What’s Going on @ Sillydog Media

It’s now officially a big issue. A reporter for Marketplace, the most excellent show (with their very own sustainability desk) on NPR that explains business news as it pertains to real people (as it most sincerely does) contacted me about a story: how has the drastic increase in the price of food affected people’s actions and attitudes towards urban agriculture?

Oh, is there a topic nearer or dearer to my heart? You know there isn’t! So, in typical Marie fashion, I responded in my typically verbose manner.

Dear Brendan,

I’m a bit of a special case, being a University trained Horticulturist with specific training in fruits and vegetables (tree fruits being my specialty). That said, I’ve been preaching that this very thing was going to happen in North America for the last decade — the difference is that people who have previously ignored me or even made fun of me have started to seek my advice for their own gardens in the last 6-10 months. As the unusually early spring has reached us here in Portland, Oregon, I’ve been noticing that people are pulling up their flower beds and strawberry patches to put in intensive “square foot” gardens. As of yet, I’ve not seen too many more greenhouses going up, but am expecting to see “lettuce houses” go up this coming winter.

I would also point out that part of this urban agriculture includes gathering and livestock. I, for instance, got 3 hens a few years ago. As my partner and I walk the neighbourhoods I pull edible weeds out of people’s gardens (purslane, chickweed, dandelion, etc…) and feed them to my birds. They get enough greens on most days to require very little feed. Within a year, there were 3 coops on our block alone, all producing eggs. Not only do I save the litter of the cartons, but I get between 500-600 eggs per year. That’s about 45 dozen at $5/equivalent carton (free-range, organic, farmers’ market eggs) or $225 per year. Though the price of organic layer pellets has nearly doubled because of ethanol, the price has stabilized at about $20 per bag. I buy 3-4 bags per year and 1-2 bales of straw at $6 each. So, worst case scenario, I save about $125 per year on eggs alone, they’re better than anything I can buy and, best of all, I know exactly who laid breakfast!

I also collect fruit from the neighbourhood. Excluding blackberries, which are everywhere, I collect about 20# of top quality walnut meats per year from my front yard and others. Equivalent walnuts sell for between $10-12/pound at the co-op and I can crack mine while watching football, when I’d otherwise be idle. That’s another $200 per year I’m saving, not to mention the irradiated nuts (and transport) from California I’m not supporting. I collect, eat and preserve hardy kiwi, cherries, fennel, figs, black walnuts, artichokes, apples, pears and many other fruits that hang over the sidewalk or go uncollected in alleys. How do I know other people do too? Signs have started appearing on prized trees asking people to pick on trees around the block! It is my belief that my gleaning and very minor agriculture saves us about $1,200 per year, or at my current salary, about 3 weeks of work.

Of course, a big part of this, and something that isn’t as apparent, is eating in season. I started doing that to save money in about 2003, and it makes a huge difference. I see people walk into the store and shop according to some recipe, and they usually spend 2-3 times what I do on produce, and I eat a rather large pile of veggies every day. I don’t even think about buying a tomato until July. Knowing what is done to fruit / veggies to preserve it in packing houses, not to mention how shipping concerns have bred tasteless and disease-prone crops (cantaloupe is a prime example), I have found this money saving measure also results in far tastier (and presumably healthier) food. I would swear on a stack of bibles or whatever one holds sacred that this food tastes better, and there is flavenoid and polyphenol science to back this up.

Another thing that has taken off here is the concept (that I wrote about 5 years ago, but didn’t jump on, much to my own personal and professional shame) is lawn-based CSA. In this scheme, a gardener tills up and gardens your lawn. In return for the use of your former lawn, you get half the produce. These have caught on in Portland so fast, there hasn’t been enough gardeners to help out. It’s still largely confined to the urban area, but it is beginning to spill out into the suburbs. I’ve written extensively on the scourge of the lawn from an agricultural and ecological point of view, and I’m telling you, it’s doomed.

Gardening certainly is cheaper, but along with the bounty of harvest goes preserving and figuring out what to do with all those zucchini. Even if you do figure that out, there are concerns you may not have even considered. For instance, after graduating college for the last time, I was dead broke. My partner at the time and myself (both hort students) were able to feed ourselves for 4 months, almost entirely out of that garden. I learned how to eat southern style turnip greens and pea shoots. We also had that ubiquitous squash with every meal for weeks. My partner at the time wasn’t drinking enough water during that hot summer and actually developed oxalic acid kidney stones (or so we assumed, as there was also no medical insurance between us). Like in WWII when people learned the hard way not to eat too much rhubarb, I would expect there to be more home preservation and accidental overdoses of plant toxins in the next few years as people learn the hard way what not to do when you HAVE to eat out of the garden.

So, to answer your questions, yes, my garden is expanding everywhere it can. There’s no light left on the ground (when the walnut is in leaf), so I’m going on the garage roof this year. Food prices are a huge incentive, but organic and local produce has become the cheaper option in just the last few months, too. I will also be assisting my neighbours in expanding their garden that does get sunlight. People who don’t know what they’re doing can spend a bunch of money on supplies, but those with a little bit of imagination can start up for almost nothing, especially when using organic methods (such as my golden chicken litter). I only buy open-pollinated seeds and have a seed bank of my own, so spend about $20-30 on new seed.

I have a long track record of predicting social changes. Mark my words: the suburbs will be covered in gardens by 2015, front and back. The backlash against urban chickens has already begun to play out as a generational conflict ( http://www.twincities.com/soucheray/ci_8344015?nclick_check=1 - read the surprisingly vitriolic comments). The bottom line is, Gen X won’t go down without a fight, and that fight is, for the first time in 100 years, moving back to the soil.

Let me know if you have any other questions; I’d be happy to answer them.

Sincerely,

Marie Richie
http://www.sillydogmedia.com/

I’m looking very forward to seeing how this turns out. Perhaps I gave him some food for thought. As something of a journalist myself, I see a whole series of articles here, ones that shake the very core of suburbia as well as the new urbanism.

I’ll keep you informed.