Urban farms and urban agriculture. Sounds like an oxymoron, doesn’t it?
Now, I know that sounds like a really big job, but it’s grounded in the most simple of things – growing food. You can enjoy locally grown, healthy food, mitigate the effects of climate change and help build a more resilient community – just by getting your hands a little dirty!
Over the last 150 years, food production has moved further and further out of sight for most of us and now takes place far away from where food is eaten. When was the last time you walked through a field of crops? Chances are not at all or not in a long time, since there isn’t much land devoted to growing cereals in New Zealand. Large- scale industrial agriculture focuses on monoculture, high-profit, high-yield crops and animal systems that can be exported. New Zealand is quite squarely in the dairy and meat game.
Herbicides, fungicides and fertilisers, which are used extensively in ‘conventional’ agriculture, damage the delicate balance of the underground ecosystem, and genetic modification has led to crops designed to be grown at scale, but with less regard for their nutritional value or their impact on the environment. Industrial agriculture may have seemed like a good idea at the time, since it held the promise of saving millions from starvation, but it has now emerged that it comes with many pitfalls and we can see that it certainly isn’t sustainable in the long run.
At its most simple, urban agriculture moves food production closer to the community that eats it. This not only reduces the costs of transport, but urban agriculture almost always uses sustainable growing methods, often focussing on regenerative methods that sequester carbon and produce food that’s packed with nutritional goodness, thus improving the physical health of the community. These aren’t the only benefits. There’s also evidence that gardening – the simple act of getting soil on your hands – improves mental and emotional wellbeing too, especially when it’s done together with others.
Urban agriculture integrates food production into both the ecological and economic systems of the urban landscape. Community gardens are springing up all around the country – Otakaro Orchard in Christchurch, Thames’ award-winning community garden and Auckland’s own long-standing Kelmarna Organic Gardens in Ponsonby are just a few of the productive patches that are feeding and educating communities and helping to fight back against climate change.
Adrian Roche, Manager of Kelmarna Gardens, says their garden is a great example of the range of food that can be grown in Auckland, and urban farms and gardens should be systems that provide real calories to feed real people. Growing a wide range of food from sunflowers to celery, lemons to lettuce, Kelmarna feeds more than just the body – it feeds the mind and the soul too, providing education about sustainability along with much needed support and therapy for people who have experienced mental illness.
Gardening is a great entry into learning and caring about the environment, says Adrian, and he suggests you’ll soon pick up knowledge and skills volunteering at a community garden near your place. If there are no community gardens nearby, you can always start your own food farm in your back (or front) yard. There are so many things to learn from urban gardens. It’s easy to be overwhelmed by news of climate change, but we all have to eat and by changing the way we eat, we can either continue to contribute to climate change or we can choose to halt and hopefully reverse it. Visit me at breadpolitics.com to find out more about the benefits of urban gardens. (ISABEL PASCH)
To read more about other urban farming initiatives in New Zealand and around the world visit www.breadpolitics.com
Isabel Pasch is the owner of Bread & Butter Bakery & Cafe and the author of the www.breadpolitics.com blog.
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