Column If you commit to “grow food not lawns,” you’re not just committing to better food security, you’re committing to a better community.

“The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings.” ― Masanobu Fukuoka, The One-Straw Revolution

I’ve been thinking about space lately; how much of it we have, what we use it for. In particular I have been thinking about all the space that goes unused, both inside and out. In a world where our numbers are growing, and our space is diminishing this isn’t just something we should think about, it’s something we have to think about.

When it comes to food, my mind turns to lawns. Maybe it’s because I live in a small apartment, with only enough space for a handful of balcony plants, leaving me dreaming of raised beds and the chance to build a trellis to grow runner beans, but whenever I see a bright green lawn, I see wasted space (not to mention the wasted water). A space that hasn’t had the chance to thrive.

There’s a growing movement of people who think the same. Founded in 1999, the Food Not Lawns, also referred to as Grow Food Not Lawns, movement grew out of the Food Not Bombs movement. The idea behind it all being that we could maximize on space and replace urban lawns with urban farms, in turn providing the surrounding community with better food security.

When it comes to growing food, often we are intimidated by the space issue; we’re intimidated by the fact that we don’t have enough. But every small act counts. I was reminded of this while visiting a friend’s home in Boulder, Colorado. It was a simple town house, facing a big street on one side and a large parking lot on the backside. There was no spacious garden, or expansive lawn. But there was a little patch of concrete out back, and my friend had taken it upon himself to get rid of the lifeless concrete and replace it with dirt instead. He was restoring the area with life.

“I’ve got tomato plants ready to put in,” he said. “Then I am going to put a sign outside that says “free” and the homeless guys can come and eat them.”

I thought about how some might see this gesture as small – tomatoes won’t keep someone fully fed – and yet at the same time, how big the impact would be. Imagine if everyone grew a few vegetables that they offered up to others to eat?

This wasn’t someone with an enormous amount of space to grow food on. But it was someone who knew that he could at least get a few plants going, and that was better than nothing. He would maximize on what he had, and his community would be better for it.

What if we all grew a few plants?

As it turns out, we don’t need to all turn into full-scale farmers, but even just using a little bit of our space for growing food would provide great returns. In the United States, for the 85 million households with a private lawn, the average lawn size is about one-fifth of an acre. That amount of space can actually provide a fair amount of food, and imagine if you got only a handful of lawns production more food. If we grow food not lawns, the results can be bountiful. In Milwaukee, a 3-acre farm manages to feed 10,000 people a year. Some people say you can grow most of what you need on as little as one-tenth of an acre.

So why do we choose lawns instead of food? Because gardening takes time. Because Western culture has instructed us that a perfectly manicured green lawn is the sign of success. But in an era where we are more and more threatened by things like drought, rethinking our outdoor spaces and how we put them to use is of the utmost importance.

Taking part in the Food Not Lawns movement is not just about gardening or food; it’s about building communities and being a part of the solution instead of the problem. Quite frankly, I think we would all be better off if we lived in a world of gardens instead of lawns. Have a little green space? Plant something. Turn a dull lawn into a lush garden, where you can pick your own produce, smell glorious flowers, and bring back a little wildlife. It’s all about cultivating something, both in the ground and within ourselves and our communities.

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Growing Your Own: Foodie Underground

This is the latest installment of Anna Brones’ weekly column at EcoSalon: Foodie Underground, an exploration of what’s new and different in the underground movement, and how we make the topic of good food more accessible to everyone. More musings on the topic can be found at www.foodieunderground.com.

Image: Curandera Vision

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Gut bacteria is a key to optimal health because it’s so closely linked to immune health. And though it’s responsible for digestion, synthesizing vitamins and nutrients, and even important to brain health, it’s largely a mystery. Now researchers have found that plant fungus may be equally crucial to soil health and as a result, it may have a large stake in the future of farming.

A plant’s photosynthetic abilities are largely tied to an ancient microbe known as chloroplast that plants depend on, according to Gastropod and reported on Mother Jones. And while we can take a snapshot of the bacterial and plant fungus makeup we don’t know the duties that each species performs. But even still, large companies are beginning to see this as a financial windfall.

