6 minute read
Urban Jungles
Can healthy home-grown food be produced sustainably and contribute to conservation?
Despite many people showing interest in accessing local food products and growing food at home, i urban density increases, and the growing number of gardenless properties, mean many people find access to naturally grown healthy produce is not a possibility.
It’s a trend that continues through to industrial farming and agriculture. According to the National Farmers Union, the UK only produces 64% of the food consumed within our shores, down from 78% only 40 years ago. Today the UK is only 18% self-sufficient in fruit and 55% in vegetables. The shortfall is so pronounced, that if everyone in the
UK ate their 5 a day sourced from UK produce, we would fall short by 2.1 million tonnes annually. ii With the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the ‘breadbasket of Europe’, the lack of self-sufficiency in food is of growing concern to governments, as well as the public, as costs of food continue to climb, and some items become scarce.
Another point of concern is the quality of food that we eat. Highly processed, nutrient sparse foods have negative outcomes for health, a point agreed by all major global health bodies, including WHO iii , NHS and HSE.
Although these issues seem insurmountable for the average person, and requiring large scale, government intervention, that isn’t necessarily the case.
There are traditional and cutting-edge solutions available that offer people opportunities to grow their own food with an aim to enrich their diets with food that is cheaper, more nutrient dense and more local. More home-grown food can reduce food costs at the checkout and improve our diets generally. It also has the benefit of being a fun and educational activity we can do with children.
The Traditional…
Home-grown food probably conjures images of an allotment or garden vegetable patch; however, lack of a garden, or poor soil or light in a garden, means that many can’t grow food at home.
Allotments used to be ubiquitous in Ireland, but they declined almost to extinction by 2004. This is now changing, and bodies like Community Gardens Ireland are working with the public to plot allotments and encourage new developments. The UK has a long history of allotments going back over 1,000 years, and even now the most common size of an allotment is 10 rods, an ancient unit of measurement. iv
Although numbers of allotments in the UK have also declined, from 1.4mil in 1943 to 297,000 in 1996 – mainly due to housing pressures and revenue requirements by councils – numbers are now holding steady due to a growing interest in home-grown food, and more community pressures on development of new-builds.
If you can get your hands on one, allotments offer excellent opportunities, at a low price per annum, for people to learn more about nature, have the satisfaction of supplementing their own food requirements, and discover new ways of cooking – with the added benefit that you can also teach this to children who usually love getting stuck in!
Onto the cutting edge…
Investments in technology and recognition of environmental pressures have caused farmers and governments to work on increasing yields, whilst reducing pollution. There are also plans to diversify land use and step away from the culture of monocultures (see box out). v
Innovations in technology also mean that lack of access to a garden or allotment, doesn’t mean that you can’t grow your own food.
Tower Gardens are a BITA member who have developed a product that uses hydroponic and aeroponic technology to grow large amounts of food in limited space. This new development means that only 5% of the water and 10% of the space usually required, is needed. The plants can be grown using only water, air and nutrients, and the innovative method means that they grow up to three times faster and have larger yields. This is available for the individual, but also for local growers who want to meet demands of more customers, while having less of an impact on the local environment. https://www.towergarden.com/tg
For growers and farmers specifically, the system means that they can grow 10 times more plants, in the same amount of space; increasing saleable produce, but not increasing overheads.
Technology can also free us from seasonality of produce, increasing resistance of drought and pests, create more predictable yields, and in some cases; allotments and the Tower Garden, lead to hyper-local food, cutting down on transport emissions.
The continuing pressures of climate change and conflict means that nations will need to get better at sourcing produce for their citizens, and a desire for good quality, local, tasty food may encourage more people to start their own gardens.
THE CULTURE OF MONOCULTURES
It is extremely common for countries to invest and focus heavily on monocultures – where only a specific item, or items are produced. Ukraine produces wheat, cereal and oil seed crops, Ireland has focused heavily on beef and dairy due to their rich grasslands, and the UK produces dairy, wheat, and meat. Normally, trade takes care of surplus and fills gaps in requirements, but when the main producer is no longer producing, there are suddenly many nations competing for fewer producers, and nations that may suddenly take a protectionist attitude to trade, as seen with India in August when their cabinet approved restrictions on wheat exports.
Another shortage leaving our French neighbours très triste, is the shortage of Dijion mustard. Canada suffered a drought last year, which collapsed the mustard crop yields, and France was going through an opposite problem where three successive winters have been too wet. As France relies mainly on Canadian imports for mustard seeds, with supplementary input from home grown seeds, the nation has faced a large shortfall in produce and stores have been forced into rationing the kitchen cupboard staple – when it’s available at all.
