Food Not Lawns

From the article “Don’t be Wasted on Grass! Lawns to Gardens!” by Heather Coburn, http://www.foodnotlawns.com/lawns_to_gardens.html

“French aristocrats popularized the idea of the green grassy lawn in the eighteenth century, when they planted the agricultural fields around their estates to grass, to send the message that they had more land than they needed and could therefore afford to waste some. Meanwhile, French peasants starved for lack of available ground, and the resulting frustration might have had something to do with the French Revolution in 1789.”

Other fun facts:
- Today, 58 million Americans spend approximately $30 billion every year to maintain over 23 million acres of lawn. That’s an average of over a third of an acre and $517 each. The same size plot of land could still have a small lawn for recreation, plus produce all of the vegetables needed to feed a family of six.

- The lawns in the United States consume around 270 billion gallons of water a week—enough to water 81 million acres of organic vegetables, all summer long.

- Lawns use ten times as many chemicals per acre as industrial farmland.

- The pollution emitted from a power mower in just one hour is equal to the amount from a car being driven 350 miles. In fact, lawns use more equipment, labor, fuel, and agricultural toxins than industrial farming, making lawns the largest agricultural sector in the United States.

This little website (and the book that accompanies it) plays on the Food Not Bombs idea and takes it a step further. Rather than growing grass for lawns (still not totally sure what those are for), and wasting all that time mowing the grass (because who really enjoys that, anyway?), we could use the lawn for something particularly useful. Such as… food. It’s a novel concept, but it shouldn’t be. In fact, it’s alarmingly obvious.

See earlier post on food crisis.

Now, taking out lawns and replacing them with beautiful, productive vegetable gardens not only makes more sense, but appears to be better for the environment, and better for the local economy (ie not buying our food from California) and educational and much more attractive. And less time intensive, depending on what kind of food plants you put in! You could have a yard full of fruit trees, and a beautiful shady place to relax, and more peaches than you know what to do with. All we have to do is abandon the mindset that a lush, green, chemically treated lawn somehow puts you in a higher income bracket in the perception of your neighbors.

Imagine the possibilities…

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Rain, rain...

In the early 90's, a small group of people in Los Angeles tried to convince their government that there was a sustainable solution to the city's water crisis.

Rainwater.

Since LA is located in a desert, much of the water has to be trucked in from out of state. It's the reason why the Colorado River no longer reaches the Pacific Ocean. The city is constantly thirsty, yet, in the wet season, also constantly flooded. Most of the city is covered in non-permeable surfaces like asphalt and macadam, making it a disaster area when any significant amount of rain falls on the city.

Even so, public officials laughed at the idea of rainwater catchment systems in LA. They couldn't see the benefits.

Several years later, non-profit organization TreePeople created a 100% effective catchment system for a typical LA single-family home. It had two cisterns for water storage, a grated driveway and drywell to catch runoff, and landscaping that retained rainwater. In a demonstration in front of public officials where a firehose rained upon the house, no water gushed out into the street. Instead it was collected and stored in the cisterns or allowed to percolate back into the aquifer.

Officials were amazed. They immediately asked TreePeople to modify larger buildings. This led the organization to create rainwater catchment systems for two public elementary schools. They tore up the asphalt around the schools (the school system had begun to pave the entire property to save on landscape maintenance costs) and created more green space, dug swales to let the rainwater pool and sink into the ground, and installed huge underground cisterns, allowing the schools to use almost exclusively rainwater.

Now, TreePeople is working with the LA Department of Public Works to change the Sun Valley area in the San Fernando Valley, applying their methods to an even larger scale to reduce runoff and prevent millions of gallons from being imported into the area.

So, why hasn't this caught elsewhere?

Rainwater catchment isn't new. It's been around in India and China for thousands of years, with each home having their own catchment system to help replenish their wells. In India, man-made ponds collect rainwater that is then used for irrigation, turning once barren soil into lush, fertile farmland.

Unfortunately, in the United States, only the more arid areas, such as California and Texas, have even considered rainwater catchment systems to help avert a drought crisis. In some states, such as Michigan, rainwater harvesting is illegal.

