We Could Subsidize Urban Farming, But We Probably Shouldn’t
Elizabeth Royte’s New York Times Magazine article about urban farming was interesting, but I have to say that I don’t think urban farming is a particularly promising model for anything. And I think Ezra Klein is unduly impressed by the argument that since the current model of agriculture is based on heavy and unjustified subsidies that it might make sense to heavily subsidize urban farms.
The reality is that farming is an inherently space-intensive enterprise. Think about your favorite farmer’s market and how much space it occupies. Now think of how much space was occupied in the course of growing all the stuff that’s on sale at your favorite farmer’s market. Consequently, it makes sense to locate farms where land is cheap. Which is to say “not in cities.”
If you want to encourage more local food in a realistic and sustainable way, what you should be aiming for is not urban farming but suburban farming. In other words, not farming in cities, but farming near them. In most of America we have lots of rules—maximum height, maximum FAR, maximum lot occupancy, minimum parking—restraining how densely developed land can be in places where land is expensive. If those rules were relaxed in, for example, the DC area, then we’d have more housing and more offices and more retail in the urban core area of DC, Arlington, and Alexandria. That would reduce the economic pressure to transform farmland in nearby areas into exurban sprawl and strip malls. That would be farmland that’s local enough to be sold to consumers at farmer’s markets and whatnot without involving any outlandish economics.
That said, one place where I could imagine a role for explicit encouragement of urban farming is in the case of cities that have suffered from severe shrinkage (see Corby Kummer’s article about Holyoke for an example of what this might look like). In this case, though, the issue is that we do have some urban areas (primarily in the rust belt) that would benefit from becoming more compact. In both cases, the basic point is that there are good reasons to try to reduce the overall geographical footprint of our urban areas.
34 Responses to “We Could Subsidize Urban Farming, But We Probably Shouldn’t”
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July 6th, 2009 at 12:26 pm
There is a lot of unused/ underused land in cities. Think vacant lots and rooftops. People will continue to expand their usage of these areas to supplement their food supply. It is a different model than mega-agriculture and will surely need a coalition of models in order to supplant mega-agriculture, if that ever happens. For some communities, urban agriculture is intensive. See the L.A. Community garden story for an example.
July 6th, 2009 at 12:36 pm
Consequently, it makes sense to locate farms where land is cheap. Which is to say “not in cities.”
Why not? Many cities are filled with thousands of foreclosed or abandoned properties that nobody wants, some of it even contiguous. That adds up to thousands of acres. Plus you’ve got rooftops. (see also: Havana). The space is there if we want it, and it would be good for the city too.
July 6th, 2009 at 12:37 pm
Suburban farming won’t happen. One whiff of pig shit, and the neighbors would be up in arms.
July 6th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
This stuff about plowing under the abandoned urban landscape reminds me of the later Foundation books, where Trantor the imperial capital city-planet had been sacked and destroyed, eventually becoming a minor agricultural world (not to mention home to the Second Foundation).
July 6th, 2009 at 12:43 pm
Matt,
I agree that in Manhattan or DC perhaps there is a better use of land. But you are missing the ability of these farms to bring together communities that historically were joined through the local factory or other central place of employment. Once these sources of income and pride were gone, is it any surprise what has happened since.
Lets not fail to point out that what is being grown in these gardens are not the stock corn, wheat, soy triumvirate which dominates industrial agriculture. In their place are fruits, vegetables and a more balanced use of land.
And you take issue with the article in the NY Times, and yet simultaneously condition your argument by agreeing that for declining towns, it makes sense. Well….duh. The neighborhoods in Milwaukee where these gardens are being developed are not the same as Georgetown or Miami Beach. Of course no one would propose to build large plots of arable land in the North End of Boston. That is both expensive as well as the fact the population there is doing just fine buying their goods from the farms in the hinterland.
But north St. Louis is not going to grow into the next Chelsea no matter what your area zoning codes dictate. These gardens (including subsidizing these gardens) makes sense when you consider the problems they eliminate:
A) Provide a place the community can rally around;
B) Provides healthy food to the neediest areas
C) Employment
D) A sudden sense that there is progress and a purpose to the neighborhood, that suddenly can provide a different vision for the troubled youth.
The big question Ezra asks is whether in reality our current system is just as economically unfeasible as the community gardens? You
July 6th, 2009 at 12:44 pm
We can encourage community gardens (is that a subsidy?) as they do all over Europe, especially Germany, and we probably should. If people want to grow food in them, why not?
