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Urban gardening is a great example of faux-environmentalism. It feels good, but it's not an efficient or safe way to farm. Lead contamination is one reason. Ano

Urban gardening is a great example of faux-environmentalism. It feels good, but it's not an efficient or safe way to farm. Lead contamination is one reason. Another is pure logistics. While advocates claim local food reduces "food miles" and saves resources, the amount of miles food travels to get to your plate is just a fraction of it's carbon footprint. It's much more efficient to grow food where it grows best and ship it across the world compared to growing it locally and using excess resources to grow plants in poor conditions. If you have time, read this: http://ntl.bts.gov/lib/15000/15100/15145/DE97763079.pdf http://ntl.bts.gov/lib/15000/15100/15145/DE97763079.pdf Otherwise, get the short version: http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/food-miles http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/food-miles That said, gardening is a great hobby that shouldn't be limited to rural communities. But we need to do this safely - perhaps raised beds and a green house. And we shouldn't expect urban farming to magically solve our food needs. Even if everyone had a garden in their back yard, it wouldn't substitute the amount we grow in large farms.

bluthru 12y ago
The associated benefits cannot be overstated: education, beauty, community, a connection to nature, health, and most assuredly tasting better. Urban community gardens are a very worthwhile pursuit. People should be encouraged to garden with their lawns instead of using so much wasteful, non-native grass. Long term I hope to see LED-powered warehouses for urban produce production: http://www.ledinside.com/news/2014/7/japanese_farmer_partners_with_ge_to_develop_world_largest_led_indoor_farm http://www.ledinside.com/news/2014/7/japanese_farmer_partner... Fresh, local, efficient, and no need for pesticides.
- sirseal 12y ago
  Local urban farming is not assured to produce healthier nor tastier food. That squarely lies in the hands of the farmer. Farming is a skill; most people are not good at it. LED powered farmhouses would be nice. But going back to the person that you commented on, now we're making energy to give to plants, instead of using the sun directly to make plants. This has the potential (especially in today's economy) to increase the carbon footprint of urban growing. Certainly local. Fresh most likely. Efficient? Not so simple, probably not as efficient. And unless you're using GMOs that are resistant to invasive insect species, you'll still need pesticides (or lots of human hours....which severely decreases efficiency and increases cost).
  - angersock 12y ago
    It's a more robust food source if your supply chains break down or are subject to things like oil price increases. Pests can be controlled with careful selection of plants and other factors--you don't need to douse your plants with chemicals in a lot of cases.
  - dubfan 12y ago
    > And unless you're using GMOs that are resistant to invasive insect species, you'll still need pesticides (or lots of human hours....which severely decreases efficiency and increases cost). And good luck convincing pseudo-environmentalists that GMOs aren't evil.
  - beamatronic 12y ago
    "That squarely lies in the hands of the farmer. Farming is a skill;" I want to believe. However most food production is now controlled by large corporations.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
  - bluthru 12y ago
    >Local urban farming is not assured to produce healthier nor tastier food. That squarely lies in the hands of the farmer. Farming is a skill; most people are not good at it. One word: tomato. Supermarket tomatoes are grown to survive shipping. Tomatoes that you grow yourself are always more delicious. I'm not sure why I was downvoted without an explanation. What I've stated is 100% factual: http://content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2118455,00.html http://content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2118455,0...
    - evilduck 12y ago
      Because you can't generalize from a single datapoint. Tomatoes are pretty much the extreme example of this where it favors home grown plants. There's a large swath of plants where they aren't likely to be clearly better, and some where they're likely to be worse than the ones grown at scale (i.e. try growing an Apple tree from seed).
- normloman 12y ago
  Not saying urban gardens aren't beautiful or enlightening. But people are advocating local food grown in urban gardens for environmental and health reasons. I want to show that this is false, except in a few exceptional cases. Your link is one of them. But realize that hydroponics isn't most people's idea of urban farming. Also, there are drawbacks to the hydroponic approach (energy costs for lighting, manufacture of nutrient solution). That said, there's a lot of potential in hydroponics, especially when you combine it with renewable energy, and I hope it continues to spread.
codingdave 12y ago
