Food Praxis
I’m working on a a serialized book called “The Insurgent’s Handbook,” that will begin to run at FTW before too awful long. In the process of clarifying a few of the sub-themes there, I ran across this online book from the Canadian-based International Research and Development Centre (note cold weather spelling of “center”). It’s about urban agriculture, which any of us consider an essential dimension of any politics of resistance worth more than a bucket of steam.
This is a bit NGO-sih, but has some very valuable stuff nonetheless.
Here are some clips:
(1) What can agriculture add to a city’s sustainability? Beyond the immediate benefits of fresh food, dietary variety, and landscape diversity, do cities gain in the long term from growing food within and nearby? Research suggests that it is worthwhile to look beyond traditional views of urban dwellers as consumers and rural dwellers as producers of food, especially in developing countries. Urban planners and policymakers seek practical, feasible solutions to infrastructure problems and environmental degradation while trying to address the social and economic ills of the inner city. Urban agriculture may have something to offer these policymakers.
(2) In this chapter, the problem of food security is examined in the context of globalization and the opposing forces of interdependence and self-reliance. While disparities between haves and have-nots continue, people have learned to cope using ingenious ways to feed themselves, urban farming being one. The food they produce is consumed by their families or sold to provide income for other basic needs. The author outlines the characteristics of urban food systems in the South and the factors that determine the ability of formal food markets to provide for city dwellers. As poverty rises in urban centres and some people spend as much as 50–80% of their income on food, access to food has become an important issue. Most developing countries are net importers of food, and it is predicted that the fastest urban growth will occur in the countries least equipped to feed the people in their cities.
(3) In Canada, two broad approaches are taken to promoting domestic food security: one of these seeks to establish a sustainable food system; and the other aims to eliminate poverty. These two approaches correspond to the two main dimensions of food security: the production and supply of an adequate quality and quantity of food; and the ability of individuals to reliably access food (Campbell et al. 1988; Beaudry 1991). Both of these dimensions of food security are threatened in Canada.
(4) The general theoretical and empirical work on the structure and political economy of food systems should be expanded. Relatively little work done in this area has focused primarily on national and international issues, and the research would benefit from a multilevel analysis of local and regional issues.
(5) Access to food is still perceived by many as a privilege, rather than a basic human right, and it is estimated that about 35 000 people around the world die each day from hunger. An even larger number of people (mainly women, children, and the elderly) suffer from malnutrition. Far from disappearing, hunger and malnutrition are on the increase, even in advanced industrialized countries like Canada, where each year an estimated 2.5 million people depend on food banks. About 30 million people in the United States are reported to be unable to buy enough food to maintain good health. The continuing reality of hunger and the unsustainability of current practices, both locally and globally, make food security an essential concern.
(6) A growing number of countries have seen a resurgence of urban food production, and this has made urban food suppliers more self-reliant and urban households less food insecure. This reality is now recognized by more governments and development agencies. As a consequence, urban food production is likely to be promoted and managed in a better way over the next decades. However, recent international studies point to information gaps that must be addressed so that urban food production for consumption and for trade can be more timely and suitably phased into comprehensive urban and agricultural policies for the 21st century.
(7) The problems faced by African cities are many. Rates of urban-population growth, which had slowed during the 1980s, are again on the increase (United Nations 1995). The infrastructural and tax bases of cities cannot catch up with the services demanded by their expanding urban populations, and this leads to increased crowding and a deteriorating urban environment (Farvacque and McAuslan 1992; Stren et al. 1992; Becker et al. 1994). Urban economies in sub-Saharan Africa declined markedly during the 1970s and 1980s, and policy reforms initiated under structural-adjustment programs (SAPs) in the 1980s cut many services and certainly cut public-sector employment. In theory, the movement toward more democratic forms of government in contemporary Africa strengthens local and municipal governments. But it also puts increased demands on their already strained capacities, and questions remain about the access of the urban poor to local political processes.
(8) A number of groups and individuals are creating food systems that are more responsive to social and cultural concerns and more connected to the local area than is usually the case. We attempted to incorporate the ideas outlined above in our work in New Jersey, United States — a state with 7.8 million people on 7 800 square miles of land
(1 square mile = 2.59 km2). Since 1950 New Jersey has lost 51% of its farmland (NJDA 1995) and is expected to lose an additional 12% over the next 20 years (ECAFE 1994). An estimated 600 000 people or more are at risk of hunger (WWFI 1989), and 19% of New Jersey’s 567 municipalities have been classified as high-unemployment areas (Schevtchuk, personal communication, 1997).2
We estimated that to feed 100 people in New Jersey, a complete vegetarian diet for 1 year requires about 23.5 acres of land (1 acre = 0.4 ha) (McGlinchy and Hamm 1996). This translates into 1.83 million acres for the entire population. The meat-based diet of the typical American increases this to about 41 acres. New Jersey currently produces about 27% of the population’s required vegetable servings. Producing the additional 63% would require about 115 000 additional acres planted in vegetables, 6.8 million gardens of 100 square feet (1 square foot = 929 cm2), or a balance between the two. Large increases in community and individually owned gardens may be a way to increase local food production. Increasing the amount of local, farm-based fruit and vegetable production would create opportunities to develop rural–urban linkages through pick-your-own harvesting and other initiatives (for example, farmstands).