According to Mother Jones:

When it comes to the human microbiome, processed food giants have started adding probiotics and prebiotics to everything from frozen yogurt to coconut water. In the field, scientists, small biotech companies, and agricultural behemoths such as Monsanto are all racing to develop probiotics for plants: learning from bacteria and fungi to develop supplements that can help crops grow better, using less fertilizer and pesticide, even in challenging environmental conditions.

One fungus has been found to be particularly important. Mycorrhizal fungi supports 80 percent of plants on Earth. British researcher Ian Sanders thinks he can increase harvests by honing in on mycorrhizal fungi and figuring out how to help it perform even better. Other companies are looking to adapt fungi that can protect plants against cold, drought, and floods in the hopes that microbes can help feed the world.

Related on EcoSalon

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Image: Kim Carpenter

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As a nation, we are losing our ability to feed ourselves. One in 5 Americans won’t eat dinner tonight and the greatest percentage of them live in rural America. In fact, 15 percent of rural households use food stamps to survive. How could it be that the places that provide most of our food can’t even feed their own?

Michael Olson of Food Chain Radio explored the issue of hunger in rural America.

“The grandparents farm never did make much money, but it did produce the best kind of food imaginable,” he said. “When the children grew up and left the farm, the grandparents sold out to those who wanted to grow government-subsidized sugar beets, and moved into the little farm town down the road.”

Today rural America looks much different than it did when our grandparents farmed the land. Farmers have been replaced by machinery and pesticides and farm houses are collapsing in disrepair. As a result, the small farmers that worked the land and ran the community have no place to work and no food to grow.

“Today there is little left of grandparents’ farm but a collapsed barn midst acres of government-subsidized crops.  Nor is there much left of the little farm town but boarded up storefronts and residents wondering what to do with their time,” Olson said on Food Chain Radio.

It all started with good intentions. During the Dust Bowl, the Great Plains were ravaged by drought in a country already devastated by the Great Depression. Farmers were going hungry so the government stepped in to subsidize their crops. Who knew that those same subsidies would result in huge factory farms.

This coupled with the fact that the next generation didn’t want to stay on the farm and work. Instead, they wanted to move to the glitz of the big city. With no one left to work the farm, many ended up being sold to mega farmers. And even if there was employment on these huge factory farms, corn, sugar beets, and soy aren’t real food, they have to be processed first.

This all left rural poverty like our country had never seen before. Show your distaste for these factory farms by eating local, unprocessed foods from small farmers as much as possible. Support self sustaining communities so they don’t disappear completely.

Related on EcoSalon

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Image: Don Graham

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China recently admitted that rampant soil pollution is a significant threat to the global food supply.

In the final days of 2013, Chinese officials made an alarming announcement: in addition to the country’s terrifying levels of air and water pollution, soil pollution has now become a threat to public safety.

During a news conference, Wang Shiyuan, a deputy minister of the Ministry of Land and Resources, admitted that poor oversight of heavy metals and other chemicals has contaminated more than 8 million acres of China’s farmland, rendering it practically useless. Some scientists have placed the estimated total as high as 60 million acres, though levels of soil pollution may be less severe in some areas.

Last year, China’s air pollution problem became national knowledge. Smog levels that blocked out the sun, forcing many Chinese citizens to stay indoors or wear breathing masks, made national headlines. The country has been notoriously lax with its environmental regulations, willing to sacrifice public safety for industrial production. But this news that significant portions of its farmland could be unsafe for cultivation may force tighter rules.

According to the Huffington Post, widespread soil pollution is the result of overuse of farm chemicals and the government’s willingness to establish farms close to chemical plants, mines and other heavy industries. Unfortunately, “cleaning up rural regions could be an even bigger challenge as the government tries to reverse damage done by years of urban and industrial encroachment and ensure food supplies for a growing population,” reported Reuters.