Small farms should also be encouraged (subsidized?), wherever they are located, insofar as they are deemed to be a pro-social activity — good for the environment, for education, for preserving rare species, for health. We could probably do this by rectifying asymmetric subsidies to agribusiness and by extending healthcare and pensions to farm workers, no?
July 6th, 2009 at 12:46 pm
Oink:
I could not agree more about the NIMBY-ISM in the suburbs that would immediately remove any chance for suburban agriculture. However, there are acres of abandoned factories in urban areas where animals could roam and no one would be bothered.
BUt of course, Matt seems to have a weird vision of the world where we ship all of our jobs to China & India and yet continued to grow our urban areas with fancy condos/lofts and coffee shops.
July 6th, 2009 at 12:47 pm
I went to this farm yesterday
July 6th, 2009 at 12:50 pm
Dude, spoilers!
And I’d just as soon see all these distorting ag subsidies thrown out. But failing that, I’d rather see them go to smaller-scale agriculture, aka the actual “family farms” we hear so much about. Yet places like upstate NY routinely get stiffed in favor of massive corporate-driven monoculture in Iowa. So if there’s public support for throwing money away on agricultural subsidies, why not choose a better model? Modern agriculture doesn’t have to be as space-intensive as it is. There are worse things the federal government could do than promote community fruit-and-vegetable gardens, and the federal government is already doing some of those worse things.
July 6th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
9: This is true.
Also, local agriculture doesn’t require farm animals. It is pretty sensible for that to be discouraged by code, but vegetables? Maybe not a bad idea.
July 6th, 2009 at 12:59 pm
Um, did you read the article? In cities, unlike out in the country, you can go vertical. And when you don’t have the same transportation costs and the like, you can even out the price somewhat. Yeah, it may be hard to do in some parts of Manhattan, but there are some parts it wouldn’t. But Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, etc? Ripe for this kind of land use.
The whole point is that you can replace massive agri-business with a large number of small, local “farms” or whatever you want to call such an endeavor. Have them in cities and suburbs. And yes, of course it should be subsidized, but let the state do so. Cancel some contracts with makers of bad food and give that money in grants to places growing veggies nearby, etc.
July 6th, 2009 at 1:00 pm
Farming is economically viable based firstly on land prices. Farm land in the US always gravitates to a price which makes the return on investment low.
Abandoned urban land that was occupied by housing or industry is highly unsuitable for farming because the soil is often not even there, or it is contaminated, or there is a cost involved clearing structures and foundations so tillage is possible.
Urban vegetable and fruit raising should be undertaken not as a profit making enterprise but a co operative or individual one as a money saving enterprise. In suburbia where more economic size plots for farming exist the devil will again be the price of the land. If the price of the land is say $50K an acre it is insane not to say impossible to farm it for profit. That is not even figuring in land taxe rates in these areas which dwarf regular agricultural areas land taxes.
July 6th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
“There are worse things the federal government could do than promote community fruit-and-vegetable gardens, and the federal government is already doing some of those worse things.”
This is certainly true. Eliminating ag subsidies is a political non-starter, and is probably bad policy anyway… since letting half our farmland go fallow and our rural economy collapse while we import cheap grain from China is really not in anyone’s best interest.
But shifting toward saner ag subsidies that favor smaller-scale niche crops and provide less support for corporate monoculture would have many benefits, and would probably also boost urban agriculture as a side benefit.
Urban farming is a lousy model for a nationwide ag policy, but that really isn’t the point. It’s just a way of coping with urban blight and giving the people who live in our great, abandoned, ruined cities a few more opportunities.
July 6th, 2009 at 1:15 pm
I think we should build a few vertical farms in the big cities. There are usually some blighted areas in a city that can be used. Plus, it would increase employment and hopefully lead to healthier eating.
http://www.verticalfarm.com/
July 6th, 2009 at 1:25 pm
Corn and soybeans which account for the vast majority of planted acreage on good soil in the US are properly understood as an energy producing enterprise. Producing energy which animals can covert into food energy for people, of the kind they prefer. The thermodynamics of these processes are not favorable and the subsidies are necessary in order for the economic equation to make sense in the face of the thermodynamic realities.
Meat production in the US and thus farming are industrial enterprises.
Fruit and vegetable production are an entirely different thing.
July 6th, 2009 at 1:26 pm
In this case, though, the issue is that we do have some urban areas (primarily in the rust belt) that would benefit from becoming more compact. In both cases, the basic point is that there are good reasons to try to reduce the overall geographical footprint of our urban areas.