(9) Urban agriculture is actively promoted in Havana, Cuba, to address the acute food-scarcity problems of the Special Period in Peacetime, which developed since 1989 as Soviet aid and trade were drastically curtailed. During the period of 1989–92, average daily per capita calorie consumption dropped an estimated 20%, and average daily per capita protein consumption dropped 27% (Torres 1996). A severe storm that destroyed much of the country’s sugar crop in 1993, along with the tightening of United States’ blockade in the early 1990s, further exacerbated these conditions (Deere et al. 1994).
In response to these conditions, the Cuban Ministry of Agriculture (MOA) began promoting urban food production in 1991. A number of urban agricultural activities have been under way. An important component of the government’s program are gardens grown to provide for the gardeners’ own needs. These gardens are cultivated on either private or state land. The gardeners can use state land at no cost. Havana has, according to an estimate, more than 26 000 such gardens (Paez Medina, interview, 19951).
(10) Food touches everything and is the foundation of every economy. It is a central pawn in political strategies of states and households. Eating is an endlessly evolving enactment of gender, family, and community relationships. Food sharing creates solidarity; food scarcity damages the human community and the human spirit.
Across history and cultures, women have had a special relationship between food and appetite, on the one hand, and body image, eating, and sexuality, on the other. Women, through the everyday routines of family meals, are the transmitters of cultural codes pertaining to food and eating (most of the great chefs in the commercial arena, however, have been men). Arguing for the centrality of women and food in industrialized societies sometimes poses a problem for feminist analysts who see the dangers in essentializing women and overstressing their nurturing capacities.
In this paper, I summarize some of the linkages between women and food and suggest how feminist analysis may further our understanding of the food system. In an earlier paper, I developed the idea of food praxis (Van Esterik 1991) but did not connect this with women; later, I explored the relation between women and nurture (Van Esterik 1996) without considering praxis. Here, I begin the task of integrating gender and praxis, concluding with an attempt to define a feminist food praxis as a conceptual tool to guide further research and action.
Heiderose Kober:
I’m busy putting in my fall vegetable garden, collecting heirloom seeds (take that, Monsanto), planting fuit trees, raising chickens, building up the soil, and exploring forest gardening. I’m also teaching myself carpentry and furniture-making. I have become infatuated with mortise-and-tenon joinery and have developed a passion for dovetails.
It is empowering being a producer rather than a consumer, even if it is back-breaking work at times. I give away our surplus to co-workers with large families to feed.
Resistance is Fertile–especially if you incorporate a lot of chicken shit into your compost.
Getting down and dirty and loving it,
Heide
3 October 2006, 1:25 amMarilyn Farhat:
Urban agriculture seems to be beneficial on many levels. In addition to its importance in providing food equitably, it promotes community and concern for others. The inhabitants become politically, socially, and spiritually invested in their land, the environment, and their livelihood. They can also achieve a sense of control over their lives.
There seem to be scattered attempts across the globe to encourage such forms of subsistence and they seem to be working.
The recent “spinach scare” is one aspect of centralization of agricultural production where, literally, access to produce can be shut down if the main source providing the produce becomes disabled. The whole country was affected by it and the origins of the problem were traced to one farm in Fresno. But no spinach anywhere for weeks. Community sustainability can avoid such problems.
Clean water and sanitation are also important. About 1.5 million children continue to die every year from unsanitary conditions, coupled with malnutrition. Many urbanized communities rely on aid for food for their children when they could be benefiting from participating in its production. UNICEF and other organizations are trying to encourage urban agriculture, but they have a ways to go.
In the 20th century, women and children were the main land caretakers because the men were working for cash. Neither cash nor agriculture alone were sufficient on their own. The combination may be the way to go in the future also.
Anything can be accomplished where there is a will. If the Saudis can grow flowers and lush gardens in the desert using desalinated and clean water, we can do the same for food for the poor and everyone else.
It would be interesting to see what will happen as more Super Wal Marts are built and as more shopping malls and parking lots continue to replace farm land in urban areas of the US and other countries. Housing prices are also a factor to consider in urban areas.
3 October 2006, 4:04 amStan:
Hey Heide (Heide and I are fellow North Carolinians, so I gotta hail my homey)
I will shamelessly steal “Resistance is Fertile” at the first opportunity.
3 October 2006, 8:07 amfrank:
If I consider this a “survival thread”, my post will seem applicable. A friend sent this to me- watch it, and greenlight the project if you wish.Dial-up users, please be patient.
3 October 2006, 7:13 pmhttp://www.current.tv/watch/13654131
Audrey:
That last linked section on food and gender, and how women’s bodies are a means of production, relates back to some recent email ramblings concerning my mom and her breastfeeding adventures. In the hospital, after giving birth, her doctor asked her if in addition to breastfeeding her child, she could also feed two premature twins that needed breast milk rather than formula. She did that, providing milk for all three babies for three months, without compensation. Milk banks are still run like that today; all the breast milk they use is donated. If the twins had been on formula, however, I’m sure the company providing that would have charged the hospital.
