Organic, Local, Small-Scale: Best Path to Beat Hunger

[marmar]

via CommonDreams:




Published on Thursday, January 13, 2011 by The Guardian/UK

World Hunger Best Cured by Small-Scale Agriculture: Report
A move from industrial farming towards local food projects is our healthiest, most sustainable choice, says Worldwatch Institute

by Nidhi Prakash


The key to alleviating world hunger, poverty and combating climate change may lie in fresh, small-scale approaches to agriculture, according to a report from the Worldwatch Institute.

The US-based institute's annual State of the World report, published yesterday, calls for a move away from industrial agriculture and discusses small-scale initiatives in sub-Saharan Africa that work towards poverty and hunger relief in an environmentally sustainable way.

The authors suggest that instead of producing more food to meet the world's growing population needs, a more effective way to address food security issues and climate change would be to encourage self-sufficiency and waste reduction, in wealthier and poorer nations alike.

"If we shift just some of our attention away from production to consumption issues and reducing food waste, we might actually get quite a big bang for our buck, because that ground has been neglected," said Brian Halweil, co-director of the project. .............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/01/13-0

[MattBaggins]

1. Sounds like touchy feely gobeeldy gook

So the majority of the worlds people live in urban centers. How does this system work again?

[marmar]

2. ............

"In Kenya's largest slum, in Nairobi, local women are growing vertical gardens in sacks, providing them with a source of income but also an element of food security for their families."


Nairobi is most definitely an urban center.

[MattBaggins]

3. How does this work in NYC, London, or Tokyo?

How do farmers farm like the Amish and support NYC?

[marmar]

4. I would imagine in much the same way......

The crowded center of Nairobi probably isn't radically different than the crowded center of New York, London or Tokyo. Check out the myriad of urban farming organizations sprouting up everywhere.

[MattBaggins]

6. Balcony gardening is a great hobby

Teaches the kids about science and provides some really tasty food but you will never feed you family on it. I can't even do it with my whole backyard in the small city I live in.

I agree on using less chemicals and paying attention to rotations; blending modern farming with traditional farming, and staying the hell away from Monsanto (they are a blight and guaranteed path to failure). The article in question is just that it's a bunch of theory crafting and no real hard numbers that X# land could produce Y# food to feed Z# of people.

It is great to support local farmers. I go weekly to our local farmers market in the summer. I by quite a few of canned products from local companies but I also like to buy pineapples in winter and I won't get that from the local/organic purists system.

[kestrel91316]

9. Check this out, if you're not too busy reading Ayn Rand:

http://www.greenthumbnyc.org/

I know, community gardens are just a communist plot. Deal with it.

[MattBaggins]

13. Ayn Rand? WTF?

Great system. Wonderful idea. Should be actively encouraged and supported by the city.


Wonderful hobby that will not feed the city.

[kestrel91316]

16. No one is claiming that community gardens will provide 100% of our nutrition.

Calorie crops take up more space and so would need to come from outside the cities.

Read this also, because some studies have shown that even calorie crops can be grown in small spaces.
http://www.growbiointensive.org/publications_about_HTGMV.html

Derisive mockery of home food production as a "hobby" is typical of those who want powerful corporations to be the answer to everything. Hence the Ayn Rand reference.

[MattBaggins]

18. I garden in my back yard and with a freind in his.

I grew up doing 90% of the work in my families garden as well as working for pay in my neighbors gardens.

I have also spent summers helping at my aunts farm as a boy and helped on my wife's families farm in Germany after I was done with the Army.


Gardening is a hobby. Farming is a way of life.

