Cities are Already Home to Macro Farms, Why Not Micro Farms?

According the the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency land use overview, “about two-thirds of the total value of U.S. agricultural production takes place in, or adjacent to, metropolitan counties (NRCS). About 1/3 of all U.S. farms are actually within metropolitan areas, representing 18% of the total farmland in this country.”

This, of course, is the source of a great deal of tension throughout our great land, as urban developments sprawl ever outwards, and the boundary between urban and rural gravitates further and further from the city center.

We drive past an excellent example every morning.  A new grocery store, which we refer to as “H.E.B.B.C.” for reasons not to be enumerated here, is growing brick-by-brick out of a cow pasture in which there are still many cuds being chewed.

This is, perhaps, upsetting to some purists who see economic development as a dirty word. We suppose it would be pleasant to see many strip malls torn down and replaced with dewberry brambles, but on the other hand, it would be equally unpleasant to be burdened by higher unemployment and longer lines at the soup kitchen. As with most things in life, there needs to be some balance.

Enter the urban small-scale farm. This is a concept that comes in many flavors, ranging from folk who do a lot of container gardening on their patios, to people with larger vegetable gardens in their back (or sometimes front) yards, to full production farms, complete with tractors and DBA paperwork, replete with agricultural use exemptions on their property taxes.

What makes a small farm any better than a large farm?

In order to fully answer that question, you really have to ask yourself a different question: why are modern farms so goldurned big?

The amount of arable land in use for agriculture in the contiguous 48 United States dwarfs that of every country in the world except India; if the U.S. has any sort of natural advantage or superiority over any other country, it is in farmland. Farms are what made this country great, but they are quickly disappearing, or more frequently, folding into larger “agricultural concerns”. In short, most food is now produced by giant multinational corporations. The Supreme Court may have recently decided that corporations are people, but those of us with working brain cells know that this is not true. Corporations are pieces of paper whose function in life is to produce other pieces of paper.

What are some of the consequences of this shift in who is doing our farming?

The biggest and most obvious difference is in methods of production. Farming is now highly mechanized, and production is regulated with an eye towards maximum production rather than with an eye towards health or long-term sustainability. The science of agriculture has come up with some truly remarkable ways to fight crop loss due to disease or dehydration, but at some costs which are not always apparent to the naked eye.

Quoting from the EPA again:

“Excessive nitrate in ground water can present a direct health hazard to very young infants. Ingestion of nitrate (NO3) can bind with hemoglobin in the infant's bloodstream and cause a condition called methemoglobinemia or "blue baby" syndrome. Nitrate does not bind to soil particles and is quite soluble, making it susceptible to leaching into groundwater if not used by the crop.”

Myrtle has warned about the dangers of contaminated drinking water, and it is fairly obvious that if numerous farms are in our urban areas, and runoff from farms can potentially contaminate our water… well, we’ll let you draw your own conclusions.

Other dangers lurk, as well. The promise of genetically engineered foods is that there may be foods resistant to diseases which reduce crop yields, and it can even produce crops which don’t need as much water; however, the long term health effects of eating such foods is entirely unknown; worse still from our point of view, they just don’t taste very good. If you’re going to potentially be poisoning yourself, shouldn’t it at least have some kind of payoff?

And we haven’t even talked about meat production yet. Fully 1/4th of the arable land in this country is taken up with cattle production. Apart from the apaulling land and water use realities (it takes 40 times as much water to raise a pound of beef as it does to grow a pound of wheat), large-scale agribusiness is a nightmare waiting to happen. High-density feed lots sound high tech, but all they boil down to is a ridiculously unethical and highly unhealthy way to produce the most meat possible in the shortest amount of time.

A high density feed lot basically consists of very small pens with animals being force-fed high fat diets, often rich in additives like bone meal and fish meal, so as to maximize growth and minimize loss due to injury. Loss due to disease isn’t a problem because in addition to slaughtering well before the animals reach maturity, the “farmers” slaughter well before the incubation period of most of the potential diseases the animals may or may not be carrying.

