Me second approach was simply to use two buckets, one which nests neatly and strongly inside the other. These two, the white one illustrated in the pictures and the black one in my previous post, took me about an hour to make both. I like this approach because of the ready availability of surplus materials to make the SIPs and the ease of making them.

In any case, a friend and I built a couple planters each one day. As I readied to plant them I realized I wanted more, so I obtained more supplies and built two more. Then I decided to teach a class at the county fair as part of the Master Gardener booth, so I built a couple more.

The latest two I made from buckets. One I kept empty to use as a prop for the class, but I planted the other with a melon. I hope that the black buckets will keep the soil warmer and produce good melons. I don’t get enough heat where I am to grow good melons or okra or other crops that require lots of heat, but the woman who taught me how to make these paints hers black and claims she is able to grow many hot-season plants that normally don’t grow here. I hope so, as I’d like to try growing okra again and eventually try sweet potatoes.

The photos of planted SIPs are from three dates: May 12, June 20 and July 2. As you can see, the plants are coming along nicely, in spite of the cool summer we have had so far. Now that our weather is starting to warm up, I expect spectacular growth.

So far, the main benefit I can see to the SIPs is that they allow people without dirt to grow food (or ornamentals) on a deck or balcony. I did plant a variety of foods in my planters, with the same or similar plants planted in my regular beds. Although the plants in the SIPS may be doing a little better, the difference isn’t significant. Nor to I see a significant difference in water usage. In fact, the SIPs may result in slightly more water usage. Within the set of planters, the second from left has one tomato and a zucchini. Together, and it’s mostly the zucchini I think, these two plants consume as much water as the other planters combined. So, the primary advantage seems to be that you can use them to grow on decks and balconies.

We can take a guess by looking first at existing non-urban industrial agriculture. It is characterized as:

1. Capital intensive, energy intensive, and highly automated (ie, not labor intensive). This is typically described as productive when measured on an output per unit of labor or an output per acre basis.
2. Based on reductionist sciences, not systems sciences. That is, it uses monocropping to produce a single output given a set of inputs and does not use integrated plant or plant/animal cropping systems (polycropping). It is not concerned about systemic level ecological or human relationships that are part of the food chain.
3. Uses industrially produced chemicals, such as fertilizers and pesticides.
4. Large scale (ie, not human know-your-local-farmer scale).
5. Subsidized by taxpayers via regulations that favor factory farms, cheap water from government projects or direct subsidies.
6. Marketed with hyperbole about how its alleged benefits will save the world from environmental catastrophe and/or future increases in population, while ignoring or downplaying its problems.

When we look at current proposals for urban agriculture, there is one set of proposals that fits the above characteristics. These proposals are focused around intensive production using hydroponics. Hydroponics has been around for quite a while, but large-scale proposals have been popping up in the past few years, more frequently as urban agriculture (and the trends towards local and sustainable agriculture) have accelerated.

First, some background. Hydroponics is a technology that grows plants in water-based nutrient solutions instead of soil. It is well-documented that hydroponics is a highly productive method of growing plants. For maximum production, hydroponic techniques require highly controlled growing conditions, controlling temperature, humidity and lighting. Because of this, hydroponics is almost always practiced indoors. These highly controlled conditions allow production to be done year-round. Hydroponic operations can recycle water, so they offer the benefit of efficient water usage. Hydroponics is by no means, however, ecological. As generally practiced, it requires industrial chemicals and large capital outlays for equipment to maintain necessary growing conditions. It does not integrate with local ecosystems, but excludes them to create its own closed system.

The first article I saw proposing large-scale urban hydroponics was a theoretical proposal in the Science section of the New York Times, in July 2008. The article presented the possibility of “vertical farms” powered by alternative energy (wind and solar). The article was short on economic and production details and heavy on “pie-in-the-sky” speculation. The estimates provided, however, are suggestive. Professor Dickson Despommier, of Columbia University, believed that a 30-story vertical farm capable of feeding 50,000 people would cost in the hundreds of millions of dollars to build. Despommier acknowledged that this idea needs more research

By August 2009, just 13 months later, the topic had moved to the Op-Ed pages of the Times. No longer being interviewed, the piece was written by Professor Despommier. He was forthright in disclosing that he has a financial stake in vertical farms, since he has started a company to build them. So, it isn’t surprising that the piece was typically Op-Ed, opening with the assertion that

If climate change and population growth progress at their current pace, in roughly 50 years farming as we know it will no longer exist. This means that the majority of people could soon be without enough food or water. But there is a solution that is surprisingly within reach: Move most farming into cities, and grow crops in tall, specially constructed buildings. It’s called vertical farming.

That’s certainly attention-getting. After a little finger-pointing at climate change, topsoil loss, voluminous water use and polluted runoff in traditional agriculture,  and expected population growth, he moves on to the hard sell. Sky-scraper agriculture will save us all, especially if we live where water is in short supply.

He claims that “Vertical farms are now feasible, in large part because of a robust global greenhouse initiative that has enjoyed considerable commercial success over the last 10 years.” It’s unclear what this means or what it has to do with vertical farms. He also claims that vertical farms would “revolutionize and improve urban life,” but doesn’t explain how. In a flash of Arcadian vision, he claims that vertical farms would also “revitalize land that was damaged by traditional farming.” Farms would be abandoned as every indoor farming acre replaced 10-20 acres of existing farmland, which would revert to a natural ecological state.  Vertical farms would act as ecosystems by recycling waste and water.

