Urban and Community Gardens: Combining the Social, the Ecological and the Spiritual

At a public lecture I attended on social issues around food and food production in the United States, a person in the audience asked how one could promote organic foods, which are so expensive and therefore inaccessible to a large portion of the population? One of the panelists answered by saying that whole foods, especially grains, fresh fruits and vegetables, need not be very expensive and offer far more nutritional value than buying a pre-packaged dinner or going to the local fast food stand. While this response began to address the issue, still the problem remained that could not be denied: organic foods, be they grains, produce or meats, are almost always more expensive to purchase than conventionally grown foods.

Those choices that are inaccessible to a large portion of the population are not inherently sustainable - socially or environmentally. It seems a travesty that organic food production, though much less chemically- or machinery- intensive than conventional farming, because they lack the same subsidies as conventionally-grown commodity foods, are sold on the market at higher prices. How do we get past this obstacle? I wondered about this for a long time and not having a good answer, resigned myself to not thinking about it. However, the solution was waiting to hit me like a load of bricks, because I had been standing in front of it for some time and simply did not see it. It is not hard to miss the significance of urban and community gardening…

As our populations increase, our demand for living and agricultural space increases. As we take over more wilderness, suck up more resources and spout out more waste, we place ourselves in an increasingly precarious situation on this planet. Instead of wasting land on abandoned city plots or on showy, unproductive lawns, imagine if we used this land to produce food. Imagine if we recycled our garbage to nourish our gardens, if we employed local people to work in these gardens, if we saved on transportation energy because our food was produced in our own neighbourhoods. Imagine if we began to rebuild our sense of community, our connection to each other and to the Earth. Imagine if all of this was simple, cheap and accessible. Would this not be an ideal solution?

Urban and community gardens are not new ideas, but similar to organic farming, we are reintroducing old ideas into our contemporary framework. Urban and community gardening touch upon and can enrich so many areas of our lives. To name a few of the most significant benefits: 1) organic, fresh, seasonal and local produce, which is much healthier, is made cheaply and more easily accessible to local populations; 2) food can be grown in a way that is far less chemically- and machinery-intensive, utilises waste materials and wasted/unproductive land, and is more sustainable overall; 3) food grown in this way uses local human and material resources and relies on very little capital investment; 4) by beautifying and cultivating pride in our communities, empowering people to be more self-reliant and starting to free ourselves from the massive web of global trade, we invest in sustainable futures for our communities; and finally, 5) by reestablishing our connection with our food and the Earth, we begin to reinstill the sanctity of these sacred connections in our lives.

Community Gardens: Integrating Human, Community and Environmental Health
It is certainly a reflection of our current paradigm that health, community development and environmental conservation are treated as separate issues. It is ridiculous to me that we talk about environmental degradation or conservation without including human communities as a part of the environment, and likewise we wear blinders when we talk about human health while neglecting environmental issues. Faced with an overwhelming system of sprawling corporate power and ineffectual government, the seeds of change and revolution continue to spring up at a grassroots level; more and more, community gardens are becoming a common meeting ground for social change-makers and educators around human, community and environmental health.

I am amazed at the work that is going on in community gardens throughout urban North America. Three in particular, which I will mention are the San Francisco League of Urban Gardeners, Building Opportunities for Self-Sufficiency Urban Gardening Institute, and the John F. Kennedy University Sustainability Garden. The San Francisco League of Urban Gardeners (SLUG) is a good example of the role urban and community gardens are playing in integrating food production, community education and development, job training and habitat restoration. SLUG has several sites throughout San Francisco, where they carry out numerous programs and projects. They offer workshops and classes to the community on composting, water conservation, environmentally-responsible pest management, and urban and native plant gardening. At SLUG's St. Mary's Urban Youth Farm, youth interns, in addition to planting and harvesting the food, also distribute food to seniors and soup kitchens. While the youth learn about sustainable agriculture, their work provides healthy food to the local community: "'Food security' is a measurement of a community's access to safe (organic), nutritious, affordable and culturally appropriate foods. San Francisco's southeast sector [as with many low socio-ecomomic communities] has more liquor stores and fast food eateries than grocery stores, and… has not outlet for organic produce. The Farm addresses this disparity by providing residents with a resource for fresh organic produce. Our close relationship with community members, as well as a formal survey of households, ensures that we grow food that is popular with residents." (SLUG, St. Mary Urban Youth Farm page, paragraph 3). SLUG started a farmer's market in the Bayview community in San Francisco, again, to address the disparities in accessibility to healthy food in low socio-economic areas.

In addition to food production and distribution, SLUG offers a horticulture training and certification program for at-risk youth at their Log Cabin Ranch. The training includes work on basic ecology, nursery management and habitat restoration, and assists participants with job placement after the program. The gardens are used not only for horticultural therapy but also as a forum for job and skills training for local youth.

BUGI (Building Opportunities for Self-Sufficiency (BOSS) Urban Gardening Institute), an organization based out of Berkeley, is involved in promoting urban food production by helping to turn vacated urban lots into gardens. BUGI has undertaken work in food policy, donating staff time to the Berkeley Food Policy Council, which is affiliated with the Berkeley Public Health Department. The organization also offers a job training/horticultural therapy program to individuals transitioning out of homelessness or drug abuse, and supports local "garden-based microenterprises" by offering training, consulting and some material assistance.

