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Farmers of the Future

This is an interesting article and speaks to the direction things are going.

I like the window gardens, earth boxes and aquaponics as a way for everyone to partcipate.

 

The city of the future will be a farm, according to ecologist David Tracey

BY STEVE WHYSALL, VANCOUVER SUN APRIL 28, 2011

 
 

David Tracey stands near the Eco Pavillion in Strathcona Community Garden. When he is not talking the politics of food production, he puts his money where his mouth is and grows food in the East Vancouver garden.

Photograph by: Arlen Redekop, PNG)

Imagine Vancouver in the not-too-distant future. There are food gardens everywhere. Mini-farms. On rooftops. In parks. Next to gas stations. Filling empty lots.

And there are fruit and vegetable kiosks dotted here and there, selling fresh, organically grown produce that has been picked only a few hours earlier.

And the people are happier and healthier and more connected to the planet and the environment and nature.

What d’you think?

Well, this is Vancouver environmental designer and community-based ecologist David Tracey’s vision of the “green and delicious” city of the future.

He says it will also be “creative and busy and messy and fun and beautiful” but most of all it will be a “farm city.”

Four years ago, he wrote his first book, Guerrilla Gardening, in which he encouraged us to see all the city as a garden.

He urged people to take back public spaces, especially empty unused spaces, and turn them into productive food gardens.

And he pointed out that there were many areas of the city that could be made more useful and beautiful by allowing “the community to turn them into gardens.”

Now, in his latest book, Urban Agriculture: Ideas and Designs for the New Food Revolution, he wants us take what he regards as the next logical step in the local food movement … and see the city as a farm and all of its citizens as participating city farmers.

“The farm of the future might be your neighbour’s suburban lawn, the roof of your uptown condominium or the co-op market garden in the vacant lot down the street,” he says.

In this new reality, food gardening will not simply be a hobby that people do for relaxation.

“No, I see it as much more serious than that. I think it is the way we are going to redesign our cities to make them more livable through the 21st century,” he says.

Basically, Tracey thinks our present system of food supply is ultimately doomed because it is fundamentally unsustainable and counter-productive.

“In the 20th century, we took a major detour from the way we had grown food for the previous 10,000 years and opted for a big, industrial factory-farm system that linked into a global-food network.

“This system has a lot of problems. It can’t sustain itself. Fifty per cent of the world’s population now lives in cities and more and more people are moving into cities every day. We can’t rely any more on rural areas to keep feeding us in such a wasteful way.”

Tracey’s goal is to inspire more people to grow their own “good, healthy, fresh, local food.”

He believes everyone should not only have the opportunity (the right, he would say) to grow food, he is working to break down the barriers that convince people food gardening is difficult and not something they can do successfully.

He deliberately structured the chapters of Urban Agriculture to guide people from starting with a basic project such as growing a few herbs or vegetables on a windowsill to tackling a more complex, substantial food garden.

“When we moved off the farm into the cities, we lost the innate ability to be aware of the natural environment. We start to live less connected lives, more artificial lives in artificially lighted boxes.

“I’m not saying we have to go back to the cave, but I think we can recapture some of the sense of what it means to be alive and connected to the living planet through plants.”

Tracey reckons this is the reason everyone gardens. “It is the one activity in our life that is real time, not virtual reality, not on a screen.”

When we garden and grow food he says something deep and organic happens in our brains.

“It makes us feel a little more alive and more human. At least, it does for me.”

Food gardening will be the driver that re-designs our city, he says.

“The city has to transform itself into a more farm-like community. History is with me on this one. We are on a dangerous course right now and we need to get back on a path that is better for the planet and for all of us.”

Tracey isn’t really this preachy. He just sounds a bit that way when you string one of his passionate statements after another.

He is a gentle, articulate, sincere, schooled landscape architect with a heart for wanting to create better access to fresh food that wasn’t trucked in from other parts of the continent causing pollution and consuming valuable energy in the process.

When he is not talking the politics of food production, he puts his money where his mouth is and gets down to the nitty gritty business of actually growing food as one of the participants at Strathcona Community Garden in East Vancouver.

For inspiration, he looks to Cuba, where he see the locally-grown food revolution succeeding because people learned to “grow their way out of a crisis”.

“They start out much the same as we are doing with a lot of people growing food here and there, in corners and on rooftops, and then they refined their operations.

“Today, there are kiosks all over [Havana] selling fresh food that was picked less than four hours ago.”

Tracey reckons today’s amateur city farmers will eventually evolve into competent, full- or part-time professional food gardeners. “Many are in the process right now of working out the economic model to make it work.”

What is next

Well I am finding this quest for more ways for each of us to be able to grow our own food is gaining a life of its own.

There is a movement coming out of New York city called window farms www.windowfarms.org.