[handmade34]

11. requires out of box thinking...

but absolutely viable

http://verticalgardeninstitute.org/

http://www.cityfarmer.org/subrooftops.html

http://www.oneprize.org/semifinalistspdf/1217a.pdf

Imagination... is the preview of life’s coming attractions -Einstein

[tech9413]

19. I'm not sure it's out of the box thinking

I'm living in the house my grandfather raised his family. We've always raised our own food. Potatoes, carrots, onions, corn, tomatoes, raspberries, grapes, chickens, pigs. Never used weed killers or chemical fertilizers. Those two items are the most costly of growing food in a commercial mono crop culture. When you start dumping chemicals into the soil you can kill it pretty quick. Healthy soil is a living thing and you don't need acres to grow it. If you've got a balcony, start a compost pile. Buy some earthworms and grubs to get it going. Good soil is dark and rich in living things that support one another. It supports the plants that grow there and feeds on the plants as they decay.

I never had the chance or time to do urban gardening while living in townhouses and apartments. You provide some good links. I would add that a search for complimentary planting and natural farming will point out many other good ideas that are really just a fall back to methods that have fed us for centuries.

[DoBotherMe]

12. Well, in Cleveland, it's started with an abandoned mall

http://www.galleriaaterieview.com/gardensunderglass.html

[Toucano]

22. That is superb!

Really great way to reclaim lost and wasted space.

[KamaAina]

14. Amish farmers market their wares in Philly

check out Reading Terminal Market.

[MattBaggins]

17. Yes we have loads of Amish at our local farmers market.

They sell their produce at the market and sell the the rest to local food packagers just like all the farmers around here.

My entire area is dominated by old ice age swamps and bogs now known as muck farms. They are generally small scale family farms who grow produce; some of which they sell locally at markets and the rest is sent to the local Birds Eye packaging plant or Mott's factory. These farmers have generations of farming and know the balance between organic methods and modern farming techniques. We need as a whole to figure out how to lower the chemical and franken foods side of it but that agribusiness is a part of the equation and just as needed.

Glueing pots to the sides of our larger buildings with the logistics involved and insane amounts of water needed isn't going to cut it.

[kestrel91316]

5. It works great where cities provide community garden space.

I had a 10'x20' plot for $20 a YEAR here in Los Angeles, and eventually a total of 3 plots together for a total of $60 a year. And people with any yard space at all can grow most of their own produce.

Vacant lots abound, especially in cities like Detroit with a depressed real estate market.

Nothing the least bit touchy feely about it - it's a very commonsense approach.

But you go right ahead with the RW talking point: WE MUST BUY ALL OUR FOOD FROM THE MIGHTY CORPORATIONS OR WE WILL ALL STARVE!!!!!!! :rofl:

[MattBaggins]

8. You will not feed NYC that way.

We have winters in NY. A very narrow growing season.

We need both.

[handmade34]

15. if all people were as

limited as you in scope of imagination... we would still be washing our clothes in the brook... ;)

all that we are and have today is the result of people that imagined and were curious and persistent

[MattBaggins]

20. Nothing to do with limited in imagination

I am interested in hard numbers and cost analysis. I am all for increasing "organic" or "traditional" farming methods even to the point of having local governments encourage them. I just don't believe they are the miracle people think they are nor will they raise the third world out of poverty. The proposed system isn't going to save them from the corporations stealing from them. They would be better served if they could keep some of the money from their crops and have control. They still need to make crops to sell to make money. They don't need Monsanto killing them with crops that can't adapt nor do they need purists on farming telling them what and how to grow.

[handmade34]

21. hard numbers are important

and I don't expect people are really thinking 'miracle'. There are many concerns about our (and third world, to be sure) food supply and you are absolutely correct in naming corporations and monied interests as the big problem! I have farmed most of my life and understand the problems with both production and distribution... I do believe much is possible and it does us no good to pooh-pooh innovative ideas without very serious consideration of all possibilities

[Toucano]

23. NYC is itself unsustainable.

Petroleum production peaked 4 years ago.

The next 20 years are going to bring a whole lot of changes and new ways of thinking.

[Wilms]

7. Vertical Farming

http://www.verticalfarm.com/

[MattBaggins]

10. Great fun. Nice hobby

Not practical and expensive. Nice system for fooling around but not real farming.

[Wilms]

24. OK. You convinced me. n/t

[Catherina]

25. Rec'd. n/t