Although Wang admitted that farming cannot continue on the 8 million contaminated areas, it’s uncertain what can be done to reclaim this valuable farmland. According to Reuters, Wang “told a news briefing that China was determined to rectify the problem and had committed ‘tens of billions of yuan’ a year to pilot projects aimed at rehabilitating contaminated land and underground water supplies.”

Remediation might be China’s problem, but the consequences of soil contamination are a concern for the entire world. Many global suppliers of food, like Unilever, Nestle source ingredients from Chinese suppliers, due to the low price and high volume.

Related on Ecosalon:

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Image: net_efekt

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Walking the talk in sustainable fashion.

Last week, the Alabama Chanin team, along with our friends Lisa and Jimmy, took to the organic cotton field  we share with the team from Billy Reid. With rubber boots, loppers, and gloves in hand, we were there helping our organic cotton bolls survive after a long summer of drought and heat followed by excessive rain and weed growth.

We walked the rows, hoed, chopped, and pulled until the sun and heat forced us out of the field. Hard to imagine the days in Alabama heat where people were not allowed out of the field. Makes me think about how things were, how things are, and how things will be.
Nine of us barely made a dent in the work that needs to be done. As we documented the day with black and white images, it looked so romantic and felt like a moment from a Willa Cather novel. But the reality behind the black and white is a sordid, ugly history. I can’t pretend that I didn’t think about those that did this work because they had no choice. But I live TODAY and I WANT to grow organic cotton in the state of Alabama TODAY.

Chapter 1 in the Alabama Stitch Book is about the history of cotton in our community and it was my goal to embrace that history with open arms, understanding the ugly past while hopeful for a more beautiful future. The beauty of the outdoors, the detailed shots of our cotton bolls make me proud. This is not glamorous work; it is hard work, and for some people, it once was the difference between life or death – without which, their families may have starved. My family worked cotton, grew small plots of cotton, and lived next to people who made their entire livelihood from this white fiber.

In an age where technology and convenience rule, our trip to the field served as a great reminder of the importance of creating things that last, leaving a legacy for families and communities, alongside our environment.
This community has a strong heritage in farming fields – by machine, by hand, by any means necessary. Images of the “Old South” come to mind as I re-read that sentence, but as I have come to learn, those stylized movie images didn’t reflect the reality of the south.

In the real “Old South,” my family and their neighbors were busy “scraping out a living.” My mother’s father worked a “good job” at the Tennessee Valley Authority AND farmed. My father’s father built houses AND farmed AND raised cattle.

As our group made its way through this beautiful new cotton field, many parts of that heritage came up in conversation. Stories, personal accounts of our parents and grandparents growing up in the fields and working with bloodied hands were shared as we, ourselves, walked rows of weed-ridden cotton. This work, these stories are a part of our souls; they are also part of our company.
At Alabama Chanin, we strive to connect the past with the present. Our company is based on age-old techniques; history is woven into every garment we create. It’s important that we understand the significance found in “modern old-fashioned” ways of doing things, from sewing to farming.

By putting ourselves in the cotton field, we found a deeper understanding of the entire manufacturing process, from planting to production. Sustainability begins with the soil in which we plant those tiny cotton seeds and continues through the dying process of our garments.
Lisa tells us that the local farmers thought we were crazy for planting organic cotton. They think we are especially crazy for working the field by hand. What they didn’t see in the beginning is that IF this works (and it appears that it will), when this works, we will be one of the first to grow organic cotton in the state of Alabama. It’s not about succeeding or failing, it’s about learning, trying, connecting, and believing. Lisa says that a few of the farmers are talking about putting in 100 acres next year to try that “organic” for themselves. Now that is success.

xoNatalie

Natalie Chanin is owner and designer of the American couture line Alabama Chanin and author of three books including Alabama Stitch Book  (2008), Alabama Studio Style (2010) and the upcoming Alabama Studio Sewing + Design which comes out spring 2012. Look for her bi-weekly column, Material Witness here and follow her on Facebook and her own blog at Alabama Chanin.

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A creative way to date. 