That set me off on trying to find other comparable situations. Sperm banks pay their donors. If they were instead set up like milk banks, taking donations without compensating men for their body fluids, I can’t imagine there would be much of a business there. We have the Red Cross with their blood donations, which is similar, except that there is also the option to donate plasma for pay if you need/want the money. In any event, I’ve never heard of a doctor in a regular city hospital in normal circumstances going up to a patient who was admitted for, let’s say, a broken bone, and announcing that the guy in the next room needs blood … would they mind?
I’ve bent my brain all around this, trying to make sense of it. It’s no problem for a doctor to ask my mother to spend an hour a day to provide breast milk for other infants. If I were the doctor, I might have done the same. He was simply trying to save two lives; there’s no way to make that into a bad thing. If I were my mother, I would have said yes, without hesitation. This isn’t a complaint about the request itself. But what if the infants weren’t premature and didn’t specifically need breast milk, but instead their mother couldn’t afford formula … would it have occurred to the doctor to ask a male patient unrelated to the twins to work an extra hour a day for several months and donate that hour’s salary toward buying formula for the babies? I know that’s a fundamentally different thing; I just can’t figure out why.
3 October 2006, 10:38 pmRhisiart Gwilym:
Siwmae Stan!
I presume you and your interested readers will have seen the two articles by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, both main-titled ‘The March To War’, on Michel Chossudovsky’s ‘Globa Research’ website. Clarifying and enlightening. Recommended.
Cofio i bawb, Rhisiart
4 October 2006, 6:06 amRhisiart Gwilym:
Siwmae eto, Stan!
On re-reading this piece, I thought maybe — from the global situation described by the Mahdi, and how it could choke our abundant oil-flow, and therefore our super-abundant food supply, just anytime — I should offer some examples of the earthy-handed particularities. People need a work-up time to get themselves handy at growing their own veg’n'protein, so take a look at the following, and if it grabs you, get to work:
If you go to http://www.caemabon.co.uk and look at the gallery you’ll get an idea of Eric’s place, where I’m currently putting in a permaculture survival garden, and starting to get in small harmonising livestock. Also - this bit appeals to my anarchist nature particularly - I’m running an open-ended planting of Fukuoka seed-balls in the surrounding forest country park. I haven’t requested any permissions from the local authority which owns and runs the park, because, except to the initiated, it’s not easy to tell the difference between a Fukuoka ‘edible forest’ and a self-sown random woodland, except that there seems to be an unusual concentration of food and other useful harvestables in the edible forest.
Practical information about making seed balls, and their great advantages for — well — call it guerrilla-gardening in both town and country can be found here, for example: http://www.pathtofreedom.com/pathproject/gardening/seedballs.shtml
See the Wiki entry on Masanobu Fukuoka for the broader picture and useful links.
As well as the forest in Bro Padarn, where Cae Mabon lies, there are on both sides of the valley vast scars of slate-quarry waste screes, which — since the demise of the quarrying about fifty years ago - have been turning themselves back slowly to natural forest. In company with other local plotters, I’m seedballing these screes with experimental mixes of seeds to see what can withstand the local sheep and wild goats, and make it up to mature edible forest.
Britain is a small island with hugely bloated population. So within a bike’n'trailer ride of Eric’s place there are about fifteen thousand people, to trade our food, and to emulate in their own many small plots of land our pioneering food-growing.
Also in Britain, it’s commonplace for people to have ‘allotments’: collections of small garden plots in or on the edge of the towns, where people grow their own food. Considered a bit quaint just now, a hobby for the oldies. But as these Interesting Times get ever more interesting watch this space…..
Cofion I bawb eto, Rhisiart
4 October 2006, 7:14 amStan:
Siwmae back, Rhisiart.
These links are very nice. We are thinking seriously about how to devote more of the bandwidth here to encouraging this kind of food, energy, water, shelter independence as an organic (no pun intended) political current.
If they can do it at the latitudes of England (and Wales), there’s no reason to think it can not be done elsewhere. The seedballs thing is very cool. “Mature edible forest” is a wonderful strategic direction.
Can these seedballs and simlar tactics rehabilitate abandonded land (ie,in the city) that has high levels of chemical contamination? And how might we look at seedballing in places where the absorptive capacity of the soil has been severely compromised?
Audrey did some forest/park planting in Michigan, so I hope you all can share a bit of experience here.
