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you can, but you'll have to shift to fish and tubers for calories
Just as an aside, but I read once that one way archeologists track the decline and fall of a civilisation is by the appearance of urban kichen/backyard gardens.
Anyway you could remember where you read that? I'd love to read up on it
I am almost sure it was just something from an article on sub-Roman Cirencester (England). It is a pretty well-preserved city site. It was in passing!
Finally! My evil plans come to fruition! Make everybody grow backyard gardens to collaps society!
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13d
Not necessarily a community effort, but I teach high school environmental science. We do a whole unit on agriculture and include urban gardening projects. Kids get to plan a garden, learn about yields and growing seasons and compost and different styles of gardening and all kinds of things. We even plant a variety of plants and record the data/run experiments. I’m hoping our course will inspire the younger generations to make better choices than we have. Several of my students did start home gardens this year, even if it was just a plant or two. Gotta start somewhere!
I also run our school garden club with a community garden, teaching kids sustainable gardening practices and growing food for our culinary classes.
My neighbour turned his entire backyard into a garden last year. I’ve been adding more space to my yard for gardening every year, but grass is nice on the one side for the kids and the dog to run around on. I grow enough carrots every year to be eating my harvest into January. This year it stretched into February. It’s all about storage. I can’t pickle or freeze everything.
Urban farming, I believe, is a great way to reduce food miles
In terms of impacts, what we eat is vastly more important then where it came from. Globally, food transport accounts for only 5% of a food's emissions while production emissions and land use change cause the bulk of the impact. Animals foods have the highest environmental impact, so focusing on shifting to a plant based food system rather than focusing on transport is a much better approach.
Unfortunately the climate nay-sayers say urban farming is worse.
Fruits and vegetables grown in urban gardens in Europe and the US have a carbon footprint six times larger on average than the same produce grown on conventional farms, according to researchers.
Researchers tracked greenhouse gas emissions from farm infrastructure, supplies and irrigation water through daily diary entries made during the 2019 season. They found that on average, food grown in city gardens emitted 0.42 kilograms (0.9 pounds) of carbon dioxide equivalent per serving, compared to 0.07 kilograms of CO2 equivalent per serving for food from conventional farms.
So forget that idea.
Even so, the plant foods that are worst for climate change are better than the most efficiently produced animal foods. So it's more important to make changes around what we eat rather than where we source it.
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I like urban farming and think it has numerous benefits in terms of health, community, and encouraging concern for the environment, but it's important to put it in context.
In terms of food security, urban farming is a rounding error. You're not going to get a significant number of calories from a bunch of people picking tomatoes in an urban lot, when compared to a combine in a wheat field.