JENNIFER COCKRALL-KING: The selection of fruits and vegetables we see today are a narrow sample of nature's variety, and a fraction of, say, apples or carrot varieties that our grandparents knew. The three types of tomatoes, for instance, we choose from are available to us only because they withstand the rigors of the handling and travel of a grocery store supply chain, not because they have any flavor or nutrition. So the facade is both in the illusion of choice, but also that there is an abundance of food available to us at all times. Most food in a grocery store has to travel a long distance to get from where it is grown. If the resupply lines are ever interrupted or stopped for some reason, we have about a three-day supply of food in that grocery store system in a city. Then the shelves start to go bare.
MQ: When I think urban agriculture, I think about backyard gardens. But your book explains that there's much more to it.
JCK: There's an explosion of innovation and energy in urban agriculture happening right now. This is why I wrote the book. There are fresh water fish tanks producing trout and tilapia in the middle of Milwaukee, Wisconsin; massive rooftop farms and greenhouses in New York City and in Montreal, Canada; and important urban beekeeping movements happening in cities like Paris, France. I met commercial urban farmers growing market vegetables in raised beds on former parking lots in Vancouver, Canada, and an industrial developer in Chicago, Illinois who was rehabilitating a former four-story meat-packing plant as a "vertical farm." My eyes were definitely opened to the possibilities of producing food in urban landscapes as I wrote this book!
MQ: What or who is driving this urban agriculture movement?
JCK: The exciting thing is that it's coming from all levels. There are just some really creative individuals who are figuring out how to produce food in cities, and there are grassroots groups and municipal governments, like in London, England, that are providing funding and space for people and projects in urban agriculture. And the energy and investment is coming from nonprofits working in food security and poverty reduction to entrepreneurs and hard-nosed business types who see a commercial future in urban agriculture. It's a broad movement that is cutting across economic, social, and racial lines that normally divide us in cities.
MQ: In researching Food and the City, you visited urban farms throughout the world. What was your favorite?
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JCK: That's an impossible task, to choose my favorite. I loved the sheer volume of urban farms in cities in Cuba -- they are everywhere, like convenience stores in North American cities. And I loved that Cuban farmers had a high social standing, and relatively high economic standing. They are actually rewarded for their skill and labor. It requires a lot of technical know-how to keep soil vital in the Caribbean and to produce food year-round through hurricanes and rainstorms. I also love the sheer brilliance of having an urban farm in Cuba right in a residential neighborhood. The farm always has a small kiosk where the financial transaction takes place between farmer and consumer. It just seems obvious once you see it, but in North America we have all sorts of regulations that would prevent something so straightforward and logical!
MQ: How did your original conception of urban farming evolve in the process of researching and writing?
JCK: I started out by exploring the reasons behind the growth in numbers of community gardens in my own city. I thought it was a handful of people who liked to putter around in the garden, like me. From there I followed the trail and discovered threads of an economic and social revolution. I really think that we got so taken in by the idea of cheap and convenient food for a while, but the pendulum is swinging back. We're realizing that we need to regain control of our food choices and become more self-reliant. With Peak Oil and other pressures, the era of cheap food is over. And that's a good thing. I don't think we can deny the negative health and social effects that decades of cheap industrial food have had on our bodies and on our society.
MQ: Can this really make a difference?
JCK: We have built our cities on top of or close to prime agricultural land, and so as our cities grow and sprawl, we're literally paving over the best farmland on the continent. I think this is just one of the issues that the urban agriculture revolution is bringing to light. And hopefully it's not too late to recognize that we need to protect what is left of the productive space that is within or close to our cities. We used to grow a lot of food in cities before the 1950s. During the Second World War, the Victory Garden movement was so successful that 40 percent of the produce consumed in the US (and likely Canada too) was grown by "citizen farmers" or in home-based "Victory Gardens." We're just beginning to figure out how much food we can produce in our cities again.
MQ: Jennifer, thank you for your time, and -- since we're talking about taking control over our own food choices -- for offering us this favorite spring recipe to share with our readers.
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