Grow whatever grows best in your area. Grow some of the food that doesn't grow best, but still is productive. Eat locally. Eat seasonally. Can/preserve food when you have an excess at harvest time, use cold storage liberally. Trade harvests with your neighbors to get more variety. Do that, and the issues raised in your citations are pretty much fixed. (And while I didn't have time to read the longer article, even its abstract at top said that proper vegetable storage can resolve the issues.) There are also more benefits to growing your own food than decreasing a carbon footprint. We put a ton of work into our family farm, to help our kids grow up to be stronger people with a better understanding of where food and other household products come from. It is hard work, and doing it purely on solar power and manual labor makes it even harder. Buying food at a grocery store would be WAY easier, but doing things the easy way isn't our goal in life. Carbon footprints don't even make the list when we talk about the reasons why we do this.
penguindev 12y ago
Downvoters: do you have a problem with anyone having a different opinion?
- peterwwillis 12y ago
  Please don't ask for justifications for downvoting. It's a fire hose, not a paint brush.
  - penguindev 12y ago
    It subtracts value from the site. It's getting really, really old. Critical thought doesn't seem welcome here.
    - peterwwillis 12y ago
      Depends what you mean by critical thought. 'Critical' as in "expressing adverse or disapproving comments or judgments"? Nope, not welcome. 'Critical' as in "crucial or highly important", or "able to discern"? Sure, that's welcome. The criteria for comments on HN is actually fairly demanding [https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html]. If your comment does not teach something, if it's not positive or civil, or if it's rude or dumb, it's basically supposed to be downvoted automatically. The kinds of comments that get downvoted the most are negative ones (obviously), followed by generalized opinions, attempts at jokes, politics, and finally, meta-complaints about the discourse on HN. In doing so, it raises the value of the site for people who don't find those kind of comments deeply interesting. On a personal level, it gets really, really old when people complain about how unfairly other people treat them. If you're getting downvoted and you don't want to be downvoted, either change your tune to get upvotes, move on to a community that likes you the way you are, or stop caring if you're downvoted or not.
crpatino 12y ago
I found your naming of urban gardening as "faux-environmentalism" as extremely offensive. I have checked you PDF source and it basically says that, if urban gardeners use the same methods as industrial agribusiness producers, the transport part of CO2-footprint is negligible. Which of course is technically correct, but deceptively irrelevant. You see, is like a paper claiming that "bikes are more pollutant than cars". Then you read the article and the fine print says their working assumption is that cyclist will jerry-rig their bikes with diesel motors, effectively turning those in DIY motorcycles. No surprise that properly engineered cars manufactured in an assembly line with QA controls comes up way ahead. That being said, your second source raises some very real concerns, like the need to eat seasonally and not to try to grow exotic stuff in your back yard. All in all, I would qualify your original statement and say that urban gardening can turn into a form of cargo cult environmentalism, if and when the person implementing it does so without performing their due diligence before putting the first seeds on the ground.
anigbrowl 12y ago
I grow enough fruit and veg that I barter some surplus with other local growers, and the only resources I use are wastewater and composted kitchen leftovers, and the occasional bag of potting soil (like 1 a year). It's not especially efficient but I'm happy with a sub-optimal producer surplus, given the minimal investment required. The opportunity cost is likewise minimal - the space used for growing food would otherwise be filled with decorative but unproductive plants, which don't have any particular economic value for me because I'm not into flowers or having a well-manicured lawn. Admittedly it's easy for me because living near the Oaklnd/Berkeley border I enjoy great weather, major pollutants were phased out earlier here than anywhere else in the country, I don't need to work the soil intensively to produce more than I can eat, nor am I dependent on selling food for my income. You're quite right that commercial food production involves large comparative advantages. But getting several hundred dollars' worth of food a year out of the garden suits me fine and I'm pretty sure the resultant carbon footprint is too shallow to measure.
schiffern 12y ago
>It's much more efficient to grow food where it grows best Food grows best (when measured in both biomass-per-acre and biomass-per-man-hour) in forests, not monoculture fields. This becomes pretty obvious when you compare the percentage of sunlight that hits bare soil. The only trick is to figure out how to design a forest (a non-trivial task by itself) using species that produces edible biomass, and arrange everything such that it's easy to harvest. One example of forest gardening: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFbcn06h8w4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFbcn06h8w4
- Litost 12y ago
  Many thanks for the post, and the link which eventually led me to this, in which Martin Crawford also appears: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVBYgg013KM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVBYgg013KM which also explains why both old (reliant on intensive manual labour) and modern farming methods (almost entirely reliant on oil) are unsustainable in the long term.

bluthru 12y ago

The associated benefits cannot be overstated: education, beauty, community, a connection to nature, health, and most assuredly tasting better. Urban community gardens are a very worthwhile pursuit. People should be encouraged to garden with their lawns instead of using so much wasteful, non-native grass. Long term I hope to see LED-powered warehouses for urban produce production: http://www.ledinside.com/news/2014/7/japanese_farmer_partners_with_ge_to_develop_world_largest_led_indoor_farm http://www.ledinside.com/news/2014/7/japanese_farmer_partner... Fresh, local, efficient, and no need for pesticides.

sirseal 12y ago
Local urban farming is not assured to produce healthier nor tastier food. That squarely lies in the hands of the farmer. Farming is a skill; most people are not good at it. LED powered farmhouses would be nice. But going back to the person that you commented on, now we're making energy to give to plants, instead of using the sun directly to make plants. This has the potential (especially in today's economy) to increase the carbon footprint of urban growing. Certainly local. Fresh most likely. Efficient? Not so simple, probably not as efficient. And unless you're using GMOs that are resistant to invasive insect species, you'll still need pesticides (or lots of human hours....which severely decreases efficiency and increases cost).
- angersock 12y ago
  It's a more robust food source if your supply chains break down or are subject to things like oil price increases. Pests can be controlled with careful selection of plants and other factors--you don't need to douse your plants with chemicals in a lot of cases.
- dubfan 12y ago
  > And unless you're using GMOs that are resistant to invasive insect species, you'll still need pesticides (or lots of human hours....which severely decreases efficiency and increases cost). And good luck convincing pseudo-environmentalists that GMOs aren't evil.
- beamatronic 12y ago
  "That squarely lies in the hands of the farmer. Farming is a skill;" I want to believe. However most food production is now controlled by large corporations.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- bluthru 12y ago
  >Local urban farming is not assured to produce healthier nor tastier food. That squarely lies in the hands of the farmer. Farming is a skill; most people are not good at it. One word: tomato. Supermarket tomatoes are grown to survive shipping. Tomatoes that you grow yourself are always more delicious. I'm not sure why I was downvoted without an explanation. What I've stated is 100% factual: http://content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2118455,00.html http://content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2118455,0...
  - evilduck 12y ago
    Because you can't generalize from a single datapoint. Tomatoes are pretty much the extreme example of this where it favors home grown plants. There's a large swath of plants where they aren't likely to be clearly better, and some where they're likely to be worse than the ones grown at scale (i.e. try growing an Apple tree from seed).
normloman 12y ago
Not saying urban gardens aren't beautiful or enlightening. But people are advocating local food grown in urban gardens for environmental and health reasons. I want to show that this is false, except in a few exceptional cases. Your link is one of them. But realize that hydroponics isn't most people's idea of urban farming. Also, there are drawbacks to the hydroponic approach (energy costs for lighting, manufacture of nutrient solution). That said, there's a lot of potential in hydroponics, especially when you combine it with renewable energy, and I hope it continues to spread.

codingdave 12y ago

Grow whatever grows best in your area. Grow some of the food that doesn't grow best, but still is productive. Eat locally. Eat seasonally. Can/preserve food when you have an excess at harvest time, use cold storage liberally. Trade harvests with your neighbors to get more variety. Do that, and the issues raised in your citations are pretty much fixed. (And while I didn't have time to read the longer article, even its abstract at top said that proper vegetable storage can resolve the issues.) There are also more benefits to growing your own food than decreasing a carbon footprint. We put a ton of work into our family farm, to help our kids grow up to be stronger people with a better understanding of where food and other household products come from. It is hard work, and doing it purely on solar power and manual labor makes it even harder. Buying food at a grocery store would be WAY easier, but doing things the easy way isn't our goal in life. Carbon footprints don't even make the list when we talk about the reasons why we do this.