To me, the solution to the water shortages, current and future, seems obvious. Instead of carting millions of gallons of water all across the country, the smarter option would be to collect what precipitation already falls on the ground. Even propping a trashcan covered in a window screen against your downspout would save on irrigation costs for your lawn.

Rainwater harvesting helps offsets your water bills, but also reduces environmental impact. Storm runoff floods streets and lawns, collecting all sorts of nasty chemicals from your lawn and driveway before heading down the sewer and into a nearby stream. Rainwater catchment slows down and can even stop the runoff process. Here are some very simple ways you can reduce stormwater runoff at home:

1. Rinse out an old trashcan, barrel, or container from the garage, place a screen over it (so birds and small animals don't get it) and secure the screen around the container. Place the container below your downspout. Scoop out rainwater as needed to water your plants.

2. If you're doing some landscaping, think about what you're planting. Use native, drought-tolerant plants that require less water and are more beneficial to the area. Hardy trees, shrubs, and grasses are great additions to your landscaping.

3. If you're doing some more intensive re-landscaping, think about creating some swales or depressed areas. Swales can be sunken areas in your backyard filled with mulch and yard trimmings that help absorb rainwater. In your front yard you can lower the area right before your sidewalk and plant with mulch and grasses to help keep rainwater from flooding onto the sidewalk and street. Think about how your current landscaping works and if it is catchment-friendly.

4. If you're putting in a new driveway, sidewalk, or pathway around your home, consider using permeable surfaces. This way the rain can soak into them and percolate into the ground instead of rushing off the surface.

Using rainwater reduces reliance on the public system, wells, and money spent for non-potable water use. It is a powerful and relatively untapped resource in the United States. Citizens can show their government that it is a viable option and can help avert any future water crisis.

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Radical Sustainability

“For example, a mainstream sustainable development program might propose installing a series of solar panels in a rural village. But solar panels only have about a 25-year life span, provided they’re not damaged sooner, and after this period the panels are useless. Typically these projects don’t consider whether or not the village has the technical expertise, access to tools or manufacturing, or money necessary to repair or replace the panels. Without these resources the village finds itself in a position of dependency. When the panels fail they must wait for someone to donate another set…

…instead of installing solar panels a radical sustainable development project might use locally harvested wood to construct a windmill that powers alternators made from scrap cars and other salvaged materials that are locally plentiful. The windmill’s design would be simple enough to be easily repaired, giving it a lifespan considerably longer than solar panels. Equally important, the design could be replicable, giving neighboring villages independence from charity.”

-Scott Kellogg and Stacy Pettigrew, Toolbox for Sustainable City Living

This is an immensely relevant point. Look at what most mainstream sources are calling sustainable. Solar panels? By what definition is a solar panel sustainable at all? They take an enormous amount of energy to produce, usually making use of electricity that’s powered by one of the non-environmentally friendly sources, whether coal or nuclear or hydroelectric. They’re expensive. And it’s unlikely the price will go down anytime soon. To top it all off, they don’t even last that long, and then what? What do you do with solar panels who have overstayed their welcome?

At best solar panels are a temporary solution- and not a very effective one, either. Better than burning coal, certainly. But think of this, as well: who buys solar panels? Not electric companies, that’s for sure. The majority of solar panels go on private buildings, or homes. Consumers are spending more money, supposedly to reduce greenhouse gases, but homeowners aren’t using nearly as much power as say, major industries. Who are doing little if anything at all to “reduce their footprint.”

No, most companies are just looking for something else to sell. Does the fact that Toyota is going to halt production on large trucks and build more Priuses mean they’ve wisened up and decided to be more environmentally friendly? No. They just realize trucks aren’t the moneymakers right now. Are Priuses anywhere near sustainable? Absolutely not. They may have fewer emissions- but what about the building process? Doesn’t that require an absurd quantity of resources? And what about the cars we already have? What happens to them?

