Urban Ag and the Politics of Food

Urban Agriculture aka Urban Ag or Urban Farming is defined as the practice of cultivating, processing and distributing food and other products through intensive plant cultivation in and around a village, town or city.

Not just limited to fruits and vegetables Urban Ag also includes animals such as chickens, goats, rabbits, bees for honey, as well as non-food items like flowers, trees and fertilizer. We used to think of agriculture as a rural practice but now within the last few years Urban Ag has spread into all the major metropolitan areas of the U.S. as well as internationally.

In Havana, Cuba residents were forced to adapt urban farming because of the collapse of the old USSR (Russia) where they used to get the majority of their food from. Since 1997 the annual production of vegetables in Havana has grown ten fold. Over 50% of all vegetables consumed by residents of Havana are now produced in the city’s 8,000 gardens and urban farms, all of which are farmed organically because pesticides and fertilizers also came from Russia.

Here in America, Urban Ag is also thriving. It started about 20 years ago, but recently interest has really blossomed. One reason is the amount of vacant land in the older manufacturing-based cities of the northeast and mid-west. Detroit has about 90,000 empty lots. Philadelphia currently has about 40,000 vacant lots. In New Orleans, current estimates put the number of blighted properties between 20,000 and 30,000.  City dwellers see all that empty space as an opportunity.

At the same time, there has been a huge backlash to the industrial food production going on in America. In recent years we have seen: an increase in foodborne illnesses, proliferation of gene-modified foods in our supermarkets, overly processed foods with chemicals and ingredients we can’t pronounce and increasing health concerns over factory farming.

Books such as Michael Pollan’s ”The Omnivore Dilemma” and Eric Schlosser’s “Fast Food Nation” and films such as ‘Food, Inc,” “Food Matters,” and “Forks over Knives” have caused people to pause and take notice of the food they are eating and where it is coming from. The fact that grapes or broccoli can travel over 2000 miles to our dinner table is exactly why the local food movement has been burgeoning.

In 2012, a study conducted by Ohio State Unversity found that the City of Cleveland spends about $115 million annually in fresh fruits and vegetables, poultry, eggs, and honey, most of which comes from somewhere else – California, Mexico, South America, even as far away as China and Thailand. It goes on to say that through urban agriculture the city could produce its own vegetables, poultry and honey, which would not only boost the city’s economy by keeping that $115 million local, but would also provide jobs.

In order to make this happen and accommodate the growing lot of urban farmers city ordinances had to be not only modified but in Cleveland’s case had to be written from scratch. In 2007, Cleveland became the first city in America to pass an urban farm zoning law.  Since then local ordinances in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and countless other cities have all made changes to facilitate urban farming and animal husbandry. Animal husbandry is the branch of agriculture that deals with the care and breeding of domestic animals that are used primarily as food or product sources. For example, in most cities, you are allowed chickens in your back yard but not roosters. In some suburbs, you can raise goats and cows for milk, but you can’t slaughter them.

As a country, we have not seen this level of involvement in Urban Farming since World War II when due to a shortage of food – and the labor and transportation to distribute it – the US government encouraged citizens to grow their own fruits and vegetables. They were called Victory Gardens. The U.S. Dept of Agriculture estimated more than 18 million victory gardens were planted between 1942-1943. Eleanor Roosevelt grew a victory garden on the White House lawn in 1943. These gardens produced more than 40 percent of all vegetables grown that year. People at the time felt that by growing a victory garden they were doing their patriotic duty to help their country.

Today our country is involved in a different kind of war. There is a War on Big Ag Corporations controlling our food systems. There is a War on Poverty. There is a War on Hunger. There is a War on Obesity.  Wait a second, how can we have a war on hunger and a war on obesity at the same time?

The answer is complicated but it begins with something called Food Security. Food security refers to the availability of healthy, nutritious food and one’s access to it. A household is considered food-secure when its occupants do not live in hunger or fear of starvation. Unfortunately today nearly 40 million Americans live in ‘food insecure’ households. That is nearly 15% of all households (approximately one in eight.)

According to the USDA, households that are classified as food insecure share the following conditions:

1) They are worried their food would run out before they got money to buy more.
2) The food they bought didn’t last, and they didn’t have money to get more.
3) They couldn’t afford to eat balanced meals.

On a global scale, Food Security is how we measure the severity of hunger and how we dictate where resources should be spent. The stages of Food Insecurity range from Food Secure situations, which is Level 0 to Extreme Famine, which is Level 5.  Southern Sudan where people are literally dying of starvation, that’s Level 5.

Today, the number of people on food stamps aka the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is about 40 million, down slightly from an all-time high, 47 million, in 2013. That’s about 1 out of every 8 Americans.

In the plant world, food insecurity is called stress. When a plant does not get the proper nutrition it becomes stressed and more prone to pests and diseases. A healthy plant can withstand pests and disease, an unhealthy plant cannot. Humans are very similar in that respect. If you live in a food secure household you are more apt to be living a healthy lifestyle than someone living in a food-insecure household who is more apt to be afflicted with health issues.

Paradoxically, despite the rise of food insecurity obesity is also on the rise. Today there are approximately 160 million Americans who are either overweight or obese.

Problems caused by excess weight and obesity include: high blood pressure, high cholesterol, type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease, stroke, cancer, etc.

Getting back to the question, how can we have a war on hunger and a war on obesity at the same time? Know this…the highest obesity rates are in the poorest states.

The following 10 states have the highest obesity rate in the U.S.: West Virginia, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Iowa, Alabama, Louisiana, Arkansas, Kentucky,  Alaska, South Carolina,

The following 10 states are the poorest in the country: Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico, West Virginia, Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, South Carolina, Arizona, and Georgia.