To make matters worse, in addition to being perfect breeding grounds for many of the sorts of diseases with which we are bitterly familiar, high density lots are a perfect breeding ground for some new diseases we really don’t want to become too knowledgeable about. Prion diseases, which take many forms, have entered our consciousness through the back door in the form of “Mad Cow Disease”, aka bovine spongeiform encephalopathy.

The name is sorta scary, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. We are used to thinking of diseases as being caused by discrete agents – a bacteria, or a virus. These are small things, true, but we can think of them as “critters” who can be fought.

Prions, on the other hand, are not living things. They are not even the building blocks of living things. They are partial protein strands, and they are virtually undetectable, and they are everywhere. They are particularly noxious, however, when animals eat other animals of their own kind. Mad Cow Disease is just one notable example of a disease caused by these undetectable prions.

The incidence of prion disease in humans who have performed canibalistic rituals is the source for much amusing debate (there’s some reading we highly recommend of a rainy Sunday afternoon!), but the consensus seems to be pretty clear: if there is a pathological hazard in eating the brains of one’s own species, that hazard likely comes in the form of pathogenic prions.

So… guess what’s in the “bone meal” animals are fed on high-density lots? Go on, guess!

Once again, it seems to us that the payoff (easier to produce, cheaper Big Macs, Whoppers, Whataburgers, et al.) is not really worth the price.

All of which leads back to the small urban farm.

Techniques on a facility with just a few acres are naturally going to be significantly different than they would be on a large agribusiness operation. There will usually be far fewer fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides used on a small farm (even a non-organic small farm), for reasons of economy, and also because these chemicals aren’t as necessary for production purposes. A small farm will rotate crops more often, taking care of the problem of nitrates and nitrites via the use of green manures (crops like clover) which bind the nitrogen to the soil, in preparation for a followup crop like corn or squash.

There are other advantages, as well, which suggest we should buy our produce from small farmers rather than from agribusiness. Check out some of the advantages of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). Many also apply to purchasing your produce from farmer's markets or grocers who are supplied primarily by local growers:

• The use of Community Supported Agriculture arrangements increases the likelihood children will eat new varieties of fruits and vegetables, as they visit the farm of origin once or twice a year
• Buying local decreases transportation costs and increases the likelihood that your produce is fresh
• Knowing the farmer who produced your food increases the likelihood that you can make special requests
• Knowing the consumers who eat their food decreases the likelihood that farmers will cut corners on food safety
• The use of Community Supported Agrigulture arrangements allows farmers to receive payment early in the growing season, mitigating the traditional risks associated with crop failure – a late frost, for example, does not leave a farmer unable to afford to plant a replacement crop.

There are numerous sites devoted to Community Supported Agriculture; we suggest googling for “Community Supported Agriculture ” and looking into it.

And, of course, if you have any kind of yard at all, we really recommend you start a vegetable garden. If you've got room for it, plant some berry bushes (a fence line does quite nicely; they are pretty and functional). And fruit and nut trees are good, too.

But even if you don't have space, or are an apartment dweller, you can supplement vegetables received from a CSA via container gardening on your porch. Many ingenious designs exist for hanging baskets of tomatoes and cucumbers, in addition to “earth box” style beds, and various strawberry tower designs – the only limit is your imagination.

As for meat, grass-fed is best; if you really want to be sure your meat is safe, let us recommend halal meat.  Muslim restrictions on animal cruelty, coupled with their dietary restrictions, guarantees healthier meat and poultry.  Ask at your deli counter - many grocery chains and local butcher shops offer meat certified as halal.  We don't know of a similar shortcut on pork, but hey, our vegan friends think we've already gone too far, so what can we say?  Maybe Judaism and Islam both have a point:  bacon is tasty, but how can you tell if it's healthy?

Every little bit helps. So, don't let us hear you say “can't”! Let's make those statistics on arable land more misleading than they already are, shall we? Myrtle says your windowsill is not included in the count, but should be!

Happy farming!