The point is, the things we’re calling sustainable now are by no means so. It’s basically a poor justification to maintain a consumer economy. Because if we really wanted to look at sustainable alternatives- communities living off little or no power, generated entirely by processes they’ve built themselves from local or scrap materials they didn’t have to pay a distant company for- well, we’d really have to start questioning our entire economy, wouldn’t we? If people generated their own power- think it through. Imagine the implications.

And then ask again if our present society really wants to be sustainable.

I know I do.

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Food Crisis? What They're Not Saying

There’s a lot of discussion right now about an upcoming food crisis. A lot of the blame has been placed particularly on biofuels- if corn is used to produce ethanol for gasoline, it isn’t used as a food source, many claim. The debate about biofuels is grounded in legitimate concerns, as biofuels alone can never replace our current reliance on fossil fuels. There isn’t enough land on the planet to produce that volume of organic material.

However, it doesn’t hurt to look at where the vast majority of corn is actually going. Corn, along with the other grain crops (soybeans, wheat, barley, rye), makes up the vast majority of what we call conventional agriculture in the US, particularly here on the Eastern Shore. But those grains are not raised for people food (nor for biofuels). They are primarily fed to chickens.

All across the country, low-grade grain crops are raised explicitly for chickens, cows, and other livestock, who are fattened on the high protein grains just before they find their way to the store. The amount of grain it takes to produce a pound of beef could alternatively produce about 12 loaves of bread. The media (and most of the UN committees) claim we need to up food production in order to meet the crisis, but in reality, we are producing more than enough food, but using it inefficiently. Aside from feeding our grain crops to livestock, our biggest problem is distribution. People are starving because they have to buy food imported from elsewhere, which makes very little sense when you consider the places with the highest rates of starvation (developing countries) could largely support themselves agriculturally- if only those regions weren’t devoted to producing exports of their own. For a very, very long time (thousands of years) people have supported themselves on what they could grow in their own region, and got along fairly well doing so. Why does this make sense? Well, because it means people aren’t paying for both the food AND the shipping that brought it to them, and a few middle men along the way. They’re just paying for the food, or raising it themselves.

This isn’t the end all be all solution. There are many, many complex issues involved with agriculture (and I will likely post on them again). But I wanted to take this opportunity, as the weather warms, to point out that we have one solution to a global food crisis right here in Chestertown. And that is the weekly Chestertown Farmer’s Market. That’s right, if you want to support agriculture, farmers, and help prevent a food crisis right here on the Eastern Shore, all you have to do is take a trip down to the Farmer’s Market. Pick up some beautiful local asparagus. Sample something you may not be familiar with- a new type of lettuce, or something a little more exotic like bok choi. Meet your local growers, and learn something new. Best of all, keep your money right here, in the Eastern Shore economy, rather than seeing it paid out to some distant company that’s importing their tomatoes from South America and spending all their profits on shipping and advertisement. In turn, the people of South America can start growing food for themselves, rather than you- and maybe come a little closer to alleviating a worldwide crisis. Sound farfetched? Maybe. But we have to start somewhere, and when it gets down to it, the Eastern Shore tomatoes taste better anyway.

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Deep Green Thoughts

Environmental ethics is a big, convoluted subject. The common perception seems to be, WalMart = bad, giant polluting factories = bad, loggers and litterers and the big bad poachers and clear cutters and all the rest = bad. We’ve got that down.

But there’s also a concept that transfers the evil-doing to things like "invasive" species. For example, phragmites, aka the common reed, are often the recipients of the hatred of environmentalists because they sprout up like crazy in wetlands everywhere, choking out native species and generally lowering the biodiversity of the marsh. Environmentalists, and I use the term loosely, respond by hacking them to pieces and usually burning them, or applying some kind of herbicide in an attempt to clear the area.

Phragmites, however, are really just doing their thing. They thrive in areas high in nitrogen. Areas, for example, where there may be a lot of run-off from agriculture or communities with lawns. Areas where people are more likely to notice the overzealous growth of these very common plants and attempt to destroy them.