I’m having trouble figuring out exactly what Matt has in mind here. Is he saying we should just indiscriminately raze the parts of these “rust belt” urban areas that fall outside of a certain footprint based on his ideal population densities? Because that would be quite foolish and short-sighted: in many of these cases, you still have valuable embedded infrastructure, established communities, decent housing stock, and so on. And although the local population densities may now be lower than they were at peak, they are still much higher than outside the urban area. Moreover, in many of these cases the populations are stabilizing and likely will start growing again soon, if they haven’t already.
So rather than just indiscriminately raze these areas, in many cases I think the goal should be to help stabilize them and set them up for success in a slow growth scenario. And reclaiming vacant lots for socially beneficial purposes (including but not limited to urban farms) is often going to be a crucial part of that effort.
Generally, I think Matt suffers from not really understanding cities outside of Manhattan. Manhattan is an exceptional case, and his ongoing implicit assumption that ideal urban policy results in all cities ending up looking like smaller versions of Manhattan is leading him astray.
July 6th, 2009 at 1:31 pm
Abandoned urban land that was occupied by housing or industry is highly unsuitable for farming because the soil is often not even there, or it is contaminated, or there is a cost involved clearing structures and foundations so tillage is possible.
Of these serious contamination is the only really compelling problem, and that isn’t always a problem. Clearing structures that have passed the point of no return is necessary anyway, so that cost really can’t be attributed to urban farming specifically. The soil can be addressed through making use of the local organic materials that would otherwise be going to waste.
July 6th, 2009 at 1:34 pm
We shouldn’t be relying on urban farming for our food supply. But encouraging small-scale rooftop farming of certain items (peppers, tomatoes, green beans, herbs, etc) is a great idea.
It creates a use for compost, which reduces garbage significantly. It absorbs storm water, which is extremely helpful to cities’ old sewer systems. It helps mediate summer temperatures–in the building and throughout the city–which saves energy. Not to mention, green things make people happy.
I’m not saying we will raise cows in Manhattan. That would be insane. But you can, in fact, grow pole beans practically anywhere, and you get more than pole beans out of it.
July 6th, 2009 at 1:37 pm
The key issue here is the transition of unused, resource-draining, blighted urban land into something productive that stops being a drain on under-resourced local govenments. Vacant lots are a pain for cities to maintain, and demand real resources. Low intensity uses like farming or gardening ensure non-governmental community stakeholders (i.e., not using tax dollars) are keeping an eye out.
So it’s a net positive before we even arrive at the food, jobs, and community building provided by enterprises like these. Why not move some ag subsidies through a channel like CDBG, earmarking them for urban gardens?
July 6th, 2009 at 1:37 pm
DTM Says:
Generally, I think Matt suffers from not really understanding cities outside of Manhattan. Manhattan is an exceptional case, and his ongoing implicit assumption that ideal urban policy results in all cities ending up looking like smaller versions of Manhattan is leading him astray.
Could not agree more on this. Matt has lived in the world center for financial services (NYC – high salary) and the world center for government (DC – high job stability). In both cases, these are communities which have not been ravaged by the global economy in the same way other areas of the US have. And yet – he seemingly applies all policy decisions based on this paradigm. From transportation, agriculture (funny someone coming from Manhattan talking agriculture…kind of like someone from Sterling, CO discussing urban policy and suggesting that the way to fix the urban poverty issues is to build a new local playground.
His entire world view is based entirely as if the rest of the country are like this. And no Matt – Aspen is not flyover country. Aspen is the West Berlin for the Coastal populations.
July 6th, 2009 at 1:41 pm
Another idea for urban agriculture which is pretty cool (although I have not heard a single bit of third party analysis so it’s hard for me to have an informed opinion as to whether it’s actually a good idea) is something called vertical farming. Basically, the idea is to put farms in skyscrapers. It’s a somewhat different approach since it depends heavily on hydroponics, so although it’s “organic” it’s still a pretty heavily industrial process, but it seems like it can provide a fair amount of the same advantages.
July 6th, 2009 at 1:50 pm
anon at 1:34pm has it quite right. The flaw in the post is the common flaw of thinking of farming in stereotyped terms … since we subsidize the production of corn, urban farming must be growing corn to be shipped by rail to a feedlot somewhere.