4 October 2006, 8:49 amDeAnander:
iirc the brassicas — cabbage particularly — are good for removing toxins from soil. one method I have read about for rehab of industrially abused farmland is to plant cabbage, harvest the cabbage and haul it off as toxic waste… do this three years running or until soil tests indicate acceptable levels of heavy metals, pesticide residues etc. this is pure theory as I have not had to do it myself.
there is a thriving subculture of mycophiles who claim that various fungi can break down or extract soil toxicity… I’ll find some links later. rehab of soil that has been killed by overpaving and/or industrial ag is going to be a very hot topic in years to come. C21 will be the Century of Repairing the Damage, if we are to have any future at all.
one great thing about this topic of food security is that it offers something positive to focus on — not only the great positivity of community action, healthy food, political empowerment, poverty alleviation etc, but the enormous inherent positivity of living soil and growing plants. it is a way of getting back in touch with sanity, after the hours we spend staring into the maw of the insane corporate capitalist machine. the sad fact is that on some very basic level, most of “life as we know it” makes no sense at all and I suspect this very irrationality, senselessness, wastefulness, craziness, is in some way hurtful to all who are exposed to it. it bruises our brains. it hardens our hearts. the dominant cultural memes are prions: they are eating holes in us.
feeding the worm bin on the other hand makes perfect sense. the sprouting of seeds makes perfect sense. the activity of insects makes sense. it is engagement with the life machine instead of the death machine. it is a breath of fresh air for the brain as well as the lungs. crumbling good compost in one’s hands gives a sense of wealth and well-being that (for me anyway) can never be matched by the crackling of a wad of 20 dollar bills.
the 20 dollar bills are imaginary, the monopoly money of a collective fantasy, a game that has got way out of control. but compost is real. food is real. we are not derivatives. compound interest is a fiction. we are embodied and our reality is above all physical, the economy of carbon and nitrogen, protein and sugar, enzymes and bacteria. we are forced to live in a bizarre collective hallucination most of our days (most of us); a few hours with feet in the mud and dirt on the hands, breathing the smell of living topsoil, is a brief interlude outside the loonybin. and I’m ranting…
4 October 2006, 2:57 pmStan:
“one great thing about this topic of food security is that it offers something positive to focus on — not only the great positivity of community action, healthy food, political empowerment, poverty alleviation etc, but the enormous inherent positivity of living soil and growing plants. it is a way of getting back in touch with sanity”
That says it all.
We are constantly assailed about being negative. And there is little doubt that the problems we face are staggering. But instead of a vanguard, we may need to think of a cadre culture of some kind that can carry the burden of seeing the negativity without becoming it, and a movement culture that creates poles of attraction that are far far more than ideological. Most people are not attracted by the scale of the catastrophes we face; they are demoralized by it. Few will fight against overwhelming odds, but many will fight to defend a garden… because they are fighting to defend themselves, their independence, and their escape from the prison of alienation.
First the gardens. Then the strike.
4 October 2006, 5:04 pmAudrey:
Just to clarify - I haven’t exactly done park “planting.” I’m working on fixing a section of forest on my own property, as well as correcting some inherited suburban blandscaping, but that’s a long slow process. We go places, we gather acorns or seeds from trees we approve of, we winter them in the fridge and plant in the spring when the taproots sprout. The idea is to get rid of the junk trees that have overtaken the woods here and replace them at low/no cost with native trees. That’s not something being done with our own food supply in mind so much as the food supply of native species. Part of the front yard has been planted with fruit trees and bushes for us, including some heirloom varieties, and other species that are native to the area, though I don’t know if they qualify for the “heirloom†label.
It was those native-to-the-area fruit trees that led me to a local park. They have pawpaws; I have pawpaws. Bees don’t especially like pollinating pawpaws, so the trees have a tendency to sit around looking pretty without performing any actual work. One of my trees so far can’t even be bothered to make flowers, though the other has been for a few years now. So I go to the park, gather pollen, come home and force myself on the pawpaw blossoms of the one mature tree.
While part of me wishes I could claim subversive activities at the park, the reality is that the park rangers have been coconspirators, goading me into pollinating their own pawpaws since I’m wandering around the woods there anyway with a paintbrush. They’ve mapped out for me where the remote pawpaw stands are that regular people in the park wouldn’t see if they stay on the main paths, and have encouraged me to go at it with those ones, and come back in the fall with a backpack and do some harvesting.
If I didn’t have a yard, I would do more cultivating in the sunnier but still remote areas of the park. Being somewhat lazy, I’d focus on long term crops that I could rely on to produce year after year, which don’t require replanting and weeding. Asparagus and rhubarb are good plants for the lazy. I haven’t done that at the parks, though, because I have room at home for a garden.
The other thing we’ve been doing at the house is killing off the lawn bit by bit each year and replacing with meadow. The areas that are still lawn are green, but look completely dead next to the other areas that are a nonstop hub of activity. When you look at driveway, traditional lawn, and meadow side by side, it gives you an appreciation for how very much suburban lawns resemble concrete.
Sara Stein passed away last year, but her books, Noah’s Garden: Restoring the Ecology of Our Own Backyards and Planting Noah’s Garden: Further Adventures in Backyard Ecology (sent to me by my sister) remain a huge influence on my attitudes toward gardening – or, as she puts it, ungardening.
“It’s the flock, the grove, that matters. Our responsibility is to species, not to specimens; to communities, not to individuals.†– Sara Stein.