Really, however, the phragmites are not the criminals. They are doing what they do best, which is grow prolifically in areas where there is an excess of nutrients. The solution, then, is not to hack them to pieces, but to stop the excess runoff of nutrients from homes and parks and all the rest. Presuming, of course, our goal is to allow native species to return and flourish. In that case, the enemy would be… ourselves? Uh-oh.

There is a tendency to point fingers at the “bad guys” in the battle to save the planet. We tend to ignore the basic ecological principles that are in fact governing everything we do- for example, it’s really no surprise that we’re in the mess we’re in right now, and by that I mean the whole slew of environmental problems, from endangered species to pollution. Our instinct is to provide for ourselves as best we can, and that’s what we’ve been trying to do. The catch is that when populations outstrip their resources, they typically die out. To return to the phragmites, imagine if the nitrogen ran out. The phragmites would die back. If it increased, they would come back. This is all logical and natural and perfectly sensible. You wouldn’t expect them to do anything else.

The same is true of humans, only on a much larger scale because we are so infinitely adaptable. This has allowed us to continue consuming resources for so long that we seem to have gotten the idea into our head that we will never run out, and that feedback mechanisms don’t apply to human beings. We seem to think we are exempt from the same rules that cause phragmites to die back. However, our own particular feedback mechanism will kick in sooner or later, and then we’re going to have a very, very, serious problem.

Unless, of course, we decide to do something about it. Humans did live, given in much smaller numbers, quite well with their environment, for thousands and thousands of years. It’s not impossible to readapt to living in a manner that will not result in the imminent catastrophic die back of our species. And it starts by realizing we’re not saving the planet. That’s a little egotistical of us. The planet can save itself, and if we all disappeared right now would get on very nicely. What we’re really doing is saving ourselves: saving the planet in a state that will still support human life.

… to be continued.

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A Lowest Price July 4th

While spending time in my boyfriend's hometown of Pasadena during the long weekend, I had the chance to visit the scariest. Walmart. ever.

After my hometown's Walmart "upgraded" to Super (ie added a grocery store), I didn't think a WalMart could get bigger and scarier. Until I visited SuperMegaHugeScary Walmart. I guess it's cheaper to build your megastore like a warehouse, keeping prices even cheaper (yeah!), but I would never say that it keeps you happy. I stood there, gawking at the rows and rows and rows of merchandise that blended into the next rows and rows of merchandise. It was all the same. And it scared me.

Of course, this was a brand-spankin' new Walmart, so (duh) it was going to be bigger. When you build it new, you have to build bigger right?

(Answer: Wrong.)

Living in a historic 18th-19th century town like Chestertown is nice. There are strict building regulations on how big a new property can be: meaning nothing is going to get bigger than the pretty victorian houses downtown, and even the neighborhoods don't seem threatening.

But, driving across the bridge into Queen Anne's County, I see dozens upon dozens of scary megahouses, all over 5,000 sq. ft. easily, with 20 windows and three stories. I angrily stare at them and then twitch when I see another For Sale sign stuck into 96 acres of farmland. I've watched acres and acres of farmland and field disappear into housing developments in Pennsylvania, and I don't want to see it happen on the Eastern Shore (anymore than it already has).

But what does this have to do with WalMart? In my mind, everything.

The growth of suburban sprawl on the Eastern Shore means more businesses, like grocery and convenience stores, popping up in strip malls. Chestertown already has two grocery stores, several convenience stores and gas stations, and many takeout and fast food restaurants. It's a pretty ample amount for a fairly small town.

But, as more and more suburbs appear in nearby Galena and QA County, people and developers want - you guessed it - a WalMart. You don't need those two grocery stores and CVS's when you have a WalMart, especially since that WalMart will be open 24/7 and offer lower prices.

Luckily, many citizens of Chestertown and surrounding towns have spoken very clearly about their feelings on a WalMart. They don't want one. But, then again, a lot of people still do. Should we give in to lower prices? Is it really cheaper in the long run to establish a Wal-Mart in Kent County?

No thank you, SuperMegaHugeScary WalMart. No thank you.

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