Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
the last eight years. The point of this brief author biography is to emphasize the rar-
ity, at least in the increasingly mobile classes, of a connectedness to place. How does
one practice slowly forming quality relationships to people, places and things when
they're constantly on the move? We don't have an answer to this question. It's more
rhetorical; to remind ourselves of those who do not (cannot) remain in one place for
an extended period of time, or of those who might live in a place laking a meaning-
ful food biography (what about those living in, say, Las Vegas, whih, as the world's
cities go, was born yesterday?).
Home and urban gardening
Home gardening (relatively ubiquitous in New Zealand) and urban gardens (being
rediscovered in the US following the recent downturn in the economy) may help
to assuage Wendell Berry's fears of not enough knowledge to grow enough food.
But it's always easier to discard years of cultural knowledge than it is to retrieve it
(Carlsson, 2008). Take the case of Detroit. Detroit is, in many respects, the birthplace
of the automobile (or at least of the mass-produced automobile). And as the auto in-
dustry has struggled, so has the city. The city today is a hollow replica of its former
self. The city's subsequent loss of population and its failing infrastructure lead to
possibility, though. Dowie (2009) points to multiple efforts to re-establish self-suf-
ficient food production in Detroit. Creative destruction, as it pertains to local food
production. As Dowie explains:
One obvious solution is to grow their own, and the urban bakyard garden boom
that is sweeping the nation has caught hold in Detroit, particularly in neigh-
bourhoods recently setled by immigrants from agrarian cultures of Laos and
Bangladesh, who are almost certain to become major players in an agrarian
Detroit. Add to that the five hundred or so twenty-by-twenty-foot community
plots and a handful of three- to ten-acre farms cultured by hurh and non-proit
groups, and during its four-month growing season, Detroit is producing some-
where between 10 and 15 per cent of its food supply inside city limits - more
than most American cities, but nowhere near enough to allay the food desert
problem.
Dowie (2009)
Just as Detroit symbolizes the failure of urbanism to some, it also acts as a
demonstration ground for new possibilities. Instead of the demonstration plots of
