by Jane Goodall
Commercial Farming in the City
Meanwhile, there is increasing understanding among city planners that food gardens are helpful to the city in many ways. They contribute to improved health and economic stability, adding a rustic element that is attractive to so many people—and they reduce crime.
In light of this, city planners across America are changing zoning regulations to encourage urban farms, run by private companies, to supply the demand for locally grown and organic food. Let me share a few examples.
In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, an NGO is collaborating with the city’s planners to transform vacant, abandoned lots that were devastated by a flood in 2008 into a 2.5-acre farm. This will make a difference, as currently most food must be brought in from up to one thousand miles away. In Columbia, Missouri, an enterprising farmer has developed a 1.3-acre urban farm and is now allowed, by the city, to sell his produce. In Boise, Idaho, new regulations have been created that encourage the growing of food in the city in order to help the tough economy. Salt Lake City has voted to allow the sale of produce without a business license, and has eased rules prohibiting greenhouses and plastic hoop houses in the city.
I just learned about a project called Growing Power, in Chicago, which was launched in 2002 with the aim of bringing the city’s various small and dispersed farming projects together and integrating them with other food-related activities. This way the wider issues of city food security and nutritional, ecological, and public health could be tackled. There are two farms (2.5 acres and 0.5 acre) on the South Side, a twenty-thousand-square-foot lakefront area in the heart of downtown Chicago, and, most recently, a seven-acre site in the Bridgeport neighborhood. From its office, Growing Power addresses nutritional, ecological, and public health problems and, best of all, provides education in farming methods and training for jobs. Many citizens volunteer in these programs.
And now I must discuss the extraordinary events that are taking place in Detroit. It was one of the places where I gave a lecture a few years ago, and even though I was only there for a day, I noticed, from the taxis that took me to and fro from hotel to lecture venue, that many stores were boarded up, the train station was closed, and the whole place seemed run-down and dejected. The recession had hit hard and many people had left, my cabdriver said. And when a house was damaged, he told me, it was torn down.
I was soon on my way to the next city and the next lecture, and thought no more about Detroit. Until very recently, when I heard about the exciting developments that were taking place because a group of citizens, whose unofficial meeting place was a coffee shop, began to make new plans for their city. And growing food was at the heart of these plans.
The very fact that there are so many vacant plots in Detroit means that urban farming and gardening can truly thrive. The Detroit Food Policy Council knows that farming empowers people as well as providing much-needed fresh and local food, and today urban farming is driving the city’s economy.
Townspeople can “adopt a lot” for free—and there is so much scope, so much space. One young man has eight plots already and is planning to get three more, and he is training young people to work on his farm. In one neighborhood where thirty houses were torn down, leaving just three standing, people are growing vegetables, fruit orchards, and flowers, and one of the remaining houses is being turned into a community center. In this new Detroit, farming is unifying the community, drawing African Americans, Asians, and whites together, all growing food to contribute to their future. Citizens ages ten to sixty are volunteering, giving their time to the greening of their city. There are gardens everywhere. And the city has plans for greening one area of three hundred acres that will include tree farms and the restoration of a forest.
I read about one enthusiastic citizen, Jackie Victor, who told a reporter, “Imagine a city rebuilt block by block, with a gorgeous riverfront, world-class museums, and fantastic local food. Everyone who wants one has a quarter-acre garden, and every kid lives within bike distance of a farm.”
Community Harvests
As I have said, the urban farming revolution is happening all over the world. In June 2011, I was invited to participate in the official launch of the Comcrop project at Bukit Panjang Community Garden, an approximately fourteen-thousand-square-foot plot close to the Bukit Timah Nature Reserve in Singapore. Once, the whole area had been agricultural land, but as part of the plans for city development the farmers had been moved from their land and put into apartment flats. There they were not happy.
They missed the land, I was told, and many of them began planting vegetables in any vacant spaces they could find—such as underneath the new expressway. The same sort of thing was happening in other parts of the island nation, and the government decided, in 2005, that allowing them access to vegetable plots in assigned areas would be better. Especially if they could be persuaded to work together rather than in “individual secretive locations.” And so Community in Bloom, a national garden movement, was launched “to foster a gardening culture in Singapore.” The community garden I was visiting is one of some six hundred that have been established on residential estates, schools, hospitals, and commercial places, such as the rooftop herb garden of the Fairmont Hotel.
It was a sunny day. I met some of the old residents. Someone gave me one of the traditional straw hats. I wandered through the fenced-in area, within which individual farmers were growing the vegetables of their choice on their small patches of allotted land. A fourth-generation farmer, Kenny Eng, along with the chief executive of Alpha Biofuels, Allan Lim, hope that they can persuade the residents to join Comcrop, a project they have devised to try to increase the productivity of the area through cooperative farming in an environmentally friendly way. Both Allan and Kenny are young men, and both were bubbling over with enthusiasm. Allan took me to see the communal herb garden that stands outside the enclosed gardens, where any member of the apartment blocks is free to take the produce—the resident troop of rhesus monkeys fortunately do not seem to care for dill, mint, and the other herbs planted there.
