Greenhouses & Hoop Houses |
Conclusion – Urban agriculture continues to slowly gain traction within the Midwest, as it’s a relatively foreign concept to the area. As a society, America doesn’t have to forego all technological advances and step backwards in time. We can take important food production lessons from the past and recombine them with new knowledge going forward to take back control of our diet and health.
Finally, we need modern political leaders with a couple shards of backbone to stand up to corporate interests attempting to hoard America’s breadbasket for themselves while bureaucrats and policymakers stand by counting dollar signs.
RRCC 