Wish you had time to date but are always too busy in the garden? Tired of people looking at you funny when you bring up organic farming methods over drinks? Can’t seem to find anyone to share your undying passion for weeding?

You’re not alone. Now, thanks to a very creative farm in Idaho, farm-loving singles can meet up for some good old-fashioned speed — we mean, weeddating. The concept is like speed dating, only instead of playing musical chairs in a bar, romance-seeking singles are picking weeds side-by-side in hopes of hitting it off with their fellow farmhands.

The matchmaking farm in Boise, called Earthly Delights Farm, hosts its “weed dating” event once a year in hopes of bringing at least a few garden-loving folks together — and as a bonus, they get a freshly weeded farm. On their Facebook page, the farm requested that participants BYOT (bring your own tool!) for weeding during this year’s courtshipping event at the end of June.

It’s not a bad idea, really, meeting your potential future Mrs./Mr. while reaching for a weed in between two rows of almost-ripe zucchini. You both reach for the same dandelion, hands touch, flushed smiles. . . and a budding romance begins among freshly blossoming zucchini flowers. . . . Sure beats the awkward “we met on an online dating site” story.

READ MORE: 

Green Date Ideas

Green Online Dating Sites 

Veggie Dating Site filled with Carnivores

Allison Montroy is an editorial intern for Sierra and a journalism student at California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo.

Image: USDAgov

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In celebration of the passing of the new Farm Bill.

Now that healthcare’s out of the way, Washington’s on to the next hot-button issue: farming. On Friday, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack stressed the importance of passing the new five-year farm bill, which will support farmers and agricultural producers in America. Get up to speed on this important piece of legislation, as well as the state of farming and agriculture around the world, with this series of informative infographics.

The Hidden Costs of the Farm Bill: A breakdown of one of the year’s most controversial pieces of legislation, from TakePart.com.

The Global State of Agriculture: A big picture look at farming around the world, from the knowledgeable folks at USAID.

Factory Farm Map: A sobering interactive infographic that visualizes the effect of factory farms on communities, consumers, food safety, health, and animal welfare. [click for interaction]

Farmville vs. Real Farms: In case you were wondering, there is a difference.

Interesting Facts About Farm Water Conservation: An infographic on the inseparable relationship between water and agriculture.

The Female Face of Farming: While agriculture is usually seen as a masculine industry, it’s often women who bear the weight of the work. This interactive infographic shows more. [click for interaction]

How Big a Backyard Would You Need to Live Off the Land?: Urban gardeners, take note.

Agriculture in the Green Economy: In this interactive infographic and video series, Farming First explains how agriculture plays into the economy and the environment. [click for interaction]

Urban Agriculture in DC: Take a tip from residents of the nation’s capital and cultivate food in your own backyard (or rooftop).

Teach a (Wo)man to Farm: This interactive infographic from GOOD and One/Living Proof shows why investment in agriculture, particularly woman farmers, is a powerful tool for economic development. [click for interaction]

ALSO CHECK OUT:

10 Earth Day Infographics

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Check out more infographics here.

Image: Kevin Dooley

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Did ancient peoples live in a Golden Age of stewardship of our planet? From forest clearances to catastrophic soil erosion, it’s clear that past civilizations had the same conflicted relationship with their environment as we do. But when it comes to how they dealt with those crises, is it fair to regard them as technologically backward?

Enter the elegant piece of land management technology called the terrace.

Terraces are a remarkably efficient way of dealing with the problems of erosion and water retention. A bare slope is too steep to hold roots or hold rainfall? Then chop it up into a series of flat surfaces. Terracing keeps soil on hillsides, helps rainwater sink into that soil and ultimately eat at the underlying bedrock (which is how soil is made), and allows roots to take hold. And best of all? All it requires is  a lot of hard work and, ideally, a good supply of stone to bolster the sides. As inventions go, it’s a rock-bottom bargain – and so it’s accessible to everyone, whatever their budget.