They essentially grow veggys in the windows of their apartments using hydroponic methods. The containers for growing are just recycled drinking water bottles made into grow containers.

We will be exploring this more and will hope to have a demo at the Coombs fair August 13 and 14.

Stay tuned there is so much more.

Building an earth box

Welcome to building an earth box. This is just an overview and when you come to the Coombs fair August 13 and 14 you will be able to see  a demo on putting them together.

The first step is buying or finding a storage container.

 Next is creating a shelf for a water reservoir.

I used some fencing material with 1 inch by 1 inch square mesh and cut it to size.  3 inch PVC pipe 3 inches long  were used for legs or support. Don’t forget to drill holes in the PVC pipes for legs for the water to pass through. The shelf has openings cut in for the wells in which the soil goes into the reservoir. An opening was also cut for the fill pipe a 1.5 inch PVC.

The cages for the soil wells were made of the same fencing material shaped into a circle and lined with landscape cloth.

 Next put the fill tube in you also need to cut the bottom of the fill tube on an angle to allow the water easy access to the reservoir, and make sure you have cut the openings in the landscape cloth for the soil to enter the wells in the reservoir.

 Make sure you drill a small hole just below the top of the shelf of the reservoir so you will know by the water coming out you are full.

Next fill with soil  and water and put a plastic garbage bag over top, cut the holes for the plants and insert. Fill the reservoir using the fill tube. Just refill the tank when needed and watch them grow.

So that is it for now. There are a number of ways to do these including five gallon buckets. Just search Google under making an earth box.

Watch for the upcoming information on  the best soil and how to construct it for use in the earth boxes.

We will also be exploring aquaponic growing methods.

Pictures

Well today is my foray into pictures on the blog.

I will post some pictures on how I built the earth boxes or I like to call root boxes.

Yesterday was a journey tracking down locally produced product called grassoline a fish fertilizer. The only outlet is in Courtenay but what a drive I never get tired of that one.

The nursery was amazing I will post a picture later. What a treat to go to the nursery and it be in such a nice atmosphere it is in a sort of valley surronded by nature.

Well off to figure out the picture thing.

Food Security

What is food security?

Food security is the ability to produce enough food in a local area to feed the the population using organic and sustainable methods.

Why is this important?

There are a number of reasons and more important I live on an Island off the west coast of Canada called Vancouver Island and at any given time there is only enough food on the island to feed the population for 3 days. Most experts on emergency preparedness estimate in the event of a disaster like an earth quake this island could be cut of from food and supplies for weeks if not months.

We sit in an area called the ring of fire just like Japan, Chile, and New Zealand.

This means at the present time we have set ourselves up for serious consequences.

Not only should we be concerned about an earthquake there are also a number of other looming catastrophes.

What are the other problems we face?

Most of our food not grown here comes from the southwest united states. The water supply that is used to irrigate the crops is rapidly depleting. The aquifer is drying up. No water no food.

The ocean where we get a large amount of fish is going through a number of crises. The acidification of the ocean is causing what is known as dead zones. The coral reefs that support tens of millions of species are dying at an alarming rate. The temperature of the ocean is rising  and there is another impending die off of animal life in the oceans. The pesticides, sewage and fertilizers are running into the oceans and producing abnormally high rates of growth of certain algae that chokes off the oxygen in that area and kills off  large numbers of  marine life.

As times get difficult for the fishermen they resort to drastic methods further destroying the very breeding grounds and habitat of the fish.

Peak oil

When the amount of work and energy required to extract the remaining oil from the ground gets so expensive it no longer makes it a viable fuel.

No fuel no fertilizers and now not able to use the large machinery to plant and harvest the crops food production cannot continue.

Not to forget the trucks to transport the food from long distances will not be able to afford the fuel

What about the threat of terrorism?

The Economic Crisis

Most experts suggest we are in for a big change in the money system. There are just too many countries on the verge of bankruptcy and no good answers in sight. The methods used are not solving the problems. House foreclosures are still rising in the US and unemployment is on the rise with few good full time  jobs being created. Food costs are going up and the quality and affordability of good healthy food comes into question.

What about the current state of health of the north american population obesity and type 2 diabetes almost at epidemic levels and closely tied to food and lifestyle including the ever increasing levels of personal stress.

So what do we do?

There are great examples of countries pulling themselves out of these crises and growing healthy organic food to feed their poulation.

My feeling is that each one of us can contribute and we can be the solution.

The purpose of this blog is to explore what has been done what is being done and each and everyone can use these methods to easily contribute to abundant organic healthy food.

The methods will be displayed at a local fair The Coombs fair on August 13 and 14, 2011 as well as on this blog.

We will along with the local help present Aquaponics and how this can be used, a method called earth boxes and the many ways of making them and using them along with updates on the progress of the food currently being grown with this method.

So come back regularly and watch the progress. We are all in this together.

 

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