Comments on: Thoughts on Sustainability or How to Grow Vegetables in the City

By: Makiwa Philip Jumo

Makiwa Philip Jumo — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 04:34:24 +0000

I find your article and other readers’ comments interesting reading. I live in Harare capital city of Zimbabwe. Urban agriculture used to be frowned upon but in the last twenty years I have noticed an increase in the number of people involved in urban agriculture. It used to be only visible in the low income suburbs, but recently even empty pieces of land in the affluent suburbs are taken up by some crop. The main crop that is often seen is maize which is grown during the rainy season (November to March). Sweet potatoes, green beans and green leaf vegetables are also grown. Leaf vegetables are grown throughout the year.

The City Council used to send hired hands with slashers to tear down the maize planted in open spaces. The reason given was that it was unsightly, helped the spread of mosquitoes and was illegal. (I grew up on my father’s farm some 200km away from Harare, so I find the summer green attractive and not offensive and I think many locals agree with me.) But year after year (particularly nowadays with increasing economic difficulties and increasing poverty)the area being planted has grown despite the stance taken by the City, and, it looks like the City has come to realise residents will not stop come what may and are now turning a blind eye. They now seem to be discouraging stream bank cultivation which causes soil erosion. I have the feeling that the City will eventually come up with more humane ways of controlling urban agriculture rather than discouraging it altogether.

By: namho

namho — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 00:34:45 +0000

That is the dilemma of urban farming. It is not romantic, nor is it cheap. There is a good TED conference presentation by Louise Fresco on that very issue that may be good to take a look at.

But I would ask your co-worker, which part of maintaining the garden is most expensive. That would be interesting to know: fertilizer, seeds, irrigation, plastic used in protecting the plants, cost of leasing the land?

The motivation for most I think is more the sense of attachment to nature and the knowledge of where your food is coming from than the financial gains.

My father has a good friend who consistently gives us a share of his crops from this farming activities in Soo-jee not far from Bundang. He gets a very high yield from his plot only because he does a lot of research and experiments regularly. He’s an exception of course. Also exceptional is, in his case, he went to the trouble of contacting the landlord and getting permission to farm on the land. He made an agreement to vacate the land without condition when the decision was made to develop the land. In turn he had the other local residents wanting to use the land sign similar agreements with him.

The point I was trying to make in the article I guess was that the local government should make similar deals with the community, especially if it is land the government owns, or even put broker agreements such as the one mentioned above with landlords who are not ready to develop their land. That way the local residents can feel a little more sense of community and the land doesn’t go to waste.

By: Matt

Matt — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 23:12:02 +0000

I also live in Korea (Changwon). I can see how urban gardening has a definite social use, as you said. However, I was surprised to learn from one of my co-workers that their garden actually costs them more money than it would take to just go to the grocery store and buy the vegetables. It seems that growing vegetables only really gets cheap when it is done on a large scale, such as by big farms. This was surprising to me. How does this affect your analysis of urban gardening, if it does at all?

By: soik

soik — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 23:02:18 +0000

i found your blog.. what a world!

see this,
http://books.google.com/books?id=IztLkcFZ5MMC
sprawltown, by ingersoll

he is greening urban sprawls with city farms. provocative. exhilarating.

By: Green Sustainability Advocate

Green Sustainability Advocate — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 13:01:57 +0000

I wish we could garden on empty plots in our city. Rather, the city council recently ordered all small gardens on city land to be taken down. Why? No idea, they cited some law and “right of use” clause. Obviously, we don’t have the most forward thinking leaders.