In Defense of Food

Okay, so I can’t claim the title, I did in fact steal it from Michael Pollan.

My seedlings sprouting up in my Southern-facing window of my apartment.

In addition to all the other enlightening luxuries of my classes this quarter, I was afforded the educational experience of our first workshop of the quarter: Urban Agriculture. After a disheartening introduction to current industrial agriculture and all its pernicious effects on humans (as Pollan says, we are sicker, fatter and poorer), the workshop turned its focus to an emerging alternative sweeping its way across the world – developed and developing countries: Permaculture.

More than half of the world’s people now lives in cities and the urbanizing population is only set to increase in the coming years. An average of 1500 miles is traversed by the apple, broccoli or bread on your table before its consumed by you, and it takes about 10 calories of fossil fuels to produce just one calorie of food. We are separated by many miles and many milieus from our food production; a bag of cheetos could grow out of the ground for all that the general public is concerned. With population overflow nearing 7 billion, more and more people piling on top of each other in concrete-laden metropolises, unsustainable extraction of natural resources, and greenhouse gas emissions destroying our life-giving ecosystem, a recreation of the way we think about our food is needed.

Often beginning with a fruit tree in the center, Permaculture mimcs natural ecosystems, aping the symbiotic relationships in nature between nitrogen fixers and worm decomposers and pollinators and pest controllers. Permaculture embraces the idea that problems can in fact be solutions, and that “waste” is actually a resource. A serene and artful intercropping of fruit trees, shrubs, herbs, and veggies represent a pleasant alternative to the mono-cropped, nutrient depleting monocroppings of corn in Iowa; and they offer a backyard portal to natural beauty and sustenance, reminding you that you are in fact part of that large natural ecosystem that is the Earth. Permaculture speaks not only to agriculture and food production, but to a greater ideal of societal change. As Garrett Hardin stated so eloquently in 1995, we used to bowl in leagues and now we bowl alone (Bowling Alone, 1995). Maybe a community permaculture garden can remind us that sharing is the way of survival.

We didn’t just spend our workshop days sitting indoors staring at powerpoints. Quite to the contrary, in MDP style, we got our hands dirty, literally. A permaculture garden was started out the front door of our Korbel building on DU campus last year, and Spring time beckons the planting of new fruit trees and several nitrogen-fixing shrubs. We dug the holes, immersed the plants, watered the roots, and mulched the soil with organic compost of leaves saved from last fall. It felt natural and it felt good to see progress in action out my front door.

If you want to be sustainable, consume less. If you want to consume less, share. If you want to share, you have to be part of a community, a community somewhat like the symbiotically related system of our permaculture garden. Wendell Berry, an agrarian poet, said, “We learn from our gardens to deal with the most urgent question of our time: How much is enough?”