penguindev 12y ago

Downvoters: do you have a problem with anyone having a different opinion?

peterwwillis 12y ago
Please don't ask for justifications for downvoting. It's a fire hose, not a paint brush.
- penguindev 12y ago
  It subtracts value from the site. It's getting really, really old. Critical thought doesn't seem welcome here.
  - peterwwillis 12y ago
    Depends what you mean by critical thought. 'Critical' as in "expressing adverse or disapproving comments or judgments"? Nope, not welcome. 'Critical' as in "crucial or highly important", or "able to discern"? Sure, that's welcome. The criteria for comments on HN is actually fairly demanding [https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html]. If your comment does not teach something, if it's not positive or civil, or if it's rude or dumb, it's basically supposed to be downvoted automatically. The kinds of comments that get downvoted the most are negative ones (obviously), followed by generalized opinions, attempts at jokes, politics, and finally, meta-complaints about the discourse on HN. In doing so, it raises the value of the site for people who don't find those kind of comments deeply interesting. On a personal level, it gets really, really old when people complain about how unfairly other people treat them. If you're getting downvoted and you don't want to be downvoted, either change your tune to get upvotes, move on to a community that likes you the way you are, or stop caring if you're downvoted or not.

crpatino 12y ago

I found your naming of urban gardening as "faux-environmentalism" as extremely offensive. I have checked you PDF source and it basically says that, if urban gardeners use the same methods as industrial agribusiness producers, the transport part of CO2-footprint is negligible. Which of course is technically correct, but deceptively irrelevant. You see, is like a paper claiming that "bikes are more pollutant than cars". Then you read the article and the fine print says their working assumption is that cyclist will jerry-rig their bikes with diesel motors, effectively turning those in DIY motorcycles. No surprise that properly engineered cars manufactured in an assembly line with QA controls comes up way ahead. That being said, your second source raises some very real concerns, like the need to eat seasonally and not to try to grow exotic stuff in your back yard. All in all, I would qualify your original statement and say that urban gardening can turn into a form of cargo cult environmentalism, if and when the person implementing it does so without performing their due diligence before putting the first seeds on the ground.

anigbrowl 12y ago

I grow enough fruit and veg that I barter some surplus with other local growers, and the only resources I use are wastewater and composted kitchen leftovers, and the occasional bag of potting soil (like 1 a year). It's not especially efficient but I'm happy with a sub-optimal producer surplus, given the minimal investment required. The opportunity cost is likewise minimal - the space used for growing food would otherwise be filled with decorative but unproductive plants, which don't have any particular economic value for me because I'm not into flowers or having a well-manicured lawn. Admittedly it's easy for me because living near the Oaklnd/Berkeley border I enjoy great weather, major pollutants were phased out earlier here than anywhere else in the country, I don't need to work the soil intensively to produce more than I can eat, nor am I dependent on selling food for my income. You're quite right that commercial food production involves large comparative advantages. But getting several hundred dollars' worth of food a year out of the garden suits me fine and I'm pretty sure the resultant carbon footprint is too shallow to measure.

schiffern 12y ago

>It's much more efficient to grow food where it grows best Food grows best (when measured in both biomass-per-acre and biomass-per-man-hour) in forests, not monoculture fields. This becomes pretty obvious when you compare the percentage of sunlight that hits bare soil. The only trick is to figure out how to design a forest (a non-trivial task by itself) using species that produces edible biomass, and arrange everything such that it's easy to harvest. One example of forest gardening: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFbcn06h8w4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFbcn06h8w4

Litost 12y ago
Many thanks for the post, and the link which eventually led me to this, in which Martin Crawford also appears: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVBYgg013KM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVBYgg013KM which also explains why both old (reliant on intensive manual labour) and modern farming methods (almost entirely reliant on oil) are unsustainable in the long term.