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Phyllis Saroff is attempting to do in her small yard what 285-acre Clagett Farm does with 1,140 times more space. When she was volunteering at the extensive working farm in Upper Marlboro, she got the idea to raise chickens, “just for eggs and just for fun,” in her backyard; she also maintains strawberry and blueberry patches in her front yard.
Could we all do the same?
Agriculture in America is often associated with large, sprawling farms in rural areas, but now “urban agriculture” is bringing opportunities to raise animals and grow fresh food to the cities and suburbs.
The urban agriculture movement spans plans for “vertical farming” in skyscrapers all the way down to small-scale gardens in suburban neighborhoods.
“It’s very easy. I wouldn’t say any part of it’s hard,” Saroff said.
Saroff keeps her two chickens in a chicken tractor, a bottomless cage that allows the chickens to scratch and eat off the ground, and feeds them table scraps, moldy bread, and apple cores. The chickens, in turn, together produce a total of about 11 eggs each week.
Raising animals isn’t for everyone. Some can’t keep animals for personal reasons, like allergies or complaints from neighbors. Saroff is careful to keep her chickens “very clean and very neat” to avoid complaints from her neighbors, who thankfully think the chickens are fun. But sometimes, even when these obstacles are overcome, the law keeps potential farmers from raising animals. Chickens on non-commercial farms are illegal in a number of states, and certain housing areas forbid pets in their living contracts.
While growing food has fewer restraints, it can prove equally difficult due to the natural restrictions of limited space, sunlight, or soil.
Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) provides a helpful alternative for those suffering under such restrictions.
In a CSA, people contribute money or time to a person or organization that does have the time and space to grow food, and the contributors get a share of the fresh produce.
A new division of CSA that allows people to get involved in urban agriculture without being entirely independent is the “lawn-share,” in which a community garden is dispersed throughout the yards of a number of members of the community.
Eliza Toomey, an ambitious gardener with limited yard space at her Annapolis ground floor apartment, started her own CSA in hopes of being able to grow a greater variety of foods. “My mother had always prompted me to find [yard] space from someone with excess land. This must have blended together in my mind with a story I had heard about a guy out in California who was running a farm off of people’s donated yards. With no further research, the Murray Hill Row-by-Row project was born,” Toomey said.
The agricultural limitations of most people in suburban and urban areas limits the diversity of what they get to grow. Being part of a CSA allows you access to many different types of vegetables, Toomey explained.Many more people than expected responded enthusiastically to Toomey’s idea, and the project is now a 21-member lawn-share. Each member gives up a section of their yard- from 50 to 150 square feet- and is responsible for watering and caring for the plants in their yard. The project currently grows about 18 fruits and vegetables, including arugula, eggplant, potatoes, sugar-snap peas, and tomatoes. “Most of the difficulties I have faced so far are those that can be expected in the first year of any endeavor - things I wish I had done differently,” Toomey said. She’s incredibly enthusiastic about the accomplishments of her project and has noted a number of benefits of locally grown food. “Store-bought food is treated and grown particularly for a long shelf life, not for nutritional value or taste, which is particularly apparent when growing your own food,” Toomey said. She also points out that fruits and vegetables in stores “travel long distances and are often packaged excessively, which leads to increased waste.”
Toomey advises those who wish to start their own garden to choose a spot with as much sun as possible; dig well, removing all weeds, grass, roots, and loosening the soil; buy seeds from a reputable place that gives good instructions on how to grow the plants; water frequently; and use organic fertilizers.
“Start now!” she said. “Don't let inexperience stop you from giving it a try! It is not as hard as it seems - and most things can only be learned by making your own mistakes and unexpected pleasant surprises.”
Developers may soon be undergoing the same educational process as they investigate the possibility of “vertical farming,” which would move farms indoors to multiple-story buildings with environments conducive to plant growth. “We use about the size of South America to farm, which is a huge amount of land, and our population continues to increase. So in about another 50 years from now, we’ll need another size of Brazil to farm. That’s not available, because that much land doesn’t exist anymore to farm, and the land we have now is being degraded. So something will have to give… we’ll find other ways of accomplishing the same task,” Dickson D. Despommier, Ph.D., an Environmental Health Sciences professor at Columbia University, said. Vertical farming has a good chance of being the new way that we will accomplish the old task of producing food. Dr. Despommier noted that it offers the advantages of year-round production while avoiding weather-related crop failures, insect pathogens, microbial plant diseases (spread when insects create holes in plants), and fertilizers or herbicides that can harm plants, and their consumers, in the long run. “I don’t think it’s more than two years off, maybe less,” Dr. Despommier said. “Everyone’s looking for money to do it.” He specifically cited areas abroad, such as Canada, India, and China, but also named some American cities that have expressed interest in vertical farming, including New York, Chicago, Portland, Los Angeles and Seattle.
While governments sort out the when, where, and how of vertical farming in their cities, small-scale urban agriculture can continue, if people are willing to make the investment and effort. “I have great faith that people will continue to try to take the easy way out and encourage agribusiness and all its failings,” Toomey said. “However, I do think that over the next few years it is going to become more and more possible for those that are interested to gather more and more of their food from traditional (think frontier days) sources rather than modern (think Sam's Club) sources,” Toomey said in an e-mail.
We put a lot of effort into making our houses and yards look beautiful, but an equal amount of effort can make the landscape not only attractive, but also productive, Saroff pointed out. “I think people waste way too much energy on lawns. I only have a quarter acre. I have a shady back yard and sunny front yard,” she said. “Anybody can do it, even if they have a little bit of space.”
By Marissa Miller
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