Obviously, if corn is being grown in an urban garden, its being grown intensively, likely as one of the “three sisters”, and is a variety of corn being grown for direct human consumption … sweet corn in particular is a crop that is far superior picked fresh to bought in the supermarket even one or two days later.
The “not urban farming, no, but suburban farming” is quite odd framing in a country where half the population lives in suburban residences and where most of what we think of as the central urban area are the old inner suburbs.
Rather than making a distinction by some imaginary, arbitrary dividing line between “urban” and “suburban”, and indeed rather than making any distinction between “urban farming” and “rural farming”, all we need to do is to tilt the farm subsidy program in two directions … toward smaller plots and toward the foods that we need to consume more of to be healthy … and that will be a program that will automatically take in urban farming.
July 6th, 2009 at 2:03 pm
I have to harp on the economic viability of farming, in any place at any time. Income from farming for 10,000 years has been barely above subsistence for the vast majority of its practitioners. Land ownership is something else again. For thousands of years land was the predominant form of capital and is still important. In history again farmers were not usually owners of the land they farmed. Rent seeking is a term founded upon farming after all.
In the US, farm land owners always have a calculus that someday someone will come along and pay big money for the land, for some other use. Huge portions of suburbia were built on former farm land where for a generation or three the farmer/land owner went from a very modest existence to significant wealth as they sold the land for subdivisions and shopping centers. The closer land, tillable or not, is to population centers the higher the price is because of the speculative possibilities.
Agricultural economics is where economics started and it’s well understood but mostly forgotten basics will not be altered by any short or medium term cyclical change in the overall economy. The capital cost of the land is the primary determinant of the viability of farming and urban and close suburban farming are never likely to make sense unless there is a profound change our economic circumstances.
July 6th, 2009 at 2:18 pm
Matt,
in response to your update:
A) I agree that it would be nice not to subsidize agriculture, but unfortunately, that is politically not feasible in this political environment. So lets take Ezra’s argument to the more realistic outcome….we transition our subsidies to reflect a more balances diet, as well as helping out the urban poor.
B) And again – I think there is little chance that given our current trade policies which are further de-industrializing our country, you can bet that there is little to no chance that the land being used for urban gardens will ever have more value in our lifetimes.
So Matt – if all you are arguing is that we should not support farms in Georgetown, well, not sure anyone else disagrees. But to argue that these urban gardens could not provide a larger portion of the diet of urban Americans I think is incorrect. In fact, given our housing crisis, this seems to me to be such an obvious solution to so many of our current issues:
A) Jobs (if subsidized – see below)
B) Better use of land
C) Providing more healthy food to the poor (nutrition is one of the keys to reducing healthcare costs)
D) Reducing places for crime…
I think the more realistic argument against wide-spread use of urban gardens is that the current urban garden movement is dependent on a certain number of volunteers. If you read the article about Holyoke, MA, it is clear that this is a model garden, and many gardens are not exactly models as to how to tend to a garden, especially in the winter months.
At some point, you will hit the saturation point of people willing to help out, pull weeds and care for the produce. This could result in a large number of failed projects.
July 6th, 2009 at 2:18 pm
Matt updates:
Nor should we deliberately prevent the redevelopment of vacant lots into high-value uses (apartments or office buildings) in order to preserve urban farmland.
That is a little better, but I still think it is a more complicated situation than Matt is accepting. To oversimplify a bit myself for illustrative purposes, the highest short-term return on investment for a developer may well be to slap up some cheap apartments on a vacant lot. But the highest long-term return for the community in question may come from instead renovating the vacant historic apartment building down the block and turning the vacant lot into a community farm. Or allowing that particular vacant lot to become a couple sideyards and building the new apartments on a different vacant lot. And so on.
In other words, Matt is treating this as basically the question of what to do with the last vacant lot in an apparently thriving community. But when you are talking about depressed communities with something like 15-20% vacancy rates (or worse), you need to go through and carefully assess what valuable structures can be preserved and what need to be demolished, what lots can be converted to sideyards, what lots can be converted to public use (parks and community farms and walking paths and such), what lots are best suited for commercial or residential redevelopment, and so on. In short, you need to approach this problem systematically, and in most cases setting aside some well-selected lots for the aforementioned public purposes is a very good idea.
July 6th, 2009 at 2:24 pm
The capital cost of the land is the primary determinant of the viability of farming and urban and close suburban farming are never likely to make sense unless there is a profound change our economic circumstances.
If you define “to make sense” as “to make a profit on the incomes directly derived from this particular plot of land”, this is undoubtedly correct. But by the same logic, public parks don’t “make sense”. And yet they very much can make sense, once you relax the assumption that all the value has to come from income directly derived from the particular plot in question.
