San Diego’s urban farmers

About a year ago, Karon Klipple, a mathematics professor at San Diego City College, took a long, hard look at the campus lawn.

With all the talk about global warming, the benefits of eating local and organic food, not to mention San Diego’s drought worries, it seemed the land and resources might be put to better use. So Klipple, who is chair of City College’s Environmental Stewardship Committee, founded Seeds at City, a thriving sub-acre farm smack dab on the downtown campus.

“Industrial agriculture isn’t going to support us indefinitely because it’s unsustainable,” she said while walking in between rows of oak leaf lettuce and Chioggia beets on a cool Tuesday morning. “There’s no way we can continue to use more resources to create fewer.”

Once championed as the end of famine, industrial agriculture is now taking heat for its monolithic waste production and energy consumption. Others criticize the negative dietary habits it encourages or enforces, citing obesity and diabetes as a social effect of corn subsidies. One has to be a conscious consumer to avoid food with the nearly ubiquitous ingredient high fructose corn syrup. The sugary liquid substance makes an appearance not just in obvious junk food, but in products with a healthy image such as yogurt, tomato sauce and whole grain bread.

It seems the age of superabundance has a lesson for our appetites: More is not necessarily more satisfying. Especially when paid for by the health of both the eater and the environment.

Klipple is just one of the many local individuals and groups that are experimenting with producing their own fruits, vegetables, eggs, poultry and fish within city limits or in their backyard. This breed of urban farmers enjoys not only an increased amount of control on the quality of food they eat, but also over the environmental effects of the production of that food.

The idea is that farming doesn’t require a field. And in some cases, not even dirt.

“My goal is to teach people they can grow food in really alternative spots,” Paul Maschka said.

Maschka and Julia Dashe are the two urban farmers directing shovels at Seeds at City. Maschka spent 17 years as lead organic horticulturist at the San Diego Zoo and Wild Animal Park, where he helped them turn their practices organic. Now at Seeds at City, he’s got his eye on a second site next to an entrance of the 163.

As a member of San Diego Food Not Lawns, a grassroots organization that promotes change regarding food and land issues, he knows just how many locals are reconsidering their yard use.

“We’re bombarded with calls by people interested in edible landscaping,” he said. “There is an interest- oh my gosh -like crazy.”

Still, while it’s one thing to splurge on a dozen seed packages during a weekend bout of enthusiasm, it’s quite another to see the fruits through harvest. Recent imagination has run wild with the possibilities. There are flourishing rice paddies in Tokyo’s underground bank vaults. Worldwide, architectural firms are dreaming up “farmscrapers,” sky-rise buildings meant to grow a city’s food in its very center. But is it really the future of eating? Could San Diego really be an edible town?

Farming in the city

To the side of a busy downtown street, past a wall of parked cars, then a staff parking lot, and up some stairs on the south side of City College, one finds the farm. It’s an unassuming plot of land that bustles with the bobbing of shovels and bandanas three mornings a week. Students and volunteers come to learn how to maintain an organic vegetable garden in San Diego’s sandy, water-challenged soil.

“I got interested walking back and forth between classes,” Colm Kenny said, a student studying math and engineering. “I’d love to eat organic all the time, but it’s tough to spend the extra money.”

Kenny and his wife were growing vegetables at home, but came across a few difficulties. Tomato worms for example.

“Here I’m learning how to prepare a vegetable bed,” Collum said. “I had no idea. Before I would have just made a hole and thrown a seed in it.”

Anywhere from 50 to 100 crop varieties are currently growing under the farm’s strict organic regimen. “Interplanting,” or planting different crop varieties close together, naturally wards off disease and pestilence and adds nutrients to the soil. Biodiversity is like organic farming’s aesthetic treasure and secret weapon, something that industrial agriculture doesn’t foster. Their practice of monocropping makes plants more dependent on pesticides for defense.

“I didn’t realize what a sterile environment this used to be,” Klipple said. “Now when I walk down the hall there are monarch butterflies.”

Indeed, it seems the dirt here has witnessed quite a regime change. Only last year, pesticides, mowers and heavy watering bullied the lawn into a tidy green. But now the farm uses no chemicals, petroleum-based fertilizers or energy-sucking power tools. And perhaps most surprisingly, operates on only 1/8th to 1/10th of the water used before.

