Cultivation in a railway yard in Helsinki by Dodo, July 2009

Charming social farming

Cutting red tomato in half and finding green seeds inside it. Buying carrots from a market place and understanding after they were born in the other side of the globe. Missing those sunny days on your granny’s vegetable garden when being young.

Wouldn’t it be nice to see yourself your food growing and yet not to give up your urban life?

Romantic pictures or not, urban farming is a phenomenon of today which can be an opportunity for people who are interested in knowing where their food comes from and how it has been growth. It is a way for city dwellers to create a contact with cultivation and yet to keep on living in a city. Urban farming needs only a little bit of empty space in a city which is sure to be found: all the marginal “non-places” of the city could be used for food production. And not to bring every apple from the other side of the continent.

Urban farming has taken place in New York on the top of the skyscrapers, in Milan on an abandoned public green and in Finland on a railway yard. In a small scale urban farming can happen in one pot in one’s balcony, but in a larger scale it can be an activity that brings together loads of unknown or familiar people. Cultivating together is not a least positive side of this motion; it can in fact be seen as a way to create sense of community in places where that is needed - as in some normal apartment houses. Cultivation is a way to work together, socialize and to work for something which results can be seen. Vegetables can grow on their boxes built from recycled materials or in old pots in an inner yard or on a balcony.

Biological cultivation may even be easier in cities than on countryside, because weeds and insects cannot harm plants as easy as on fields. The main negative side of urban farming is to take in consideration how big is the pollution in neighborhoods. Great deal of urban pollution is nowadays caused by traffic, but in old cities also soil can be well contaminated. Usually urban farming happens in soil brought from somewhere else. Rain can bring also pollution on vegetables, though water is often taken from a tap if there is no place for water containers. Interest on urban farming arises a lot from environmental awareness caused by climate change and its consequences. On the other hand the changing climate is also giving some benefits on urban cultivation: global warming and thermal bubble make the growing season longer.

Though this motion could sound marginal to many people it is a way that is strengthening all the time. For example there are already 430 cultivated gardens in Milan according to blogMilano and The New York Times wrote on June that the green roofs installed last year in the city cover 6 million to 10 million square feet. On blogMilano they also bring out the fact how city gardening reflects people’s economical state: in Milan those are immigrants and elder people who cultivate on public spaces, not anarchist youngsters. Thereby cultivating your own food can be seen as a way to save money, as a hobby or as a way to combat stress.

Internet has an important role as equipment for creating communities and connecting people who has similar interests. Capital growth campaign on offering support to communities around London to get access and create new food growing spaces. Finnish environmental organization Dodo has a project called Global picnic that cultivates vegetables in unusual places in cities and they use also internet as a network. Landshare is an interesting English service that brings together ‘growers’, ‘landowners’ and ‘helpers’. Every day you can see on their web page adds from people who offer land for other people’s use. Up to now already 39 965 people have signed-up to join the Landshare movement.