Allan and Kenny have persuaded Starbucks Coffee Company and the downtown microbrewery Brewerkz to donate and deliver their waste products for compost. Indeed, it would be hard to refuse them.
The local government is behind Comcrop—officially it was announced as a project designed to create “a meeting place for residents to interact and elderly residents to get some exercise while gardening.” But there is another reason—to encourage urban farming as an economically and environmentally sustainable source of food throughout the island. If everyone grew at least some vegetables over and above what they themselves need, the community as a whole would benefit, as the extra produce is often donated to food kitchens or the needy.
Food Gardens for Refugees in Tanzania
When JGI started our youth program in Lugufu, the big Congolese refugee camp in Tanzania, one of the first projects that were introduced was a vegetable garden. Our goal was to try to involve the young people in activities that would bring meaning into their lives, for so often there is a dearth of hope in the camps.
Producing one’s own food is a great tonic, to watch it grow, then harvest and cook it—and finally eat it. It provides exercise, knowledge, and skill, and all this improves self-confidence and self-esteem. Over time, the gardens prospered. Chickens, from our chicken-incubation project, flew over the fence, fertilized the ground, and consumed insect pests. A little Congolese boy of about twelve showed me around when I first visited, so proud of the beans, peas, tomatoes, and maize that his group was growing.
Many of the elder refugees were delighted with our food-growing projects and were eager to share their knowledge. During one of my visits an old farmer from Congo was demonstrating to our Roots & Shoots group how you could make insecticide from papaya (pawpaw) leaves. He explained that you cut them small, add some salt, and boil them. The residual liquid makes a strong insecticide that can be used, at different strengths, for different kinds of pests. When the
refugees were forced back to the DRC, our groups took with them not only their chickens but also seeds from their vegetable gardens. That was their one comfort as they faced an uncertain future.
Refugees in America
Conditions were not easy in Lugufu for the Congolese refugees, but at least they were still in Africa, and many of them could speak to each other in Kiswahili. Nor are the foods very different in Tanzania from what is grown on the other side of the lake in the eastern part of the DRC.
It can be very much harder for people who have been forced to leave their countries and who end up in a very different part of the world. Some refugees, from many parts of the world, have ended up in the City Heights neighborhood of San Diego. Here you will find people from many countries, including Somalis, Cambodians, Liberians, Congolese, and Latinos from Central and South America. There are Burundian mothers with babies on their backs and produce on their heads, Latino men with wide hats and chaps, Muslims, and Christians.
When they first arrived, about 50 percent of City Heights’ residents lived just at, and some even below, the US poverty line. But it was not only poverty that made them so often unhappy. They were housed in apartments, which was hard for those who came from rural areas—very different from the openness of village life. And they were homesick for the traditional foods of their homeland. Most could not afford fruit and vegetables, and gave them up for cheap fast food.
One day, in 2006, a conversation took place between a Somali Bantu refugee, Bilali Muya, and a group of people from the International Rescue Committee, an organization that helps refugees. It would lead to a project that provided new hope and new life to hundreds of refugees. Muya talked with passion about the need his people felt to grow their own food. Together they conceived of the idea of an urban farm. Needing more support, they reached out to the Cambodians, who had arrived in numbers in the 1980s, escaping the Khmer Rouge. One of them, Bob Ou, was very excited by this, and a search began for suitable land.
Eventually the perfect place was found, a vacant lot of 2.3 acres, and after two years of negotiations with the city, permission was finally given. During this time Muya and Ou frequently met at meetings, but although each of them was working to raise money and organize their communities, they had never spoken to each other. However, when the New Roots Community Farm opened, Ou and Muya had neighboring plots, and as the weeks went by, a friendship developed. As they worked among their tomatoes and beans and cabbages, they sometimes shared stories about the violence that had forced them to leave home, the terrible conditions in their refugee camps, and the disappointments they had faced on arriving in the United States of America.
In San Diego, refugees from many countries have created the New Roots Community Farm, where they can grow many of the foods that they grew back home. Bob Ou (left), a refugee from Cambodia, and Bilali Muya from Somalia are leaders in this venture. As they worked on their plots, they gradually struck up a close friendship. (CREDIT: ALLEN J. SCHABEN, COPYRIGHT 2013, LOS ANGELES TIMES. REPRINTED WITH PERMISSION)
Now both men are leaders in their communities and both, of course, are passionate about the farm, which enables eighty-five families from twelve countries to grow food—right there in the heart of the city. Many of them were farmers before they fled, and the work helps to reconnect them with the land, feed their families, and, as with Ou and Muya, foster friendships. Food that is surplus to their household needs is sold each Saturday in the City Heights farmers’ market, which has become a meeting place in the heart of the community.
New Roots Community Garden in City Heights is one of about fifty such community farms for refugees that are spreading across the United States. Courses are offered in farming techniques suited to the new environment in which they find themselves. Some of these farms are very successful: Lao, Mien, and Hmong refugees who settled in Fresno County, California, in the late seventies are now growing and selling Asian crops. At least thirteen hundred farmers are taking part in this program, and they can earn from $5,000 to as much as $50,000 per year. Having gained experience from working in the community gardens, some refugees are now running their own independent farms.