“We focus on the soil, not the plants,” Maschka said. “If you use good organic methods, you enrich the soil so much that it retains water for a long time. It only takes a fraction of the water industrial agriculture takes. ”

Many enthusiasts have touted the health benefits of organic farming practices, but only recently is there much scientific support. An experiment conducted at UC Davis found that organically grown tomatoes are richer in certain kinds of flavonoids than conventionally grown tomatoes. Flavonoids are thought to help prevent both cancer and heart disease.

But it’s a process that doesn’t come in a can. Scraps from the college cafeteria and a restaurant across the street are composted in three messy bins and later worked into the soil. Maschka estimates it will take about three years of amending to get the soil at full speed.

Next to the compost piles is the vermiculture bin, filled with dirt and awaiting a shipment of worms from Europe. The worms’ digestive systems will work tirelessly at turning high-quality scraps into castings, a nutrient-rich amendment that also increases the soil’s water retention capability.

The farm is also in the process of installing a French drain to catch runoff water from their washing station, which they will divert to other areas of the garden.

Maschka hopes to demonstrate that growing food can save water as opposed to traditional landscaping. He doesn’t think our water worries are going to dry up anytime soon.

“It’s going to be crazy later. There won’t be lawns, period. Golf courses will be a thing of the past,” Maschka said.

Eventually, Seeds at City hopes to set up a one-year certificate program that would prepare students to create businesses revolving around organic urban farming. Which brings up a good question: How do you do this on your own?

Groceries in your yard

Karen Contreras, who once maintained a 3.5-acre farm in Oregon, was in the direct mail business and looking for change.

“I knew a lot of people were interested in gardening, but after one bug or disease, that was it,” she said.

For example, a friend of hers loved fresh zucchini, but didn’t know what a zucchini flower looked like. So Contreras started Urban Plantations, a San Diego business that helps those without the time or know-how create a successful edible garden. Her services include planning a garden suitable to the client’s tastes, installing it and checking back regularly. For those particularly busy, she even harvests the crops and leaves them on their doorstep in a basket.

“Our goal is to install edible landscaping that’s contemporary looking,” she said. “A blueberry bush stays there all year round. Right now the leaves are really pretty coppery bronzy green with pretty pink flowers.”

Other popular picks are strawberries, grapes, lettuce and a passion fruit vine with “crazy beautiful flowers, ” that she says are great in a cocktail.

Contreras installs about two gardens per week, and coaches seven. Even a business has commissioned her services for an employee edible garden. For those considering starting a garden on their own, she recommends an hour a day commitment, give or take, for trimming, tending and watering.

But the benefits are worth it.

“Every time I go to the grocery store there’s something I think I have to buy,” she said. “Now I can walk out to my yard and harvest a salad. It’s a great stress reliever after the freeway. ”

Another resource is Victory Gardens, a new organization dedicated to encouraging home, school and community food gardens. As a collaborative effort between several local food groups, they plan to install 15 food gardens in San Diego residences this year. For free. Anyone interested can apply for the garden through their site. In the future, they will offer the same garden kit and installation for a price that will allow them to provide the same service to a family in need.

“We want to raise awareness of where our food comes from, because it’s lost on a lot of people unfortunately,” Bob Greenamyer said, a retired educator who helps oversee Victory Gardens.

Another option is renting a plot in a community garden. Community Farms and Garden’s Web site lists around 50 local spaces to raise a veggie patch, but a call around town reveals that the waitlist will take you well past the season.

The wait list at Ocean Beach’s community garden is at 23. Margaret Young, who runs the 50-member garden, reports not only an enormous increase in interest in the last 18 months, but a less frequent turnover of gardeners.

Golden Hill’s 29-plot community garden has a waitlist of 53. Many have stayed on since the garden’s inception four years ago, because even with occasional pests, the plots are productive. One gardener harvested more than 50 pounds of fava beans.

“It does seem more and more people are interested,” said Paul Gray, the secretary of Golden Hill’s community garden. “Nearly every time I am working, someone stops and inquires about the plots.”

