Farming the City: Planners and Gardeners are thinking of how to feed us
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Like many good ideas, community food planning seems obvious in retrospect. Each new subdivision raises a host of concerns as it goes through the approval process - but how well its surroundings can feed future homeowners has seldom been one of them. However, the notion that a community must give some thought to how to feed its members seems to be taking root. The nonprofit American Planning Association adopted a policy in May that encourages its members, 65 percent of whom work for state and local government agencies, to help build "stronger, sustainable and more self-reliant" local food systems. Until recently, most planners were only peripherally concerned with food systems. Their involvement in conserving agricultural land stemmed more from a desire to protect open space than from an interest in preserving local food production. "Yet, among the basic necessities of life - air, food, shelter and water - only food has been given short shrift by the planning community," write the authors of Policy Guide on Community and Regional Food Planning. That has now changed, though it's important to note that these are guidelines rather than enforceable rules. "Local food planning is a very popular topic that has a surge behind it," said Amit Ghosh, chief planner at the San Francisco Planning Department. "It has a lot of currency here in the city. And it is not something that is just a fad. It's the basis of all sustainable policy that you may have. After all, food is one of those basic human needs." A food system encompasses the production, processing, distribution and consumption of food and the management of waste. In justifying its new policy, the planning association said a city that can supply and control its food needs will have more say in what it eats, an opportunity to eat fresher foods and insulation from disruptions in national food distribution. All that, plus the fact that dollars spent on locally produced food have a greater chance of cycling back through the community, and that food grown nearby bears a lesser liability for greenhouse gases released in transport. Read the whole article by clicking here.
A companion article was also written:
Can S.F.'s vacant lots become garden plots?
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Bayuk and other urban gardeners with big dreams but little capital are striving to create a metropolis that can feed itself. It's one thing to support local organic agriculture, as in the region's farms that sell their goods at farmers' markets. But for Bayuk, a 30-year-old landscaper and gardener who lives in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood, a truly local food system means being able to walk down the block from your house to harvest a bowl of salad greens for dinner. Over the past year, as a project for the San Francisco Permaculture Guild, a group of gardening and design professionals, educators, activists and volunteers, Bayuk has been on the hunt for open space in San Francisco. Bayuk and the guild envision what amounts to a reincarnation of tenant farming, in which gardens are built and tended in private vacant lots by volunteer growers. Unlike tenant farming, however, landowners would not be paid, and the produce would go to local food banks and possibly even be sold at farmers' markets. Most owners intend to develop these lots, but the permit process often takes years, and during that time the land sits fallow and sometimes blights the neighborhood. Some owners don't live in the city and are unaware of the state of their properties. That's the perfect time, Bayuk says, to install a temporary organic garden. If the lot has exposed earth, he says, the soil would be tested, and if it's not contaminated, seeds and starts could be planted directly in the ground. If the lot is paved, container gardens or beds could be installed. Bayuk recently compiled a surprisingly large list of privately owned vacant sites - called infill lots - throughout the city. The 1,058 lots amount to about 127 acres, or 5.5 million square feet, a fairly significant amount of unused land for a city that measures 49 square miles, or roughly 31,300 acres. The San Francisco office of the assessor-recorder conducted its own search in its database and, surprisingly, found more than double the number of lots Bayuk had found (see box). "I was shocked by how many (vacant) properties there are and the sizes of them," Bayuk said "While these plots are vacant - and before they're developed - there's a great opportunity to use them for gardening." Read the whol article by clicking here.
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