4 October 2006, 8:16 pmskol:
“We are constantly assailed about being negative. And there is little doubt that the problems we face are staggering. But instead of a vanguard, we may need to think of a cadre culture of some kind that can carry the burden of seeing the negativity without becoming it, and a movement culture that creates poles of attraction that are far far more than ideological. Most people are not attracted by the scale of the catastrophes we face; they are demoralized by it. Few will fight against overwhelming odds, but many will fight to defend a garden… because they are fighting to defend themselves, their independence, and their escape from the prison of alienation.
First the gardens. Then the strike. ”
Goff for the win!
I may be joking, but I ain’t lying.
Anyway: How does this happen
4 October 2006, 9:28 pmStan:
Strikes normally require strike funds, so people can eat while they sit out. Every bill paid off, every credit card cut in two, every home water collections system and sustainable energy system, every collective, every community-run school, every woman who is confidently trained in self-defense and practical independence, every common reclaimed, and every garden… is part of a future strike fund. Only we have to think of it not as a “one day longer” strike, but a “one generation longer” strike.
“How does this happen?”
It’s like eating an elephant. Ya gotta do it one bite at a time. Read above posts by Rhisiart, Deanander, Audrey, Heiderose, Frank, Marilyn, and skol…
Resistance is fertile! (Gawd, I love that.)
4 October 2006, 9:50 pmSam:
This year celebrated my first garden since the Brooklyn fire escape tomatoes of several years past and I’ve taken to it in a way I couldn’t have predicted. I don’t like the bother and mess of cooking so I assumed gardening wouldn’t appeal to me either, but there’s not a bean I’ve eaten from my garden that hasn’t brought me the joy of knowing I organically helped Ma Nature make those little miracles happen right before my eyes.
There’s an especially odd delight I take in adding to the compost bin. Watching garbage turn into rich soil makes me giddy.
If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend the book “The Botany of Desire” by Michael Pollan. Humans are just big bees doing the pollinating will of our masters the plants.
5 October 2006, 1:12 amDeAnander:
On Strike Against God.
…and this is why self-sufficiency, food and housing security, is seen by the capitalists as something to be extirpated, by fraud where possible, by force where necessary — from the colonial possessions to the colonised areas of the interior. why “subsistence agriculture” is a pair of dirty words to the developmentistas — what they are interested in developing is capitalist control over people’s lives and livelihoods, and successful subsistence agriculture undermines boss-power. why farming has become factory farming — millions of acres that produce nothing humans can eat, farm families getting their groceries at Mall*Wart, in debt to bankers, being forced inexorably off the land. why Mugabe wanted to wipe out urban food gardening. why Cuba was able to withstand the US embargo.
self-sufficiency — communitarian and individual — is resistance, or at least the precondition for effective resistance. the blockade is the fundamental weapon of capitalism (siege warfare, company town, monopoly) and self-sufficiency is what makes us able to withstand the blockade. dependence is what the capitalist boss wants — customers dependent on his merchandise, or preferably hooked on it, and workers dependent on his mingy salaries for bare subsistence. not interdependence which is the natural state of biotic communities but monodirectional dependence, dependence of vassals on overlords, of junkies on pushers.
well anyway. I agree with Stan that everything that sustains us outside the money economy is part of a strike fund for a kind of permanent strike. “off the grid, low on the hog, under the radar.” viva la TAZ.
what you discover when you start looking into food production is the value of land. an acre can feed a family but an acre is hard to come by in the high-rent areas of the country. ironically the wrecked urban cores, vacant lots standing idle, old rundown houses with huge weedy yards, is where affordable land can be turned over to urban farms and gardens… I’ve got links on these kinds of projects stashed away someplace and anecdotal testimony from a friend in PA.
a valuable resource for the suburban food gardener is This Organic Life — notes on using a large suburban plot for food production… Gaia’s Garden of course is the most popular reference on small scale permaculture… I’d better quit here or I’ll be up all night typing but will try to come back with more references (books and urls) later. I have got a copy of Noah’s Garden but have not dug into it yet — also on the list for this fall is Farming with the Wild and I still haven’t read The Power of Duck
there are other side issues to explore, like for example the prison where the management found that inter-inmate violence declined markedly when the cafeteria started using local organic produce instead of processed corporate “food” (feedstock is more like it, or feedlot mash); the schools (more than one) where similar improvements in student attitude and learning ability have followed a switch to fresh organic foods and away from packaged/processed corporate fakefood. these test cases are hotly denied by the food industry, but what else is new… I mean, they just tried to blame the E Coli spinach contamination incident on “organic farming” — the John Stossel brigade is ever ready in the wings waving their “Organic Food Will Poison You” banners. yaaawn.
Pollin is right, what the corporate food industry has created is a national, and a global, eating disorder… a truly sick and warped relationship to food and hence to life itself…
5 October 2006, 1:49 amElki:
I would encourage everyone to proactively participate in growing your own food, especially without pesticides. It’s no new idea, but in the context of a climate where genetically engineered foods are now the norm (don’t be naive now - i know you guys here aren’t), we are now more than ever unsure of what we are really buying from the (super)market. The GM food that farmers grow, is patented, so that farmers have to buy the seeds, but they do not ‘own’ the seeds that come from that harvest, or any other harvest from that engineered product.
