Defending Urban Gardening By Bob Farmer
A study has appeared in the journal Nature Cities, continuing the ideological attack upon decentralised agriculture, in this instance growing vegetables and fruit in one's own back yard. It is alleged that the carbon footprint of home-grown produce is around six times greater than produce coming from Big Agri and insecticide/pesticide, artificial fertiliser-rich commercial farming. Yes, you use compost from the scraps of your table, and rainwater of your roof, and no insecticide, pesticides or artificial fertiliser, and still the food falls foul of the climate change faith.
As well, there are the vast costs of transportation that homegrown produce does not encompass, such as fruit coming from across the world. The study is nonsense as far as I am concerned.
But, there is probably a clear agenda here, as detailed by the Off-Guardian piece that speculates that regulation of homegrown food will be the next big thing. The article points out the globalist bodies that supported the research: "Support for the project was provided by the UK Economic and Social Research Council, German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, French National Research Agency, U.S. National Science Foundation, Poland's National Science Centre, and the European Union's Horizon 202 research and innovation program."
It is not too hard to see why these globalist organisations would have been interested in the case against homegrown.
https://off-guardian.org/2024/01/24/growing-your-own-vegetables-is-bad-for-the-planet/
"Apparently, a new study from the University of Michigan has found that "urban gardening" is 5 (or maybe 6, they're not sure) times worse for the environment than "conventional crops".
I don't know how they calculated it, and it doesn't really matter. If you read the bodies of the articles they even say it only applies to some vegetables in some places and it all depends on how the "infrastructure" is put together.
The details aren't the point. The point is yet another weapon in the war on food. More regulation, more commercialization, less freedom, all in the name of "fighting climate change".
And if you're doubting that's the agenda here, check out the sheer number of government research agencies which the "supported" the research project:
Support for the project was provided by the UK Economic and Social Research Council, German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, French National Research Agency, U.S. National Science Foundation, Poland's National Science Centre, and the European Union's Horizon 202 research and innovation program.
It's a fairly obvious case of needing a study to support a position, going out and buying one.
This is one of those stories that exists simply to be a headline, so some pundit can quote it on some political panel on primetime TV and start a conversation about "regulation".
Since we started with a prediction, let's end with another one: This is just the first step, and you don't have to be paying especially close attention to see where it goes from here.
They are never going to make growing your own vegetables illegal, they are just going to make it increasingly difficult.
It will start with licenses, for food safety purposes or something. Maybe an outbreak of a disease will be linked to people sharing food from their allotments.
Licenses will be increasingly expensive, and come with restrictions. You'll only be allowed to use seeds from specific approved vendors, seeds of GMO plants which "mitigate the impact of climate change". These seeds will likely be "terminator seeds", meaning they are sterile in the second generation.
And, in that fashion, growing your own vegetables will no longer be an individual and independent experience, but just another corporate subscription service."
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/01/240122140408.htm
"A new University of Michigan-led international study finds that fruits and vegetables grown in urban farms and gardens have a carbon footprint that is, on average, six times greater than conventionally grown produce.
However, a few city-grown crops equaled or outperformed conventional agriculture under certain conditions. Tomatoes grown in the soil of open-air urban plots had a lower carbon intensity than tomatoes grown in conventional greenhouses, while the emissions difference between conventional and urban agriculture vanished for air-freighted crops like asparagus.
"The exceptions revealed by our study suggest that urban agriculture practitioners can reduce their climate impacts by cultivating crops that are typically greenhouse-grown or air-freighted, in addition to making changes in site design and management," said study co-lead author Jason Hawes, a doctoral student at U-M's School for Environment and Sustainability.
"Urban agriculture offers a variety of social, nutritional and place-based environmental benefits, which make it an appealing feature of future sustainable cities. This work shines light on ways to ensure that urban agriculture benefits the climate, as well as the people and places it serves."
Urban agriculture, the practice of farming within the confines of a city, is becoming increasingly popular worldwide and is touted as a way to make cities and urban food systems more sustainable. By some estimates, between 20% and 30% of the global urban population engages in some form of urban agriculture.
Despite strong evidence of the social and nutritional benefits of urban agriculture, its carbon footprint remains understudied. Most previously published studies have focused on high-tech, energy-intensive forms of UA -- such as vertical farms and rooftop greenhouses -- even though the vast majority of urban farms are decidedly low-tech: crops grown in soil on open-air plots.
The new U-M-led study, scheduled for publication Jan. 22 in the journal Nature Cities, aimed to fill some of the knowledge gaps by comparing the carbon footprints of food produced at low-tech urban agriculture sites to conventional crops. It used data from 73 urban farms and gardens in five countries and is the largest published study to compare the carbon footprints of urban and conventional agriculture.
Three types of urban agriculture sites were analyzed: urban farms (professionally managed and focused on food production), individual gardens (small plots managed by single gardeners) and collective gardens (communal spaces managed by groups of gardeners).
For each site, the researchers calculated the climate-altering greenhouse gas emissions associated with on-farm materials and activities over the lifetime of the farm. The emissions, expressed in kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalents per serving of food, were then compared to foods raised by conventional methods."
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