They’ve has been asking the city about expanding the garden to accommodate the growing interest, “but it’s a long row to hoe,” said Gray.

They aren’t alone in their difficulties. New Roots Farm, a project by the International Rescue Committee, has been in the works for almost two years. Forty-six thousand dollars later and they still have not planted a seed. The non-profit, who aims to provide growing space for low-income, immigrant families, has found these fees unaffordable.

“It’s a waste of city’s time and our time,” said Amy Lint, one of the farm’s coordinators. “For a non-profit, we could’ve used that money in more efficient ways.”

It’s a constant battle in bureaucracy navigation. One person tells them they don’t need a permit for a shed, then someone comes out and tells them they do. And because they’re located near Chollas Creek, an environmentally-sensitive area, they’re subject to a more intensive review. But with San Diego’s property values, that’s the most likely type of land available.

“On paper it’s a sensitive environment,” Lint said. “But it’s not being treated by the city as that. There are shopping carts. It’s a dumping ground. We think we can become a watchdog presence and beautify the area.

Their next step is getting hooked up to city water, which will run them another $16,000.

“Navigating city planning isn’t our organization’s specialty,” said Lint. “The city says they want to support community gardens, but when it comes down to it, we get no support.”

According to Lint, a garden should cost around $500 to set up. New Roots Farm is working with the city to help streamline the permit process, so that other community gardens won’t have to deal with the same obstacles.

Especially at a time when more people are finding it difficult to eat.

According to the San Diego Food Bank, 480,000 San Diegans are living at the federal poverty level, which qualifies them as “food insecure.” And according to Chris Carter, the organization’s director of communications, the Food Bank is having a greater difficulty providing their services. The cost of food is going up as their donation intake is going down.

“In times of scarcity, when people don’t have money for food, they eat more filler foods like rice and corn syrup products,” Lint said. “Fruits and vegetables are lost from their diet, so that’s where we can help.”

Food justice, or providing healthy food that is affordable and ecologically friendly, is one of the goals for many in the urban farming movement.

“Because we’ve subsidized cheap unhealthy food and made local fresh organic produce expensive, we’re finding people in low-income areas are obese,” Dashe said. “Food security should be as important as homeland security. And the safest way to do that is have farmers and gardens in the city.”

Still, even garden projects envisioned on land that’s been used for similar purposes are difficult to get approved. Julie Osborne, the founder of Community Farms and Gardens, has been pushing for an edible landscape project at Balboa Park. Osborne imagines a wide, fenceless space with fruit trees instead of flower borders, peppers and Swiss chard. She thinks it wouldn’t be much different in appearance or maintenance than the nearby Trees For Health garden, which showcases trees that can be used for medicinal or culinary purposes.

But the Balboa Park Committee has turned her down. Despite an outpouring of interest and volunteers, there are too many technicalities Osborne says just can’t be fulfilled or predicted when planning for a garden. Aesthetics and maintenance are some of the main concerns. There is also worry that the fruits might actually be eaten — by the homeless.

“If people eat it, then we need more, not less,” Osborne said. She thinks people are too attached to the land as a money maker. “There’s such a bureaucracy involved,” she said. “Everyone is afraid to say yes. Every agency will send you to another agency and it costs time and money. ”

Not that community gardens are fail proof. A vegetable patch outside of UCSD’s Che Café was eventually shut down after a series of troubles.

“It’s politically touchy,” said Matt Finkelstein, a recent UCSD psychology graduate . “Rumor has it someone kicked over a water main after a show and it gushed for three days.”

“I heard people were growing marijuana,” Adam Gage added, a graduate student in Urban Planning.

Finkelstein, who was not involved in the Che Café garden, is the community advisor to UCSD Sustainable Food Project. Inspired by Seeds at City, the group is now looking to secure space for their own campus farm.

“Reconnecting with your food has such a multiplicity of benefits,” Finkelstein said. “It improves community relations, relations with mental self, relations with physical self.”

Finkelstein, who was a fraternity member and avid athlete during his college days, is currently enjoying the produce of his first garden. After two or three days volunteering at Seeds at City, he learned enough to bring about 10 types of vegetables and a range of herbs to harvest.