July 6th, 2009 at 2:24 pm
There is nothing inherently wrong with subsidizing food production. If the population want a type of food, incentives to produce it by the govt are generally a good thing. Unfortunately for US, the population decided they want highly processed meat products. The govt response is a subsidy of prices of meat (from the true free market cost) to make people happy. Also benefiting are many businesses that now have a stake. This limits our availability of other products (market domination and consolidation) reinforcing their continued subsidization from the government.
Subsidizing the production of things people should consume (fresh fruit and veggie), increasing interest in these products through education, and lessoning subsidy on unhealthy/environmentally harmful products (beef) so the price is closer to the true cost (for bad stuff) are public goods and should be adopted by the government. How to produce these healthier foods is another matter, but urban farming is a great idea in collusion with other options as it seems to educate and provide food.
And thermodynamics has nothing to do with it as it does not consern itself with efficiency in biological systems, but your point seems about right
July 6th, 2009 at 2:33 pm
Didn’t Russians avoid mass starvation after the collapse of the Soviet Union by immediately converting major production of certain crops -potatoes, mostly- to little urban patches, to augment a massive breakdown in the agricultural sector? I read somewhere that individual Russians grew and harvested more than 60% of the nation’s potato crop -their number one staple- on small plots, out of dire necessity, in the years after the Soviet break-up.
Also, can’t you grow almost anything in a greenhouse, and go vertical with it? I mean, it’s not just marijuana that grows in greenhouses. Although, I can definitely see a marijuana skyscraper being very profitable.
July 6th, 2009 at 2:42 pm
You know some other things that we probably, on the whole, shouldn’t do in cities:
- Relocate the Army’s 29 Palms tank warfare training ground to Times Square.
- Relocate the Navy’s China Lake naval gunnery testing ground to the National Mall.
I just bring these up in case Ezra decides that maybe they are a good idea.
July 6th, 2009 at 3:10 pm
One of the biggest anecdotal arguments as to why “poor” people eat poorly is that they can feed their family on a McD’s family meals for less money than if they tried to use healthy goods.
But as others have pointed out…cheap beef for McD hamburgers is due to the subsidy of the food for cattle (soy and corn). But what if the urban poor were not only able to access healthy food for a cheaper price, but were also emotionally invested in the food they ate because they actually grew it.
It seems to me that even if this is not the most economic optimal use of the land (i.e. – marginally brings in less $ per acre in a mutually exclusive environment than a cheap rental apartment), it seems to me that there are other external benefits. The fact is, St. Louis would be a more attractive city for both commercial interests, employers as well as the middle-class if North St. Louis were filled with inner-city gardens than abandoned lots or cheap, forgettable apartment buildings. Not saying that this is the solution to all of the problems of the inner-city. But it may be our best solution until somehow we develop a way to employ the undereducated in the United States again.
July 6th, 2009 at 3:18 pm
concerning:
This statement assumes that all land is equal, and therefore we need use only the inexpensive land for the purpose of farming. If this were the case, the majority of the farms would be located in the state of Nevada where land is relatively inexpensive. Obviously, other factors need to be considered: quality of soil, availability of water, availability of transportation, etc. However, once this prime farmland becomes too close to our ever-expanding cities, then it becomes too dear to be farmland and is rezoned as city (suburbia). This, of course, is the God-given right of every developer in the United States, to develop prime farmland into suburbs. I think our pursuit of the almighty buck will eventually be our demise.
July 6th, 2009 at 6:31 pm
rapier, July 6th, 2009 at 2:03 pm:
Ergo, economically viable. Indeed, as is well understood, if agriculture in some economy is not economically viable, there is no secure basis for the viability of that economy. And, of course, development of improved agricultural productivity is part of the history of large countries that successfully establish industrial economies … the UK, Germany, the US, Japan are examples that highlight the point.
However, given that the US has not no long term future as an industrial society without profound changes in our economic circumstances … that’s an implication of an ecologically unsustainable economy, after all … the fact that something would require a profound change of our economic circumstances tells us very little on whether its likely, unlikely, or something in between.
July 8th, 2009 at 5:42 am
Please take a look at most donut cities of the rust-belt (empty urban cores) and tell me that land in them isn’t cheap. If people aren’t going to live there, they might as well do SOMETHING with acres of vacancy.
July 10th, 2009 at 3:28 pm
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