For Sustainable Food Choices, Go Home-Grown
City should work together to boost the availability of locally produced food
As a newcomer to Baltimore, I was surprised at the lack of green spaces and grocery stores in my neighborhood - and throughout the city. I was born and raised in Austin, Texas, where lakes and rolling green hills are as abundant as the diverse farmers’ markets, local farm shares and grocery stores where residents can purchase their food at reasonable prices.
Sure, Baltimore has a handful of successful farmers’ markets, and there is a small movement in the direction of community-supported agriculture. However, while Baltimore is focused on population growth and economic development, in many neighborhoods residents struggle with relatively few affordable, healthy choices when it comes to buying food.
But unlike some of the seemingly intractable problems facing Baltimore - such as a high crime rate and an inadequate school system - this is something that would be fairly simple to change, and would have immediate, widespread benefits. City neighborhoods can and should take action to increase the number of healthy food choices available to us.
For a “locavore” like me, Baltimore can be a frustrating place to live and eat. I have had to work hard to find local, sustainably grown, affordable and healthy food choices in my neighborhood of Patterson Park. What I’ve discovered are a few high-price grocery stores, many high-price, low-quality corner stores, and one farmers’ market in nearby Highlandtown.
But why should anyone care? Why is local, sustainably grown produce better and healthier than what we buy in a corner store or chain grocery store?
First, buying local means putting money back into the local economy, which supports area farmers and boosts economic development and growth - something that Baltimore is aching for. Second, buying local means you are, more often than not, supporting sustainable agriculture, which is safer and sounder for improving and maintaining the environment, as well as human health.
Many fruits and vegetables may be shipped thousands of miles, meaning a lot of ozone-depleting fuel was used to move them here. That same produce may have been contaminated with harsh chemicals and pesticides, which are not only dangerous for our freshwater aquifers and the environment but also very threatening to human health.
Meat lovers should be aware that large animal-producing farms are now the main source of the chicken, beef, pork and even fish available to Americans. Yet big is not always better. These animal factories cause large-scale environmental degradation, as we’ve seen with the poultry industry on the Eastern Shore. Factory farming is a leading cause of ozone depletion, as well as community collapse (because small farmers no longer can compete against the big farm companies and because communities can’t stand the awful smell of the factories).
Large, overcrowded farms cause stress to the animals living in unsanitary quarters, often resulting in less-tasty meat. In addition, these large facilities threaten human health by creating large open lagoons filled with animal waste and kill by-products that can run off into our streams and neighborhoods.
Still not convinced? Well, another strong reason to buy local is that in learning to be flexible with buying the foods that are in season in your area, you may also save a buck or two - which is something everyone is interested in. The days of fast-food restaurants and doughnut shops vastly outnumbering affordable grocery stores must pass, if we are to have a chance at fighting the obesity epidemic sweeping our nation and our city.
Fortunately, there is great potential for improving access to sustainable, healthier and safer foods and food systems in all Baltimore neighborhoods, but the effort will require local community mobilization, organization and cooperation.
To address two local but widespread problems with one solution: Many abandoned row homes in Baltimore are used for drug deals, prostitution rings and criminal hideouts. Some of these dilapidated buildings could be sold to enterprising individuals, local nonprofits and community development groups, demolished or restored. They could then be used to create revived, safe, community spaces that could be used to hold community events such as farmers’ markets or other community-supported agricultural venues, nutrition and health education fairs and community or roof gardens, as I have seen done with great success in East Baltimore.
In addition, it would be very advantageous for neighborhood organizations and businesses to advocate for at least one more supermarket in each neighborhood that could be primarily stocked with locally grown produce and fair-trade items, allowing for increased sustainable community access to fresh, safe and affordable products.
And why couldn’t parents, teachers and students create a campaign for school-facilitated gardens, incorporating an environmentally sustainable and community-based initiative into current nutrition and healthy-living education courses? Despite a few local initiatives doing great community work like this, there is much work left to be done.
Through partnerships such as these, Patterson Park and neighborhoods throughout the city could launch a campaign to teach residents of all ages the importance and value of locally sustainable healthy food systems - and, not incidentally, give them access to better-tasting and healthier food.
Sarah Henly-Shepard is a master’s degree candidate at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her e-mail is shenlysh@jhsph.edu.
Copyright © 2008, The Baltimore Sun
Goddamn right! Three cheers for Sarah, and thanks to all who are participating in reestablishing our sovereignty over our food!
Sarah, my stereotypical greek immigrant grandparents owned a small restaurant in Baltimore for over 35 years…My grandmother took the bus to Lexington market every morning to buy produce/groceries, most of it locally grown/ produced back in those days. They lived in a small row house in southwest baltimore…12 feet wide. At the back of their small concrete lot (pad) was a 4′X 12′ 6″ raised piece of dirt. In it they grew tomatoes, basil, oregano, grapes (and hence grapevine leaves) and roses… My gandmother saved her eggshells in a jar and poured the stinky water onto her plants with regularity, The coffee grounds from every morning were added to the garden daily. But I remember even in the 1960s her garden was flourishing, and her neighbors dirt plots were just that…dirt……You can advocate for “community” gardens and produce co-ops…but the tools most people need in Baltimore are already at their disposal…what is needed is a change in mindset, there is much work left to be done…and this trend is over 30 years in the making…but it’s not Baltimore specific…and … A small farmer’s market can be set up in an empty parking lot just about anywhere…I think that’s your best start
Oh yeah…That part of Baltimore also had the “street Arabs” horse and cart vegetable salesmen…who would ride along selling whatever was currently in season…I especially remember carts loaded up with greenbeans, and watermelons. That was another way people got fresh, locally grown farm products in Baltimore city…I don’t know if they’ve been regulated out of business or their time has just passed…It’s been 20 years since I’ve lived in that area…
During the past twenty years I have noticed that most major US cities and even some smaller ones are striving to “Manhattanize”.