This is driving the small farmers out of business, because they have to rely on the patented seeds. I would urge anyone wanting to take note, to grow organically, not only because the produce is not tampered with (and hence meant to be “healthy”* as we percieve it), but because it gives the smaller farmers who grow organically, a chance to survive.
Vandana Shiva has done a lot of work to sue companies that have tried infiltrating these patented seeds to India. (If you google her name you will come up with information).
I’m an Architect who’s making it my soul purpose to provide a service to people who are interested in investing their time and their hard earned pesetas, into ecologically sustainable building and living design. As simple as it sounds, the most difficult thing about what i do is finding people who are ready to lay their pennies down for something worthwhile.
I view my work as being a bridge to help people to help themselves and the environment. It’s not hard to do once you’ve mastered the principle ideas and how to implement them. It’s laws of nature, laws of physics, …well you get what i mean. One of the easiest ways to participate is to use that square metre (square yard for you american’s?) or backyard space you have, and grow something of your own. In this day in age most people will live their life never doing this thing - that fact personally really astounds me. Technological age - my ass.
I know this isnt a gardening session and i have no intention to make it so. So what i want to point out , is for anyone who reads this or listens to me, to go out and buy some seeds. And when you get them, read the recipe on the back about how to bury them. It’s not hard. Just do it. Try a couple of varieties of plant you could eat. And follow the instructions. It is much more simpler than writing code for the internet.
I’m building a straw-bale cottage at the moment. I’ve designed it before but never hands-on built it before. These are two different things - telling/instructing its design, and doing it. I’ll let you know how it goes. Each hour i spend on it (with my husband) is therapeutic. Its like a spiritual journey, a meditation, i love some parts of the journey and hate other parts.
Growing your own food is like creating your own design. Nature helps naturally. Sometimes you succeed, sometimes you fail. But you get better at doing is as time and learning lessons goes on.
I have to end here - have to get to work!
*I say this with the ” ” because who knows what GM foods can offer us. Noone knows, that’s the problem.
5 October 2006, 5:35 amStan:
My parents fished. My dad fished until he died, even after he went blind. My mom, who is 82 now, living in Arkansas, still has a half dozen poles in the car port and makes regular trips to the Ouachita River. My kids fish. My yougest daughter, her boyfrind, and I went fishing just a couple of weeks ago. My alomst-4-year-old grandson fishes.
When there aren’t those scary warnings, we eat fish. I’ve even eaten gar and carp (which lots of folks dismiss wrongly).
But that’s not my main point. Those who fish or have fished, with line and pole will know what I’m talking about. You can’t always tell what is under the surface of the water, what kind of structure there may be that could hold a few fish. (I’m a low-tech fisherman, who has never had anything bigger than a john-boat with a ten-horse motor, and who has never used fish-finding radar, etc. No boat now, I fish from the bank.) So you cast, let the lure slowly drop to guage the depth, then work the lure back. It’s “addictive” in the same ways as gambling, I’m sure, because there is random reinforcement. When you get that first bump, however, your whole being focuses on what is going on. The minute you set the hook, you can tell from experience when you have something unusual on the line, which might be an eel or a turtle, or a very big fish. You can feel it in your hands and forearms, like you’ve been plugged into what is under the surface of the water. Other times, you cast into a spot, and the strike is almost instant. That’s when you try again, and if it happens again, you know you are on a spawning bed or into a school. If this is an eating fish, like a crappy, you are about to have a very big meal (as well as lots of fresh fish offal for the garden).
Now to my point, however. This blog is kinda like fishing. Sometimes, there is a post that keeps getting strikes for ages, like you’ve found a school. Other times, you cast into places where there are no fish. Sometimes, however, you get that special strike where you know, even before you feel the full weight of it, that you have caught something really big.
That’s how I’ve felt about this whole issue of our “(inter)national eating disorder,” as De so evocatively puts it, ever since she started redirecting my attention to it some time back. This is a very big fish. This post is confirming that impression for me, because several of the folks who lurk but seldom speak have quickened onto the comments section. Welcome. Please stay.
For me personally, this is becoming a kind of quantum leap that began with the Gulf Coast March. I can’t even go down that track here, because I’ll get lost in the richness of that experience, and the people who cmae together there. But this notion of food-praxis, intentional independence as politics, etc etc, is as emotionally/intellectually resonant to me as my first real discovery of Marxism after coming back from the Haiti invasion in 1994… where there was this body of work that was a new microscope to study the disease of which I’d been a part (this is why — with all my grousing — I remain so deeply indebted to that interrogative tradition… it saved my life in a lot of ways).
This thread, this subject, this approach, frames the questions and the what-to-do’s together (that IS “praxis,” after all, **reflective** **intervention**), and brings hard-eyed realism together with hard-work hope.
Whoda thought that feeding worms might constitute a revolutionary act? And it is something we can convince plenty of people to do.
5 October 2006, 9:33 amHeide:
Here’s another way for people to opt out of FACTORY PRODUCED food and opt into COMMUNITY GROWN food.
