Will Urban Farms and Gardens Save Us - Again?

     That's a question a couple of young men dug into in their film, Growing Cities, as they traveled from their hometown of Omaha. Their adventure looks at community efforts at growing food around the country. The Corvallis Slow Foods chapter hosted the film and one of its producers at the Linus Pauling Institute at OSU recently. The panel discussion afterward barely scratched the surface of all that's going on in our region. It reminded me of how fortunate we are in the Willamette Valley: we're rich in physical resources, climate, knowledge and people who care and work hard to see things happen. Unfortunately, it appeared that all the students who were assigned the task of seeing the film, skipped out as soon as the ending credits appeared. They missed the real lessons of what's happening all around them.

      As the filmmakers said, gardening, especially community efforts at growing food, usually comes to a head during war or economic crises. It did in the first and second world wars and again after the economy slumped, just before Reagan “rescued” us. In recent years, as the economy tightened again, there was another resurgence. Given the industrial global food system and all the problems it has brought us (cheap, non-nutritious food and more people who can afford only that kind of it; myriad health problems, such as rampant obesity and diet-related chronic diseases), what gave me greatest encouragement while watching the film was seeing people wresting control over their diets again. It gives them (us) a sense of empowerment, as well as true physical power through better nutrition and the exercise required to grow the food. 

     Best of all, in my humble opinion, is the young people getting involved. Some of the most powerful segments of the film concerned programs for youth in dangerous neighborhoods where hope and opportunity for the future are rare. Especially impressive was a program in New Orleans. 

      Since the film was made, the producer at the screening told us, some of the featured gardens have folded, mainly for lack of funds, manpower or loss of their sites. Still, others are sprouting up across the country, usually in forms that best fit that community and its people and resources, as well they should. Like the local food movement, you can't franchise it from some corporate headquarters. That's the beauty of it. Ordinances are changing so people can raise small animals in towns and cities and can dig up lawns to grow food. Corvallis has some of those.

Local Inspiration

     The Linus Pauling Institute, where the film was shown, has one of several local programs geared towards youth, both growing and preparing food. I've written about them in the Corvallis Gazette-Times and Take Root Magazine.

      Al Shay, site manager for the Oak Creek Center for Urban Horticulture on the OSU campus has some great ideas for subtly incorporating food into our current landscapes without making a big fuss. It's refreshing to see what is happening at a site where the entomology department previously tested pesticides. Good change can happen. When it involves plants that often means slowly, but the results can be breathtaking, even life-changing.

      Toni Kessler, a former teacher who coordinates the Community Services Consortium's Youth Garden Project feels the work she's doing now is even more rewarding than teaching in a classroom. The program just keeps growing, literally and figuratively. And besides filling up a corner lot donated by the Beanery and 2^nd and Western, they partner with the Farm Home on Hwy 20 for more growing/learning space. Stop and talk with the young people you see selling their preserved foods at the farmers' markets – and buy some. The program relies completely on (sometimes unreliable) grants and what they earn from the plants and foods they sell.

      The third local panelist was Doug Eldon, coordinator of the Calvin Presbyterian Community Garden, which happens to be the one where I have a plot. As I said, this is a great community to learn self-sufficiency, such as gardening. At the moment it's hard to think of all this energy as a passing fad. It's not just war or the economy that is prompting interest in self-sufficiency; our world is changing and it's becoming more necessary. Who knows what catastrophe could come along to prove that. 

     I'll do separate posts on our community garden. For now, visit the Sustainability Coalition website to learn more about local gardening resources from the ground down – and up.