“Manhattanization” invariably leads to real estate prices too high for anybody to sell real food at anything approaching affordable prices.
Also, immigrants have historically operated many of the affordable grocery outlets in big cities, and recent anti-immigrant sentiments will reduce their numbers.
This topic of food security and food choice is to me more important and critical issue than anything else I read on CD. Slowly the industrial food complex is eroding our choice and diversity.
In addition to the problems mentioned in the article, the CAFO’s (concentrated animal feed operations) where most supermarket meat comes from are feeding their animals feedstocks of corn, soy, animal fats to animals that were not designed for consuming these products, hence comes the antibiotics to help a cow digest a grain, which it was never meant to eat. These systems create more problems than they solve.
Now, the government (with industry lobby) has decreed that my meat is safer coming from one of these government inspected facilities than for me to buy meat from my neighbor who has slaughtered it himself? From a neighbor who has taken a personal interest in every animal he raises, and who has no problem letting me see and observe and even participate in the entire process from birth to death (try going to Tyson foods and asking to let them see their kill floor). So the regulations around cows/pigs etc. makes us both criminals when I buy from him. The absurdity of this is too hard to swallow.
There are industries that are slowly trying to control our food supplies (ie. Monsanto through chemical fertilizers and seed patents and attempting to make seed saving illegal), Cargill through corn and soy processing and Tyson through industrialization of meat raising are slowly eroding our choice and food security. The means and ends they use are just as bad if not worse than the military industrial complex.
The more we can buy food locally and directly from the source the more our money goes to who deserves it the more the whole industrial food chain become irrelevant.
We have to take charge and grow our own food (even it it’s just basil in a pot on a balcony or spouts on a window sill)…support local food growers and artisans …choose slow food…study permaculture …diversify and decentralize….
Many fruits and vegetables may be shipped thousands of miles, meaning a lot of ozone-depleting fuel was used to move them here. That same produce may have been contaminated with harsh chemicals and pesticides
transport fossil/carbon spew - check.
pesticides toxification - check.
Oh and the synthetic fertilzers - those are hugely fossil/carbon intensive/expensive.
Oh and the really bad taste/nutrition in commercial varieties.
Oh and the wax and stickers and who knows what else they plaster all over the produce.
Oh and the genetic modifications which we don’t know about.
Oh and the many monoculture problems of commercial orchards..
Oh and the relative “retail” price of commercial produce is astronomical.
Oh and the political influence gained/abused by the produce corporations.
Oh and almost no variety to choose from - kinda makes you lose touch with nature.
Solve a dozen problems all at once by planting your own. Try heirloom varieties and grow from seed - save seed from year to year. Choose perennials over annuals - they grow deeper roots. On trees, plant several, graft branches from better trees to the others.
I’ve always been interested in inner city garden projects, but wondered what the best steps to take regarding toxins in the soil would be. Do you just test, and then act accordingly?
Check out www.lawnstogardens.com
This is the right idea - grow food at home and bring back victory gardens!
jakenewton-as to toxins in urban “soil”. You could test, but more often than not, folks will add A LOT of compost and do raised beds with good soil. And if you’re concerned abou eating food grown in a potentially contaminated soil, don’t. It’s still gonna be better than the stuff you get from the pesticide laden farms.
“And if you’re concerned abou eating food grown in a potentially contaminated soil, don’t.”
It would seem to me to depend on what toxin it is, and whether the crop in question concentrates that toxin in it’s tissues or not.
Another thing, I had heard of certain cover crops that tended to “detoxify” soils, any word on that and what toxins do or don’t apply?
Thanks for that link Pojer, I’m anti-lawn.
In 1975 I was a grantsman for the Economic Opportunity Board, the anti-poverty program in Albuquerque. Early that spring a North Valley landowner offered a one-acre field with adjacent irrigation rights, to our agency for $1 annual lease. We got a small grant for seeds, seedlings and gardening tools from area nurseries. An adjacent Catholic church even had a “Blessing of the Garden” ceremony the Sunday before we broke ground. Word got around about the community garden and its blessing; likely a good thing as the site was unfenced and potential poachers still travelled the nearby Santa Fe railroad tracks.
It was a small project but it worked to perfection; that’s why I’m recalling after 33 years. The site, basically donated for this purpose, hadn’t been used in years so the topsoil was surprisingly good; water from the adjacent ditch was plentiful and free; all the seeds and young plants were inexpensively procured; everyone in the community who wanted a plot got one; a special section was set aside and planted with vegetables for the old and infirm; and the church blessing made the site like hallowed ground.
The results were stupendous. Several varieties of tomatoes plus melons, canteloupes, bell peppers, green and red chilies, squash, cucumbers, carrots, celery, green beans and snap peas, pinto beans and okra grew in abundance. It got to the point we didn’t care about poachers–there was so much fresh food for the picking.
My point is there are thousands of empty lots and fields in cities everywhere. As we enter springtime, I think there are many such opportunities under our noses. I’ve been involved in two neighborhood gardens here in the heart of San Diego. Growing food is gratifying; eating it is even better.
Sure, try having a garden in empty lots in Philadelphia, Newark, Trenton, Camden, Chicago, Detroit, Toledo, Baltimore, and so on. Be sure to pack a street sweeper shotgun for protection from street gangs. This isn’t 1945.