Neighborhood Agriculture - seeing Heaven in Suburbia Hell

[Korey King]

this doesn't do justice to the scope of the vision here, but early sketches:


full article here: Rethinking Communities with Neighborhood Agriculture

How about building residential communities that, instead of growing aesthetic foliage that doesn’t bear edible fruit, have all sculpted landscape grow food for their residents?

Apple and lemon and pear and almond and orange trees instead of oaks, pines, etc. Grow them three to eight per yard (front and back), requires minimal irrigation and the average mature tree will produce between 40-200kg (88-440 lbs) of fruit per year.

Did you know pineapples grow in the ground?
I didn’t. But their leafy tops might just make great lawn trim.

Strawberry leaves are surprisingly soft to the touch.
Why not replace lawns of grass, with lawns of strawberries?

If you wanted to get really, really creative we could splice some genes — a fruit bearing plant with a robust, fast growing vine for example — and we could have fresh cherries or grapes growing along a chain link fence.

A wall of cherries.
In our lifetime.

What about splicing edible wheat fibers into common grass? Imagine that — mowing your lawn, then having the mulch milled to make bread, or even fuel, and any other practical use aside from fertilization (or in increasingly more cases, decomposing in a plastic bag in some landfill)

And this is the really awesome part:

Don’t just grow a lot of food.
Grow more than the family will buy, or need, for the entire year.

Different residences produce different foodstuffs, eat what they want, then sell or store their food in the central ‘market’ — where they can buy, or trade for, what they don’t produce.

We’re talking a residential community with surplus food production, actively producing needed food without being a traditional food-producing property such as a farm or ranch or biosphere.

That’s huge.

This means the family is fed for effectively zero cost, and the homeowner or residential developer can not only produce surplus food for anyone who wants or needs it — but make a profit from it if they so choose.

This concept can be applied all over the world, in most any climate conditions. Irrigation, temperature regulation, and lighting systems exist right now that can adapt on a small scale to individual plant preferences, growing food in optimal conditions no matter where it is grown.

Future breakthroughs in robotics may automate the entire process.

[Justin Boland]

This is a good place to stash Jeff Vail's excellent recent run on Suburbia...in reverse order since part three was the best:

Part 3: Weighing the Potential for Self-Sufficiency
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/4774

Part 2: The Cost of Commuting
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/4741

Part 1: Sunk Cost and Credit Markets
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/4720

Can 4,000 square feet produce enough nutrients to feed one person while simultaneously sustaining and improving the soil? One issue is that topsoil has been scraped away from more recent suburban developments. How effectively can we re-build soil, and how long does it take? John Jeavons has addressed this question in depth (summarized at p. 28-29 of “Grow More Vegetables”). He concludes that 4,000 square feet is roughly enough to feed one person a complete, nutritious diet, while simultaneously improving soil quality. His method involves 60% (by area) focus on growing soil-improving crops (high carbon content food crops for eventual compost), 30% mixed high-calorie root crops, and 10% mixed vegetables.

I’m sure Jeavons’ is one of many possible ways to approach the problem. One alternative is forest-gardening, depending largely on fruit and nut production from long-lived trees coupled with understory vegetable and root crops. Another, more high-tech route is hydroponics. While I anticipate a lively discussion on these points, I’ll cut my presentation short, closing this point on a simple thought: Jeavons (a practicing expert in the area) argues that 4,000 square feet is realistic. My mother (admittedly, a Master Gardener) is doing exactly this in her roughly 5,000 square foot home garden. I don’t claim it will be easy. I don’t even argue that suburbia can consistently provide 100% of its food production. But I do argue that suburbia can realistically provide around 50% of its food, can act as a localized buffer against disruptions, and can provide a high percentage of vitamins, minerals, flavor, and culturally-important foods.

Critically, while attaining self-sufficiency on suburban lots may not be easy, it is certainly more practical to obtain a significant degree of food self-sufficiency in suburbia than it is in urban settings. This isn’t to say that urban areas shouldn’t explore gardening possibilities—it is simply to point out that suburbia’s food-production potential is an asset when compared to urban settlement. Whether or not its food-production advantage outweighs its transportation disadvantage is not clear—but more on this later.