Since we're all about Gardening & Outdoors this month, it's the perfect time to highlight organizations like BK Farmyards, a Brooklyn-based "decentralized farming network" that turns private yards into farms and then throws neighborhood dinner parties to celebrate the locally grown food! The premise is simple: you provide the land, they grow the produce, and those without yards pay for the produce.
BK Farmyards establishes partnerships with developers, homeowners, and city planners to cultivate under-utilized land and plots in an effort to reduce the city's reliance on fossil fuels, provide local jobs, and support lower-income communities:
After cars, the food system uses more fossil fuel than any other sector of the economy, between 19 and 37 percent depending on the study. Contributing to the fossil fuel costs of the food system are: gas-powered farming equipment; chemical fertilizers made from natural gas; pesticides made from petroleum; gas-powered food processing machines; oil based packaging materials; and refrigerated transportation. Our food system is at a critical point: we either reconnect to local resources, or we risk the health of ourselves, our communities, and the land. As an additional issue, chronic disease due to the subsidized production of corn and soy products has been needlessly on the rise in our children for years, and has put a strain on our medical system. Our economy is linked to agri-business' dependence on oil and pharmaceuticals for the cheap production of food-like substances: we need education regarding the real price of sustainable, healthy food.
The rituals of preparing and eating meals are the foundation of culture: it is how we celebrate the gift of life, and how trust is established in a community. BK Farmyard provides local jobs, local economic growth, and a sense of stewardship and pride in the community: it educates, organizes, and mobilizes new social relations around food. Integrating a new farming model into the existing urban fabric is a radical approach without taking a wreaking ball to the city and without massive investments. If applied across all the urban centers in the United States, BK Farmyard is a lean strategy to overhaul the food system
See a list of current farms here.
(Image: BK Farmyards)