Seven of these states overlap: Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and West Virginia.

What conclusions can we draw from this correlation; the poorest states in the country are inflicted with the highest rates of obesity? It seems ironic. We would expect that in the poorest states folks are not eating regularly and are undernourished. However, what we are witnessing is this incredible rise in obesity in both children and adults.

How do we explain it?

For starters, it is not the quantity of food, it’s the quality. Science now tells us that someone eating a diet consisting mainly of highly refined carbohydrates (white bread, cookies, cake) and sugar (soda, candy, desserts, etc) is going to gain a lot of weight (read Good Calories Bad Calories by Gary Taubes). Those who are consuming this diet as a majority of their calorie intake are mostly those who live in food-insecure households.

When the choices are 1 apple for $1 vs. 3 packs of ramen noodles for $1, a person of limited means is going to buy whatever equals more meals and lasts the longest.

In poor rural counties of the country and in poor urban inner-cities we have areas known as Food Deserts. Food Deserts are generally described as areas with high poverty rates, low access to healthy, nutritious, affordable food, and remain distant from mainstream grocery stores or supermarkets.

If you’re the president of a high-end supermarket chain, and you can put a new store anywhere you want, where are you going put it? Are you going to choose an affluent community where the residents will have no trouble paying your high-end prices or are you going to put it in a low-income area where residents will have trouble affording your prices? The answer is, of course, the high-end neighborhood.

Now pretend you’re the president of Yum Brands, the company that owns Taco Bell, KFC, and Pizza Hut. You’re looking to put in a new fast food restaurant with a new low-priced dollar menu, where are you going to put it? Well, how about a poor urban area where folks line up for cheap dollar menu items because as a family that’s all they can afford.

Could it be then that the nation’s weight problem is in fact a problem of class? That is, it is the poor who are suffering disproportionately.

So, what are the answers? How do we solve the problems of hunger and obesity?

First off, Education – Parents and caregivers make approximately 75 percent of the food decisions for children. So, on the one hand, we need better education for adults.

How many of us know the Six Essential Nutrient Groups for Human Health? The word essential means that we must ingest these compounds through our diet; our body does not make them. We need these substances to grow and maintain our health.

In humans, the six essential nutrients are: water, carbohydrate, fat, protein, minerals, and vitamins.

If we live on a diet of soda, chips and fried foods we are satiating our hunger but we are not supplying ourselves with the essential nutrients we need for a healthy body. In fact, we could be making ourselves unhealthier by the choices we make. For example, salt. In plants, too much salt (which are present in fertilizers) can kill a plant within hours. That’s why when you’re fertilizing your plants you always need to read the directions and stick with the prescribed usage amounts. You never want to over-fertilize your plants. More is not better.

In humans, too much salt can lead to high blood pressure, which means that the heart has to work harder than it should to pump the blood around the body.

As an adult everything you put into your mouth, everything you eat is a choice.  Every day, you need to remind yourselves of that fact and remind one another.

Besides education what else can we do? How do we make healthier food cheaper? The answer is we grow it ourselves. And that right there is one of the main tenants of Urban Agriculture.

We grow our own food. We control our own Food Destiny. We don’t rely on some supermarket whether it will or will not come into our neighborhood. We don’t rely on the big corporate fast food joints that are making tons of money exploiting poverty and making us unhealthy in the process. We control our own Food Destiny, which leads to Food Justice.

According to JustFood.org, Food Justice is communities exercising their right to grow, sell and eat healthy food. Healthy food that is fresh, nutritious, affordable, culturally-appropriate and grown locally with care for the well-being of the land, workers and animals. People practicing food justice leads to a strong local food system, self-reliant communities and a healthy environment.

By growing our own food we are also helping the environment by not importing food from around the globe. There is a term called Food Miles, which describes how far food travels from where it is grown to where it is consumed. Like the previously mentioned grapes, it is said that the average meal in North America travels 1500 miles from farm to table. Think of all the oil we could save, think of all the pollutants that are NOT being spewed into the atmosphere by NOT transporting these foods 1000’s of miles.

Some other benefits of Urban Agriculture include the following:

1) It saves you money. The cost of growing your own food is mostly labor. There is some cost involved with seeds, soil, tools, etc, but the biggest cost is your own sweat. In the long run, you’ll be saving a lot.

2) It can create jobs. An urban farm might sell produce to a local restaurant or direct to consumers via farmer’s markets. An industrious entrepreneur might find a niche building raised beds for backyard gardeners or selling worm castings as fertilizer.

3) It involves zero packagings. Think of all the trash you’ll be keeping out of landfills.

4) You’ll enjoy the freshest, most nutritious produce you’ll ever eat, pesticide and chemical-free and you’ll have a lot more choices of fruits and vegetables that are not grown commercially.

5) Every homegrown bite you take removes you one step further from a broken, profit-driven food system that feeds us fat, salt, and sugar.

Even though Urban Ag has many benefits, there are impediments and obstacles that need to be overcome. The conventional view is that food-growing is something that takes place and belongs on rural land. The idea of turning urban lots into a source of usable produce is still foreign to most people. Key federal agencies, such as the Department of Agriculture (USDA), and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), are only remotely attuned to the idea of urban agriculture. They, like most local government policy officials, believe that Urban Agriculture may not be the best use for vacant inner-city land. Local politicians, in particular, would like to see a higher tax return from this land. It is your job as citizens to convince them otherwise. Do your patriotic duty and grow a garden. You and your community will both be better off.