Community Supported Agriculture (CSA)
A CSA is a way for people to hook up with a local farm and get a weekly basket of deliciously fresh produce. By making a financial commitment to a farm, people become members, shareholders or subscribers. Most CSA farmers require that members pay for the season up-front. This investment allows farmers to plant without going into debt and allows CSA growers to remain independent. Some CSAs may ask that members work a few hours on the farm during the growing season and most will welcome volunteers if you wish to get dirt under your fingernails. Some farms even conduct workshops for people interested in acquiring specific skills necessary to survive as a small-holder. The CSA season generally runs from mid-spring through mid-fall here in NC; the growing season may differ in your neck of the woods. There were about 50 CSAs in the US in 1990s. That number has grown to over 1000! Resistance never tasted this good!
Keep a keen eye out for legislation that seeks to undermine local cooperative ventures. Small-holders are very vulnerable and need the community’s support to fight off unfair laws and regulations that target their, and thus our, independence.
Stan, I came across ‘Resistance is Fertile’ some years ago and loved it so much I had it printed on the checks I use. It’s a ‘pass-along,’ another term I like. Many of our traditional and heirloom food and landscape plants survived and spread for generations as ‘pass-alongs’ -freely given from my garden to yours and beyond. When we work the soil, we come to understand that we carry in our bodies a deeper wisdom. This wisdom tells us that for food and thought to sustain and nurture us, both must be honored as the living communal inter-generational energy currents they are, not dead things that we claim to own or are owned by. So, be shameless and pass it along and keep it alive!
Heide
5 October 2006, 3:59 pmWindhover:
“This is a very big fish. This post is confirming that impression for me, because several of the folks who lurk but seldom speak have quickened onto the comments section. Welcome. Please stay.”
OK, you’ve reeled in one lurker. I am a female farmer and this thread has begun to explore the things I began wrenching my guts out years ago. Farming on any scale is the most verdant expression of femininity the world has to offer and for far too long both have been under attack on multiple fronts by corporate/religious violence. I agree with Elki. Poke a seed or two in the ground and see what happens. If you have the room, get a goat or two. I was amazed at the questions they could answer.
I heartily look forward to the discussions to come.
Windhover
6 October 2006, 3:12 pmJon:
Since moving to Brooklyn I really miss not having a garden. My apartment looks out into a small courtyard (that is usually locked) that has nothing but grass and weeds growing in it. It seems such a shame that with so little green space that this isn’t being used to grow food and flowers. I loved to help out in the family garden when I was a child but over time as both my parents took full-time jobs it turned into lawn. When they retired I went back and helped them rebuild it (this time as raised beds), we all rediscovered how satisfying it is to grow and eat your own food.
Sam - I have a similar giddy reaction toward composting as well. I got immense satisfaction from taking kitchen scraps and leaves, things I would normally throw away, and help turn it into something that gives life. I know intellectually that it is microbes that are breaking down the organic matter but I couldn’t help feeling that there was something of alchemy in the whole process – something mysterious that I found thrilling.
Thinking of composting and urban gardening as self-sufficiency this would seem to me to be an important first step (other than acquiring the space and materials) as in an urban setting one would have to either import or make soil.
As for starting a garden from scratch I would recommend Edward Smith’s The Vegetable Gardener’s Bible – we had a lot of luck with this book. The raised beds and inter-planting not only worked better in less space but it is also was much more pleasing to the eye than the more common Apollonian (to borrow from Michael Pollan) row method of gardening.
Although winter is coming this post has inspired to get involved in an urban gardening project here in the city and looking into some local CSAs…as well as figuring out how to make an indoor composter for my tiny apartment!
6 October 2006, 7:58 pmGary:
For those who haven’t yet seen, I highly recommend the documentary “The Power of Community”, which explores Cuba’s heroic transition to localized organic agriculture after the collapse of the Soviet Union. It is incredibly inspiring and shows that food sovereignty and sustainable living arrangements can be achieved even by a whole country. It can be found here: http://www.communitysolution.org/. If you had an interest in gardening before, this documentary might just make it your life’s work.
7 October 2006, 11:48 amDeAnander:
agree with Gary, that is a good video — though I wished it were far longer and more substantial. also recommended (by me anyway) is the documentary “The Future of Food,” an excellent overview of current issues in industrial food production, especially Monsanto, GMO, genomic Enclosure. Web site here.
the gene patenting issue is not going to go away. it’s obvious from Pollin’s recent book (The Omnivore’s Dilemma — which I recommend heartily) that the food/ag industry, long plagued by its inability to patent a recipe, is delighted by the prospect of patented genetic sequences. the pursuit of lawsuits against e.g. Schmeiser, combined with the documented crosspollination and creep of GMO released in the field, opens the door to both absurdity and totalitarian food control.
