I'm pleased to see Grist exploring Urban Agriculture in the US in their "Feeding the City Series". America needs a focus on urban ag particularly because we have so deeply abandoned the ordinary and routine participations that city dwellers have always made to their foodshed. If you look at either our past or the present in most of the Global South and in many Global North Nations as well, we see that there's nothing very unusual in the urban dweller participating in food production. Indeed, most nations on the Global South produce at least 20% of their meat and produce within city limits, often much more.
So yes, and yay, and its about time we talk about the rightful contributions of cities to feeding themselves.
Sharon
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yeah, when he was still living in Poland, my grandparents had a huge garden-plot on the outskirts of the city they lived in where they grew food and kept chickens and rabbits.
In Germany, the same kind of garden-plots are popular, but there aren't any animals on them, just plant food.
My son's girlfriend is from Guangzhou, a metropolitan area with a population of about 12 million. When she was a little girl her parents kept geese in bamboo cages in their apartment. Her task was to herd the geese out to graze during the day then herd them back inside at night. Imagine girls herding geese into Central Park from their Manhattan apartments! I don't think that would go over well in NYC.