“The plants do all the work for you,” he said.

Finkelstein said numerous departments and administration have expressed interest in the project. Faculty from biology to psychology departments are interested in using the space as an educational resource.

“Like what about alternative therapy for the psychology department? Instead of giving people a bunch of pills,” Finkelstein said. “Why not put them in the garden?”

Recently they’ve secured space in Pepper Canyon. But it’s only temporary as there is a proposal for a trolley stop there in the next 10 years.

“We have a decent amount of red tape to cut through,” Finkelstein said. “But our scissors are getting bigger and sharper.”

The roots of San Diego food

Urban farming isn’t just about growing food, but monitoring the source of all of one’s sustenance. To many involved in the movement, shopping organic at places like Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s is a step in the right direction, but not the answer.

“While I think it’s really important that food mainstreams to organic, they are really supporting ‘big organic,’” Dashe said. “Organic produce from 1,500 miles just doesn’t make sense.”

Industrial organic does not embrace the spirit nor all the nitty-gritty techniques of small-scale organic farmers. Local farming advocates like Dashe criticize them for monocropping, inhibiting biodiversity, and feeding the plant, not the soil.

“It’s detached from place or community,” Dashe said. “And then the local farmer suffers.”

This concern over food origin has led a local farm, Tierra Miguel, to contribute to a San Diego foodshed mapping project. A foodshed map traces the origins of an area’s food input as well as the destination of its food output. Their goals are to measure the cost of gas, the carbon footprint and other ecological factors that go into transporting food to and from San Diego.

“We want to show resident consumers and producers that we should keep the food we grow here and not put this toll on our environment and our pockets,” said Jonathan Reinbold, the Farm to School coordinator.

He understands the upfront cost of local organic food is higher than conventionally grown, imported items, but he thinks preserving the environment is worth the investment.

Though San Diego County has the second highest number of farms in the country, 68 percent of the crops are flower and nursery crops, and the top food crop is the water-needy avocado. Reinbold hopes their efforts will convince farmers to grow more edibles, especially less-water intensive edibles, like row crops.

But according to Mark Wall, the manager of Vista’s farmers’ market, farmers are on the endangered species list in San Diego. As someone involved in the California’s first farmers’ market in Los Angeles, he does think interest in local food is on the rise. But it may be too late.

“Water is an issue in San Diego, so are taxes, so is land,” Wall said. “Laws are making it harder instead of easier. And no one cares about making local farmers mad because they’re only a couple of votes. ”

Industrial agriculture is estimated to account globally for 10 to 20 percent of greenhouse gases which are emitted during transportation, storing and tending to the crops. But some food economists are hesitant to say local growing could necessarily cut the ecological costs.

Peter Andrée, a professor of political science at Carleton University, urges for a more careful look at what he calls “counterintuitive facts.”

“Just as there are economies of scale, there are ecologies of scale,” he said. “There can be less of an environmental impact when you produce on a large scale.”

For example, he cites a New Zealand study. Nervous about the local food movement’s impact on their economy, New Zealand commissioned a study on energy consumed in food production and transport. They found that lamb produced in New Zealand and shipped to Germany took less total energy than lamb both produced and consumed in Germany.

A lot depends on transportation technology. For instance, if one industrial truck is replaced with 22 smaller farmers’ trucks, and shoppers are driving both to the grocery store and the farmer’s market, then more gas is used. Studies also take into account the driving habits of the farmers . In New Zealand, the shepherds didn’t drive to work, whereas in Germany they did. Making necessary adjustments for environment changes takes energy too.

Another concern was brought up when the United Kingdom considered only certifying domestic goods as organic. International development groups complained it was an immoral policy. Third-world farmers would be put out of the very business they were set up with during colonial times.

And what about toxicity levels in the soil of urban environments, Andrée wonders. Regardless, he thinks the urban farming movement is very positive, especially for its community building aspects.

“I would never want to discourage it,” Andrée said. “But it’s only part of the picture. We shouldn’t throw away everything we’ve learned from industrial agriculture.”

Erin Glass is the SDNN health and lifestyle editor.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 18th, 2009 at 5:32 am and is filed under Environment, Food, Home & Garden, Lifestyle . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.