Saving Our Food by Saving Our Seeds
Here is another homegrown movement that is a direct way of fighting back against the industrial control of our food supply—saving your heirloom seeds. An heirloom plant is a cultivar that was commonly grown in a bygone era, one that has been pollinated naturally—by insects, birds, and the wind—and that is not used in modern intensive agriculture. Many have been grown from seeds handed down, generation after generation, through a family or community for hundreds of years, although not all have such an ancient lineage.
It was after World War II that so many heirloom seeds began to disappear, and this was the same point at which agriculture became more centralized and big companies began advertising commercially packaged seeds that often consisted of hybrids. This was also when markets were being developed by the larger corporations to make the most profit and as quickly as possible.
Fortunately many individuals and organizations are working to preserve, collect, grow, and distribute heirloom seeds. The largest in the United States is Seed Savers Exchange in Decorah, Iowa, founded in 1975. Each year they publish a book with the names and addresses of their growing membership (more than thirteen thousand in 2013) along with lists of some six hundred heirloom vegetable and heritage fruit varieties that they are offering to gardeners. And there are countless other smaller organizations throughout North America and around the globe.
Another, in Canada, is the Seed and Plant Sanctuary, which originally started with Salt Spring Seeds. It has built up a large, properly stored collection of most local food and herb seeds, comprising currently some nine hundred mostly heirloom varieties in their living-gene bank. These seeds are distributed to many custodians across Canada, who test the performance of different varieties in different parts of the country.
Communing with Nature’s Bounty
Just as people can share seeds, so too can we share nature’s bounty with one another. As children we used to go to Richmond Hill Church—a big and very beautiful church in Bournemouth, with a tall spire, glorious stained-glass windows, and a picture over the altar that I loved of the Good Shepherd holding the lost sheep under His arm and a shepherd’s crook in the other hand. As I relive the occasion in my mind, He seems to be smiling down on us as we gathered to celebrate Harvest Festival.
Almost everyone has brought something from their garden or from a nearby farm. My contribution is the potatoes I begged from the farm where I had helped to dig them from the ground. There are baskets and baskets of large polished tomatoes, and cucumbers, radishes, cabbages, and a couple of giant squashes. And what a bounty of apples and pears, plums and gooseberries. There are two sheaves of golden corn propped up at the base of the pulpit, and autumn flowers are everywhere, ranging from roses and dahlias in elegant vases to bunches of wildflowers in jam jars picked by Judy and me!
All of the lessons, the hymns, and the sermon celebrate and give thanks for the bounty of nature.
It is sad, but true, that today people seldom give thanks for their food. Some families still say grace, but many families no longer even sit around the same table to eat and talk in companionship. How often do we thank nature, think of the plants that have provided our food, or offer gratitude to their plant spirits? How often do we even think of the people who grew and harvested them?
Some time ago I was a participant in a workshop organized by Satish Kumar, a follower of the teachings of Gandhi and editor of Resurgence magazine, which publishes articles about the environment and sustainability. Afterward we moved into a simple room that opens onto a small garden, shaded by plane trees. It was late summer, and the evening sun lit up an amazing array of food that awaited us on the rough wooden table. It was all, of course, vegan, organic, and homegrown.
It was a veritable feast, and not only for the eating. The colors were a feast for the eyes: cri
sp lettuce leaves and spinach and cucumbers, different shades of green, in giant salad bowls, with splashes of red radishes and small orange-red tomatoes and sliced peppers. Apples—red and green and yellow—pale-golden brown pears, dark-purple plums and grapes, and almost-black avocadoes.
Now I close my eyes (lucky I learned touch-typing!) and I am smelling the amazing fragrance; there is parsley, the tang of the stems to which some of the tomatoes are still attached, the mint leaves that are being crushed and mixed into a fruit punch, and over all the scent of roses and honeysuckle wafting in from outside.
Then comes the tasting, the different flavors—I always like to keep the different tastes separate—to enjoy the fullness of each one, so special. There is indeed much to enjoy, for people have worked hard to cook their special dishes in order to honor Satish and his guests.
And tonight we experience not only the delicious tastes but a very rare opportunity to become familiar with all the different textures, for we eat just as a huge percentage of people around the world eat, using only our fingers as we put the food onto plates made of recycled cornstarch. And so we feel the food with our fingers, and the crunchiness or smoothness in our mouths, and the sliding down into our stomachs. (I am sure, though, that we shall not feel the process of digesting such wholesome, healthy food!)
But before we load our plates and find a chair, we make a circle around the table, and Satish bids us to hold hands while he gives thanks for the food and thanks to the Great Spiritual Power that has provided for us, and for the companionship we enjoy. And he gives thanks to Mother Nature, too. He is well qualified for this prayer, for he was a Jain monk before he realized he needed to be out in the world to spread Gandhi’s teachings.