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Urban farms could be incredibly efficient—but aren't yet
In some ways, hyper-local food is a counterculture movement, focused on growing herbs and vegetables in the same dense urban environments where they will be eaten. It trades the huge efficiencies of modern agriculture for large savings in transportation and storage costs. But is urban farming environmentally friendly?
According to researchers at Australia's University of New England, the answer is pretty complex. Within their somewhat limited group of gardeners, urban agriculture is far more productive for the amount of land used but isn't especially efficient with labor and materials use. But the materials issue could be solved, and the labor inefficiency may be a product of the fact that most urban farmers are hobbyists and are doing it for fun.
The researchers—Robert McDougalla, Paul Kristiansena, and Romina Rader—defined urban agriculture as taking place within a kilometer of a densely built environment. Working in the Sydney area, they were able to find 13 urban farmers who were willing to keep detailed logs of their activity for an entire year. Labor and materials costs were tracked, as was the value of the produce it helped create. The energetic costs of the materials and labor were also calculated in order to assess the sustainability of urban farming.
The plots cultivated by these farmers were quite small, with the median only a bit over 10 square meters. Yet they were extremely productive, with a mean of just under six kilograms of produce for each of those square meters. That's about twice as productive as a typical Australian vegetable farm, although the output range of the urban farms was huge—everything from slightly below large farm productivity to five times as productive.
For the vast majority of crops, however, the urban farms weren't especially effective. They required far more labor than traditional farms, and, as a result, the total value of the inputs into the crop exceeded the income from selling it. In other words, the urban farmers were losing money, at least by traditional accounting measures.
PNAS, 2018. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1809707115 (About DOIs).
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Saturday December 29 2018, @09:40AM (10 children)
S.O.'s laziness/desire for instant gratification, crossed with being time-poor means seedlings appear after trips to nursery.. Weeding is excessive, as I have to it all, as rest of family gets bored after a few minutes..
Watering, at least, is automatic.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday December 29 2018, @09:59AM (9 children)
Automatic as it may be, for the last 3-4 years the cost of water alone is higher than the cost of the produce that I'm obtaining from the veggie patch (about 80-90sqm in raised beds. Grass clippings make a fertilizer good enough between crops, I haven't bought manure or extra soil since I established the patch about 10 years ago).
It still worth it for the taste.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 5, Insightful) by VLM on Saturday December 29 2018, @03:00PM (3 children)
I can't speak for anyone but its possible OP was being sarcastic; being east of the Mississippi I get near four feet of rain per year and I only actively water my container garden because it drains too well or there's a short term drought (two weeks or so). Fairly common to skip many watering days due to rain.
This will never work in Las Vegas or CA in general, but bad places to live are just bad places to live. Kinda like don't move to the UP of Michigan if you don't like snow, don't live in a desert if you like to garden anything other than psychedelic cactus (which might be fun?)
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday December 29 2018, @08:53PM (2 children)
Australia's weather patterns vary considerable in space/time (OP lives downunder too).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Funny) by gawdonblue on Saturday December 29 2018, @09:18PM (1 child)
Australia - that's in Texas, right?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday December 29 2018, @10:02PM
West Texas to be more precise
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by tibman on Saturday December 29 2018, @05:53PM (4 children)
Water is free if you have a rain barrels. My county sells barrels and conversion kits for 25$. Less water going into draining ditches is better for everyone.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 29 2018, @06:50PM (1 child)
And that's probably illegal to do that. Here in Seattle, the city bought the water rights to most of the city, so if you're located in one of those areas, you're both free and encouraged to collect as much rain that falls on your property as possible. Due to most of the water immediately running off into the ocean, the water rights must not have been very expensive. It's also a bit of a benefit in that it helps those times when we get 5" of rain in a single day.
But, in most of the country, it's not legal to collect rainwater as you don't own the rights to it. I don't think it's a commonly enforced law when it comes to people's houses, but it isn't legal.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 29 2018, @11:42PM
That's not even uniform in the USA. It's mostly true in western states but it's not necessarily true in the east.
There's a whole history this, related to how pioneers came in and then were in conflict with later settlers who violated their early norms ... complex topic.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday December 29 2018, @08:46PM (1 child)
I have rail water tanks, I just don't have enough rain.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday December 29 2018, @08:49PM
s/rail/rain/g
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford