All over the world the line between gardening and farming is rapidly being blurred. In the so called “rust-belt” of the United States, which includes declining industrial icons like Detroit and Pittsburgh, suburban wastelands full of derelict houses are being reclaimed for use as miniature farms. In debt stricken Los Angeles, micro farming businesses utilising rented backyards are springing up like California Poppies.
In the UK, an innovative scheme called Landshare brings together people with a plot of land to spare with those who want to grow their own food but have nowhere to do it. The project has got off to a flying start since launching last year. More than 47,000 members have joined the scheme, with back gardens, church yards, rural plots and even pub gardens being snapped up by land-sharers as soon as they become available. The UK’s National Trust has seen value in the scheme and has pledged to make available 1000 growing plots.
Even here in Toowoomba, a growing band of suburban gardeners are replacing ornamentals with edibles. At Gardenfest last weekend I got chatting with an experienced gardener about his interest in producing organic food. So keen is the bloke that he’s removed most of his rare plant collection, and is filling his 800sqm block with fruit trees and vegies.
This is all exciting stuff for a keen home grower like me to witness. I can’t help but think that finally, after decades spent filling gardening books with ornamentals and relegating fruit and vegies to the appendix, we’re starting to get the message that land is a precious resource, best used productively. I’m hopeful that we’re over the false notion that crops are grown on farms and gardens are made for the dual purpose of boosting property values, and making us feel warm and fuzzy.
Historically, the lines between gardening and agriculture have been unequivocally blurry. Right up until the boom period following World War II, and for a while thereafter, small, private gardens the world over were full of fruit, vegies, chooks and flowers all happily coexisting alongside kids playing summer games under the sprinkler. In a sense, everyone farmed. Just about every garden was productive. Then along came rising incomes. Cheap food produced using cheap energy flooded supermarkets, and with it came the perception that home grown food was something done in the Third World, not a prosperous country like Australia. Fruit trees were cut down and vegie patches became archaeological relics lost under a landscape of turf and conifers. Or worse. How many productive gardens have been lost to the frivolity of plunge pools and outdoor kitchens?
But cheap energy is now nostalgia. The fiasco unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico should remind us of what we all learned in basic primary school science: fossil fuels are finite, and logic suggests that if we use up enough of them, one day they’ll run out. What’s going to fuel the combine harvesters then? Where will farmers grow food when nigh on all the productive farmland has been lost to open cut coal mines and salt water spewing gas wells? We might be able to power the odd car and lightbulb, but how will we fuel our bodies?
The answer is right under our noses! It’s already arrived. Millions of gardeners have already turned the ornamental garden over to backyard food production, and guess what – the outdoor kitchen was never as useful as the indoor one and the plunge pool was useless in winter! Plus, as a bonus, it turns out that the edible garden looks just as pretty as the “ornamental” garden but is far more satisfying.
The word “agriculture” is derived from two Latin words – ager, meaning field, and cultura meaning cultivation. Taken literally, agriculture means “cultivation of a field”. Whether that field is the size of cricket oval or just a courtyard, if you’ve made up you’re mind to cultivate it, you’re engaged in agriculture. If that cultivation produces edible crops, as far as I’m concerned, you’re farming.
In the current issue, Time magazine has named its annual top 100 list of people who most affect the world. Alongside household names like Barack Obama, Sachin Tendulkar and Lady Gaga is Will Allen, a 62-year-old African American, six-foot-seven-inches tall former professional basketball player. Allen is an urban farmer. From a two-acre site in a poor Milwaukee neighbourhood, he produces a quarter of a million dollars worth of food that helps feed 10,000 people. Allen’s Growing Power foundation teaches people how to grow their own, and works on the motto “Grow. Bloom. Thrive.” Sounds like a pretty decent idea to me. What about you?
First published in the Toowoomba Chronicle, 8th May 2010. Photo by Justin Russell – “Spring Vegies”.