It’s also possible to see them as a social empowerment tool, by the poor, for the poor. In places where level terrain is scarce, who gets the flat land? The people with the most money – leaving the peasantry to make do with barren hills and slopes. Since well-maintained terraces can gradually improve the fertility of soil, terracing could be a form of investment for less wealthy farmers hunting for a way to build some capital and status…

Terracing has existed for thousands of years and in many parts of the world it’s still going strong today – even as a source of tourism revenue, as with the incredible Banaue Rice Terraces of the Philippines. They’re environmental management on a sometimes colossal scale…and anyone can have a go (if they’re prepared to sweat for it). Backward? Not if you’re one of the 99%.

Images: Indrik myneur, TheFutureIsUnwritten and bigberto.

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On competitive swimming, chickens and honeybees.

Swimmer Natalie Coughlin, 29, was the most decorated female athlete at both the 2004 Athens and the 2008 Beijing Olympics. In Beijing, she became the first U.S. woman to medal six times during a single Games, giving her a lifetime total of 11. She hopes to add to that number this summer at the 30th Olympiad in London.

Besides swimming, Coughlin’s passions include food, gardening, and the five chickens she keeps in her backyard in Lafayette, California.

Avital Andrews from Sierra magazine interviewed Natalie to find out more about her gold-medal habits.

SIERRA: What do you mean when you call yourself an “urban farmer”?

Natalie: I grow a lot of my own food and have replaced a lot of our landscaping with edibles. We have 10 citrus trees, seven seasonal vegetable beds, and five chickens for eggs. We’re considering honeybees next. For a while we were thinking about goats but realized that would have been ridiculous and too much to handle between our two dogs and five chickens and my travel schedule.

SIERRA: When will you decide about the bees?

Natalie: I’ll probably wait until after the Olympics and then dive into that project. Right now we have several mason bee houses, to give them a refuge and encourage them to come pollinate all our fruits and vegetables. I definitely notice a difference this summer, versus the previous summer — a lot more of our flowers are turning into fruit.

SIERRA: How did you pick up gardening as a hobby?  

Natalie: When I was a kid, I had a 90-year-old neighbor — she could stick anything in the ground and it would grow and flourish. We’d always play in her garden. I still have the colander that she used to make potpourri from her roses. A lot of people in my life have had backyard gardens so when I was looking to buy a home, that was one of the requirements. I think it was just a desire to learn more about the seasons and about where food comes from.

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Island life is a fragile thing.

Deciding to live on a remote island is to enter into a complex balancing-act with the local environment. Your arrival puts an unusual drain on the carrying capacity of the land – something you need to offset if you want to survive. You gamble that the climate will help rather than hinder you. You trust that bouts of extreme weather will be fleeting. However hard you work to establish a toe-hold, you could be knocked off your feet by any number of factors – including sheer bad luck.

Such is the case with the remote Scottish archipelago of St. Kilda.

Head forty miles west of the Outer Hebrides, deep into the Atlantic Ocean, and you’ll find a cluster of fang-like islands forming the archipelago of St. Kilda, one of the most savage-weathered parts of Britain (waves up to 5 meters high; recorded windspeeds as high as 130 mph). Its forbidding cliffs, often inaccessible from the sea, include the sheerest drop to sea level in the whole of the UK. This is not a place you linger.

Tell that to its previous inhabitants. There have been people on St Kilda for 2,000 years. Or rather, there were, until 1930. Thanks to a tragic combination of crop failure, accidental contamination of the land and an unsustainably low population (70 people in 1920; 37 in 1928), the delicate ecological balance that had sustained a hundred generations of human inhabitants was broken. The St Kildans were a dying community – even with their dwindled numbers, the land couldn’t support them. They were too far from the mainland to rely on food deliveries until the soil recovered. They had no choice. On August 29th 1930, the remaining inhabitants were evacuated off the low-lying main island (Hirta) and back to mainland Scotland.

Since that day, the island has had no permanent population. It’s now a World Heritage Site and an important seabird breeding station, a place of scientific interest…and a poignant reminder of our relationship with the land we stand on.

Images: CaptainOates.

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