common ground

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the ability to know exactly where their food comes from and what is in it. The distance between producer and consumer is non-existent; they become one and the same.

Beyond addressing health and environmental issues, the urban agriculture movement is doing something bigger: it’s bringing communities together. Dundem Csaiyala, a leader of the alternative agriculture movement in Northeastern Thailand, says, “When people come together, it’s like a big book in which everyone’s a chapter. Everyone can learn from each other.” Spaces like community gardens provide a place where people can share knowledge, preserve culture through cultivating native seeds, and teach children about food and the earth. Local food networks spread knowledge about food and the environment, connecting people to the land in ways that have long been forgotten. When people grow their own food, they have a closer relationship with both the food they eat and the friends with whom they eat it.

These days, it seems normal to shell out over $100 a week at the grocery store. Rising food prices have jeopardized peoples’ food security everywhere, but especially in urban areas. Growing your own food guarantees food security.

When you grow your own food, the costs for things like chemical fertilizers and pesticides, transportation, electricity, and labor vanish. The only thing you have to pay for is the seeds. Csaiyala observes, “The current economic system is like a hole in a bowl. People get more money but it disappears through the hole. Why? Because they pay for food three times a day. When they grow their own food, this cost disappears.” For many urban poor, the ability to grow some of their own food is reassuring. At the end of the day, even if they have very little money, they can reach into the ground and pull out something to eat.

Urban agriculture movements allow city dwellers to take small steps towards being more self-reliant. Though people in cities will never be completely independent, by growing some of their own food they reduce their dependency on others. Srithan community uses the gardens at the school as a medium by which people can come together to improve themselves and their community. Thirty percent of a typical American’s income goes towards food. What can reduce that cost? Look in your own backyard, look in your community: you can grow food just about anywhere, so get planting!

One generation plants the trees; another one gets the shade.
—Chinese Proverb