Urban Agriculture: Beyond Your Stomach

by Dave Boehnlein

With the buzz we have seen around urban agriculture in 2010 it is not surprising to see lots of new projects starting up in our cities all over the world. The City of Seattle declared 2010 “The Year of Urban Agriculture.” The International Living Building Institute modified their Living Building Challenge Standard to include requirements for urban agriculture. New community gardens, both sanctioned and guerilla, have cropped up in our neighborhoods. City governments have started revamping codes and ordinances to make urban agriculture easier.

A huge driver for this interest in urban agriculture is resiliency building. Discussions about climate change, peak oil, political instability, war, and economic fluctuations have all led us to question how well prepared our cities are in the event of some sort of disruption. Many people across the political and economic spectrum have come to agree that currently our cities are not as prepared as they should be.

The focal point for these conversations often comes down to food. Three years ago the term food security was not heard in the U.S. outside the context of the developing world. Now it is a common concern for many of our domestic city dwellers. The question often asked is, “How many days of food do we have on hand in our town?” That matters because if some sort of disruption happens preventing trucks, trains, or boats from reaching a city they must rely on what they have or what they can continue to produce locally. Currently, most of our cities have minimal access to local production and only a few days worth of produce in distribution centers at any given time. The focus on food appears to be justified.

However, if we set our sights on the overarching issue of supply disruption we begin to see that food is not the only product that is reliant upon shipping from far off sources. Most of the products we use everyday come from somewhere else with few locally accessible substitutes. Therefore, it makes sense to expand our vision of urban agriculture beyond food to include a variety of other products upon which we rely.

Medicines

Many of the pharmaceuticals we use are developed in laboratories far away and shipped across the globe. What would happen if these were no longer accessible? Clearly, we cannot produce all of the products a pharmaceutical company can on a local scale. However, we could start to include some basic medicinal plants into our landscapes and urban agriculture projects so that we have a something available should supply be disrupted. Ginkgo, feverfew, witch hazel, and echinacea all have healing properties and are easy to grow. They also provide flowers, bee forage, and mulch products. These plants are just the tip of the iceberg. We could be choosing many types of medicinal plants for our urban landscapes.

 Textiles

Our urban agriculture systems should include a wide variety of textile products. Most of the clothing and other fabric products we use are produced, assembled, or manufactures far away, often internationally. While these products do not run out as quickly as foodstuffs they do still wear out over time. There are many materials that we could begin growing now so that we have them if we need them in the future. Cotton, flax, and, in a less restrictive scenario, hemp are all used to make fabrics and would grow in many of our urban areas. Even better, each of those species has the potential to be low maintenance and aesthetically pleasing while providing an opportunity for someone to create a cottage industry. That is a winner in our current economic climate.

Construction Materials

There are a wide variety of construction products that could be woven into our urban agriculture systems. Some parts of the U.S. are blessed with fairly local access to construction materials, most commonly wood. However, in a situation where we encounter long term disruption of transportation getting that wood to our urban areas will be challenging. What if we started growing some of the construction materials we need right in our urban green spaces? Timber trees such as firs, pines, maples, and oaks can be grown in our cities with good planning for growth and harvest. However, other materials may also be important in our future. For instance, some buildings in Eastern Europe still use traditional thatching techniques to supply their roofs. Many of our urban areas could support palms or rye for thatching in the future. Black locust and Osage orange both make excellent posts for fences and outbuildings. Nettle, yucca, and New Zealand flax all provide excellent fibers for cordage. Again, one of the best parts about these species is that most of them are low-maintenance and aesthetically attractive.

Fertility

All urban agriculture systems require fertility inputs. In the current paradigm it is common practice to meet our fertility needs with products that are energy intensive and transported a long way (even the organic ones). Should this become infeasible how will we continue to maintain the productivity of our other urban crops? There are many mulch, green manure, and nitrogen-fixing plants that can be grown in an urban context. Mulch and green manure species, such as elecampagne, alfalfa, and cattail provide such copious amounts of plant material that they can be harvested as on-site sources of organic material. Nitrogen-fixers such as ceanothus, red alder, and California wax myrtle have bacteria on their roots that can convert atmospheric nitrogen into a form accessible by other plants. These types of plants can help to enrich soils while growing and providing other functions such as beauty, screening, and wildlife habitat.

Other Products

There is a wide range of other plant products (and animals for that matter) that we could include in our urban agriculture systems. We could benefit from locally produced products such as:

• Forage for animals: Honeylocust, Alfalfa, Autumn Olive, Chestnut
• Industrial Chemicals: Chicory, Citrus, Monterey Pine, Soy, Corn
• Tannins & Dyes: Indigo, Black Walnut, Mulberry, Artichoke, Clover

The sky is the limit for how to expand our urban agriculture systems beyond providing food for people. While making sure everyone is fed is a top priority in an emergency situation, very soon other needs, such as clothing, medicine, and housing begin to become apparent as well. By creating diverse, productive urban agriculture systems that go beyond food we can create cities that are much more resilient and better equipped to approach sustainability. Hopefully, we will begin to see our cities provide a wide range of products from toppings for your pancakes to the shoes on your feet.

Resources for More Information

• Plants for a Future (http://pfaf.org) – Database containing thousands of plants with their edible, medicinal, and other uses.
• Edible Forest Gardens (http://edibleforestgardens.com/) – Information and a two-volume set on growing productive species following models from ecology.
• American Bamboo Society (http://americanbamboo.org/) – Organization for the promotion of bamboo in North America.

Dave Boehnlein serves as both principal for Terra Phoenix Design and education director at the Bullock’s Permaculture Homestead on Orcas Island where he has lived for the last six years. With varied backgrounds such as organizational leadership, internship/apprenticeship program design, and trail work Dave brings a unique set of skills to the table. While fine tuning his permaculture lenses Dave has also organized and taught at over a dozen permaculture courses & workshops. Dave is particularly interested in education, the mainstreaming of sustainability, and keeping things organized.

*Dave will be joining a top notch teaching team for a Permaculture Design Course at Wild Thyme Farm in Oakville, WA, February 27 – March 20, 2011. For more information see here.  

Related posts:

1. Canon Gives Vancouver $60,000 for Urban Agriculture Fund
2. Brown Bag Talk on Urban Agriculture in Seattle
3. City of Seattle Launches Urban Agriculture Website

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