On March 20th, 2020, Canada enacted a strategy to fight COVID-19, in most, if not all provinces. The way we lived our lives changed overnight. Usually, at this time of year, gardeners and farmers alike would be making efforts to prepare lands, collect seeds, or begin seedlings to be planted in the next couple of months. This would not change for the local agrarian culture. However, access to these food sources would become somewhat complicated. Global supply chains became accelerated overnight as people went into a survival mode. Many started to hoard random products for fear of missing out (FOMO). Products such as toilet paper, sanitizer, Lysol wipes were hard to come by. As self-isolating households learned to cope with no access to outdoor entertainment, baking products then flew off shelves to the chagrin of grocers ill-equipped to handle the demand.
These unique times put everyone on high alert. In May, community garden membership requests surged sparking Community Garden Builders to create an app that could help regional managers with their needs. Also, a request for food supplies through charitable organizations increased such as was experienced on the North Shore by the Food Bank with one of its suppliers of fresh produce, Edible Garden Project. This may have stemmed from the self-isolation or from unemployment due to the shuttering of businesses. Local food production and its lower costs and immediate access became instantly appealing. However, in June through to August people started going back to their previous habits as grocery stores were easily stocked and opened up for longer hours.
This brings us to the idea of how North America can revisit food production and its many pitfalls. As Winston Churchill and others have insisted one must never let a good crisis go to waste. So how is it that the COVID-19 crisis and the future of our climate can help municipalities and local governments rethink their local populations’ needs and the resources they have access to?
Community Minded Urban Agriculture
In Dallas, Texas, Bonton Farms is an urban farm model that established itself to look at the community on a holistic level. How can urban agriculture affect communities of people who live in poverty?
This is what Daron Babcock explored when he first moved down to Texas. He wanted to make a difference for the community and the people who needed jobs. 25% of the population in America lives in poverty and many young men from those communities find themselves in jail before the age of 25 years old. Instead of dealing with the symptoms of poverty and racism, Babcock looked at how he could assist in getting people healthy food, housing, and employment.
Babcock says, “There should be a huge shift in investment and energy from the downstream measures when they have fallen in the river and they are drowning and moving it upstream before they fall in and give them the resources, they need to become something special to give back to this world.”
Currently, Bonton Farms is the largest urban farm in the U.S. with over 42 acres inside the city of Dallas. The community has over 1800 people coming down to visit them. “It’s no longer us and them, it’s we and things change.”, says Babcock.
Learn more about Bonton Farms at https://bontonfarms.org/our-story/
Current industrial food production is also less than ideal for its variety, nutritional content, and environmental impact. This essential service has been managing in a less than ideal situation creating an imbalance in the system states Michael Ableman, co-founder, and director of Sole Food Street Farms in Vancouver, BC. He establishes that “the system is way out of balance. You have 1.5% of the population providing nourishment for the rest of us.” Ableman has been a social advocate for how to manage food production in urban settings with the intent of affecting populations living on the fringes of society, for over a decade now. Learn more about Michael Ableman and his current publications in our concluding edition of food production at Harvesting Ideas and Ideals. So where is this food production, currently?
Taking it to a Higher Ground
Produce found in our local supermarkets is selected for their ability to travel long distances and go through many changes before arriving. For instance, greenhouse tomatoes used to allow for a choice of 500 varieties. Now based on the industrial farm production and the supply model, they have been reduced to 12 varieties. To enable a lengthy transport and handling process, they will be picked while still green disallowing the growing process to nurture its full nutritional development. In the end, the process of industrial farming utilizes 70% water, 37% land, 30% energy while emitting 20% greenhouse gases to give consumers basic produce that could be grown on rooftop gardens, balconies, front or backyards. So how can food production be explored closer to home?
“Nothing about urban agriculture is really revolutionary, it’s simply a recreation of something that is very, very old.” says Mohamed Hage in his 2012 TEDxTalk.
Mohamed Hage, an agriculture and technology enthusiast, is the founding president of Lufa Farms, a company that designs, builds and operates rooftop agricultural greenhouses. It was to provide fresh, local and responsible vegetables to montréalais consumers that he created the first commercial rooftop greenhouse in the world in the winter of 2011. Mohamed Hage supervises all of Lufa Farms’ daily activities, but is particularly interested in research, planning, construction and operation of the greenhouse environment.
His present goal is to help this new agricultural model be progressively integrated onto rooftops across major cities. https://montreal.lufa.com/en/
Looking at rooftop gardens, a variety of professors have been instrumental in creating the Ryerson University Green Roof project in Toronto. These same people have helped the municipality pass a bylaw that states that any new buildings over a certain size must include a green roof. Currently, buildings built before the 1950s were the only rooftops available for rooftop gardens as they have the load-bearing capacity to handle the weight of a rooftop garden. When fully saturated with mature plant cover, a thin extensive green roof can weigh about 13 pounds per square foot. A more typical extensive roof with 3 to 4 inches of growing medium weighs 17 to 18 pounds per square foot, and a deeper intensive system can weigh 35 pounds or more per square foot. These are some factors which are important to consider when considering rooftop farming. Listen for more details on how the Ryerson explored their venture with the Green Roof Project in this video:
Learn more about the advantages and disadvantages of Rooftop Gardening.
CBC’s Now or Never PODCAST explores “What it takes to Farm” in their September 23th episode. Trevor Dineen and Ify Chiwetelu interviewed six different farmers across Canada from BC to Ontario. Tune in to hear about the different farming traditions was uncovered during the PODCAST interviews.