E Ann Clark’s essay written after the Schmeiser appeal illuminates some of the possible outcomes of GMO creep. taken to the logical conclusion (something capitalism tends, with humourless literal-mindedness, to do) it would enable the big ag companies to extort tribute from any gardener, anywhere, if genalysis (performed of course by the company’s “experts”, and unaffordable by the average person) showed that their patented genome sequences were present in the flora of that person’s garden.
this trend is very much related to the MPAA and RIAA furore over “file sharing” (intelprop Enclosure enforced by the armed power of the State) but is far more dangerous. the simple answer to the MPAA and RIAA is to stop consuming corporate media, period. the copyright on corporate media products cannot creep into the private creativity of the individual. but GMOs can infiltrate “innocent” biomes, polluting the gene pool of traditional cultivars and hence annexing them into the Enclosed gene space claimed by the corporadoes.
it is as if the corporadoes could invent a new flu virus with a patented genome, then sue you for catching it. no action (unauthorised copying for example) is required on the part of the “consumer” — the creep of the GMO material into the victim’s cropland or garden can be completely inadvertent… on the victim’s part anyway — I am quite certain that the “accidental” releases of GMO over the last 20 years have been quite deliberate and aimed at creating exactly this creep and this splendid opportunity for extortion.
the upshot of all this is that the corporadoes are making a bid for totalitarian, centralised control of the entire food chain. their great weakness is that only the price of land prevents ordinary people from producing our own food; they are aware of that weakness and are taking pre-emptive action to remedy it. carefully designed and tended polyculture can be up to 60 times more productive per acre than industrial monoculture; we can produce food better than they can.
and they know it.
we can, in fact, have food independence, due to the basic facts of biology. soil organisms do most of the work for us, for free. sunlight is free. water is free or cheap in most of the affluent nations (though they are working on Enclosing this commons as well).
but most importantly plants and animals can reproduce themselves — for free, requiring only labour and skill on the part of the grower; Nature really is bountiful. in other words, the biotic realm has always been in the same state as the “new and scary” condition of the media realm (where digital media provide free unlimited reproduction of content). the scramble for total content control in media mirrors the scramble for total control of biota: it is anathema in the capitalist system that anyone should have access to any good or service without paying tribute to the bosses. it is “wrong” for anyone to get anything for free, or by their own unmanaged and unbossed labour.
the two greatest threats to community food security, urban farming projects, regional self-sufficiency and food localisation movements, are
1) the cost of land (and the related issue of property taxes and zoning manipulated to the benefit of capitalist developers and carcentric planners rather than livable communities or agricultural productivity — cf the destruction of the LA Urban Farm this year) and
2) the accelerating invasion of the GMOs and the ability of the ag/bio corporations, with the full support of the legal system and the State, to extort tribute from gardeners and farmers to the point of bankruptcy (one of the goals of the whole game is to bankrupt farmers and drive them off the land so that land ownership can be consolidated into industrial farming conglomerates), with the confiscation or destruction of crops as the penalty for noncompliance.
so it’s imperative that community gardens work with the seed-saving organisations to perpetuate and further the development of open pollinated cultivars, nonpatented or GPL-type stock. even this may not be sufficient however, as the biopirates claim the right to patent (i.e. Enclose) any life form they encounter, regardless of its provenance. they are even now being granted “bioprospecting” rights in the national parks of the US, over the objections and protests of the custodians of those parks. any “useful” organisms they find can be patented and claimed as the private property of the finder. finders keepers indeed. it would not take much for them to do the same to any open pollinated cultivar developed by community effort in the first world, as they have been doing for a decade or more in the third world.
it behooves urban gardeners to work on “covert gardening” skills as well as traditional open plot gardening: the seeding of food forests in woody areas, the “invisible” combination of decorative landscape gardening with edibles, etc. may become important if/when the corporadoes make their bid to render illegal any cultivation of food producing plants without payment of licensing fees. sounds crazy and paranoid, I know, but… some years ago I read an interview with a CEO from the biotech loonybin; he scoffed at the notion that consumer resistance to GMO foods, or the organic lobby, had any relevance to his business plan. I cannot remember his exact words now, but the gist was this: in another ten or fifteen years GMO pollen will be everywhere and there won’t be any “organic” standard to defend, so people will just have to shut up and live with it. I have never forgotten that interview. it was the first clue I had that the GMO contamination of the world’s flora was quite deliberate, not just incompetence or stupidity at work.
7 October 2006, 4:07 pmskol:
De’s comments remind me of Oryx & Crake, by Margaret Atwood, about GMOs and their possible consequences. I couldn’t recommend it more for the corporate dystopia genre. Not a long read, either
9 October 2006, 12:06 amDeAnander:
Less spectacularly the sci fi novel “City of Pearl” (Traviss) suggests in passing, as a casual plot detail, a corporatised future where it’s illegal to grow a tomato plant and seeds are traded covertly among surreptitious gardeners, running the risk of fines or imprisonment.
9 October 2006, 8:45 pmJeremy:
Hey, I just came across this article on terra preta or black earth, and thought it was very interesting and relevant here. Unfortunately it doesn’t give a whole lot of practical information, and I’m not sure how it would apply to the kind of small scale urban farming we’re discussing here. But I think that information could be found with a little more effort.
10 October 2006, 8:32 amJeremy:
I tried putting in the link before, but it didn’t work, hopefully it will this time. If not got here: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v442/n7103/full/442624a.html
10 October 2006, 8:34 am