Finally, the John F. Kennedy University Sustainability Garden, which is a collaborative project between students, staff and faculty, aims to teach people about sustainability - in thought and in practice - through a real-life, hands-on model. The garden is an example of how to create an inexpensive, simple and environmentally-responsible garden, using recycled and donated materials, such as cardboard, foodscraps, straw, wood chips and compost. It is also a "conversation-starter" that helps to educate the university community by its very presence at the centre of the JFKU Orinda campus. What makes this garden group special, however, is its intention to incorporate the sacred and spiritual into their work; the opening and ground-breaking ceremonies included community rituals to honour the land, Mother Earth and the indigenous people who used live on this land. The volunteers have put a lot of love into their work and the garden's "magic" and radiance is felt and appreciated by so many in the community. JFKU's Sustainability Garden is a place where people come to reconnect with nature. This garden, along with many other community gardens, show us that investing in people, communities and the environment are all complimentary and are a part of the same vision we are building.

Self Reliance and Food Security: Urban Gardening in Cuba
The link between food production and social and economic forces is apparent in Cuba's story. In the past, the country's agricultural industry focused on cash crops for export and disregarded food production for local consumption. Trade was a priority and neither local food security nor sustainable production were a concern until 1989, when the Soviet Union collapsed. Suddenly, Cuba found itself cut-off from its largest trading partner and in the midst of a major food shortage. Without the import of pesticides and fertilisers from the Soviet Union, Cuba's agricultural industry was also turned on its head. Social and economic pressures caused the entire country to undertake a new approach to food production, and amazingly, the Cuban government took progressive action to reestablishing food security.

Havana had long relied on imports from the surrounding provinces for its food supply. Prompted by the food shortage and a government initiative to turn poorly-utilised land to food production, urban gardens began to spring up all over the city. By 2002, urban gardens covered up 12% of the land in Havana (Grogg, 2002). Remarkably, by 1999, 65% of the rice and 46% of the vegetables in Cuba were being supplied by organic urban gardens from throughout the country (Kjartan, 2000). This new revolution, in contrast to the "Green Revolution" several decades earlier, relied more on small-scale production, which capitalised on human labour and locally available resources (garbage and unproductive urban land), and less on major capital investments in farm machinery, chemical fertilisers and pesticides, and large plots of agricultural land.

The Cuban model demonstrates three important sustainability principles. Firstly, in order to live sustainably, a country or a community must be able to support itself on its own land - its own ecological footprint. In other words, to create a secure future, Cuba must be able to support its own population on the land and natural resources it has available; if it borrows resources from other areas, it is inevitably borrowing resources from other communities and from its future generations. The Cuban model, which attempts to meet the needs of local populations by cycling local resources, is far more sustainable than the insatiably-devouring systems of most industrialised countries. Secondly, with many of our natural resources in short supply and human resources being abundant, the substitution of human labour in farming for chemically- or mechanically-intensive practices is a smarter use of our resources and energy. The inputs that go into fueling human labour are also less environmentally draining or damaging than the application of heavy machinery or chemical products. Finally, in a massive system, as in the case of global food trading, accountability to local communities or populations is often lost, and inertia can be so great that change is often slow to take place. A smaller, local network, found in community gardens, is more adaptable to change and can more effectively meet the needs of its own constituents.

A Magical Answer? Wrapping it All Up
Perhaps community and urban gardens offer us a magical answer; they are a powerful, grassroots forum through which we may address some of the massive social and ecological problems in our communities. These issues include: inaccessibility of fresh, healthy foods in low socio-economic areas; poor environmental resource management in cities and by large agribusiness; and the disempowerment of individuals and communities as a result of massive, ineffectual systems that separate people from the source of their food and their livelihood. Community and urban gardens, in small, but meaningful ways, make fresh, organic food accessible to local populations, make better use of wasted land and materials (garbage and composting), and empower people to learn new skills, to be stewards of their own communities and to provide for themselves and their families.

Urban and community gardening are such simple ideas and in some ways are not so revolutionary. However, the revolution and evolution take place as we shift our way of approaching the system - the food-health-livelihood-community-environment-spirit web - to meet it in a way that truly recognises the interconnection of all of these elements. When we are able to meet people's food, health and livelihood needs, the needs of a growing community and the needs of a living ecosystem, and then in addition to all of this, we are able to hold the sacredness of all these elements, we will have created something that is truly sustainable on multiple levels.

Over the years, I came to believe that I was not much of a city person. I dreamed (and still do!) of living on the land and building an ecologically-friendly, smartly designed house, having a large garden and greenhouse, and offering classes to people about sustainable living and holistic health. I wanted to leave the city and invite people back to the land. I wanted to live sustainably and did not believe I could do this in a city. Yet the idea of urban and community gardens - smartly designed patches of nature embedded in the quiltwork of cities - have begun to lure me back to urban life. I am allured by the prospect of inviting nature back into human environments and making human spaces a part of nature instead of trying to tame her or keep her out. Our collective future - for all people, animals, plants and the Earth - invites us forward to create something visionary and quite remarkable. We can begin in our own backyards with a shovel, a handful of seeds and a lot of soul.

References
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