The availability of fresh food would improve diets and reduce Type II diabetes and obesity. Reduced transportation costs would reduce fossil fuel use. Crops damaged by weather would be a thing of the past. Pollution from agricultural runoff would end. Jobs would be created. Buildings would be “things of beauty and grace.” There would be less carbon dioxide and more oxygen in the air. Gawd, what’s not to like? (I did warn you of the marketing hyperbole in these proposals!)

Finally, he gets to the main point. In order to prove that this concept works, he needs money. In particular, he needs a massive handout from the City of New York to build a prototype. Once the prototype (subsidized by taxpayers, of course) demonstrates the economic viability of high-rise agriculture, venture capitalists will rush into the market. Apparently, however, the benefits aren’t so obvious that private investors are willing to risk their capital on the prototype. Venture capitalists will take risks, but they’re not stupid.

Looking at this proposal, we see that it meets all the above criteria for industrialized agriculture. A more critical look would raise some key questions that might explain the dearth of private capital. The proposed  systems are heavily energy-dependent, so I’ll focus on energy, although other issues could be raised. Protecting crops from the weather in high-rise buildings and producing food year-round would require massive investments of energy to construct the buildings and the internal production systems. Operationally, temperatures would have to be maintained at crop-determined levels, ie, heating in the winter and cooling in the summer. We already know that commercial buildings are massive users of energy, so maintaining the proposed vertical farms would have similar energy requirements. (What would happen, incidentally, to the crops–not to mention the people dependent upon them–when a major power outage occured? The requisite backup systems to prevent total crop loss would likely be prohibitively expensive.) Finally, energy costs associated with the production and transport of industrial chemicals used in hydroponic operations need to be considered.

I am, to say the least, skeptical. Most of the proposals I’ve seen so far appear to be sky-scraping pies in the sky. That’s not to say that large-scale hydrop0nic operations won’t find a place. But, that place is likely to be a small, niche market, where such projects have particular benefits dovetailing with local factors. In particular, in locations where temperatures are moderate year-round and water is in short supply, the energy requirements for structures would be low and savings in water would be valuable.

I do believe we need more experimentation with these systems. Although they are definitely industrial and not ecological, the lines between the two systems can and will be blurred, with some features of sustainable systems moderating the negative features of hydroponic systems. Basically, we’re in the process of reinventing urban agriculture and we need to experiment wildly to find ways of producing food in cities in ways that are sustainable. It’s possible that hybrid systems will be developed for economic and/or ecological reasons, depending on local circumstances.

For example, aquaponics is similar to hydroponics, but instead of industrial chemicals, it uses waste from fish to grow food, providing both plant and animal products. (Of course, where does the fish food come from?) See this discussion of a possible commercial aquaponics operation. A recent New York Times blog post discussed a variety of urban agriculture developments taking place, including a hydroponics production test facility on the Hudson River that uses alternative energy sources. A fellow blogger recently sent me a link to an article about an aspiring entrepreneur in the hydroponics field. You know the topic has hit the collective consciousness when bloggers begin to promote the approach. The important point here is that people are exploring possible ways of producing food in urban settings. While I believe the best ways of doing this will be ecologically sound, we won’t know what those ways are without experimenting. In the end, I believe that agroecological systems will be more viable, as they integrate with local social and natural systems using time-tested production methods.

Pisgah View Community Peace Garden now includes a productive vegetable area, a small orchard and a greenhouse, complete with chickens. I didn’t make a complete inventory of crops that they grow, but here are the ones I noted: collards, cabbage, asparagus, garlic, potatoes, figs, apples, kiwis, persimmons, grapes, blueberries, Asian pears and raspberries.  The garden now provides fresh food to garden participants and surpluses are sold at market. Robert has recruited neighbors to help with the garden, using it as an educational opportunity for everyone, himself included. One of the ladies pictured above is now teaching nutrition classes in the neighborhood.

In addition to the neighbors, others from the wider Asheville community have been supportive with both their time and money. The garden has grown rapidly in just a few years and has received grant monies to aid in its development. This is a powerful example of what motivated people can do in a very short time, converting underused urban lands into productive farmland.

Robert’s efforts are part of a larger trend in this country to convert urban lands to use in food production. This trend is partly a result of recognizing the benefits of local food production, and partly due to recognition that our current food production system is not sustainable and that growing our own food will become more of a necessity in the future. I admire Robert for making this a community effort. Community gardens provide one way for people to obtain access to land for growing food when private land may not be available. Community gardens also provide ways to teach others, to improve garden security and to simply have fun working together. Robert has clearly tapped into a need with the Pisgah View garden, underscoring what people are discovering everywhere about underused urban lands: Unbuild it and they will come.

I expect the book is as funny and informative as her talk was. A New York Times reviewer found it so. You can decide for yourself by reading the first chapter. Even though I haven’t read this book yet–I plan to write a review of it soon–I recommend it wholeheartedly.

My picture of a dacha changed rapidly. A visit to Wikipedia revealed that dachas became quite common, often due to squatters, during the communist era in the Soviet Union because of poor agricultural production. Because they were so common, they eventually obtained some legal status. They are still quite common. A few days later, I was taking a class and met a woman from the Czech Republic. She mentioned that dachas were common in her country, also.

What I see in this is another creative solution people have developed to deal with the problem of access to land. This is a solution that may be useful to urban gardeners and farmers in other parts of the world. The history of dachas, with people simply squatting on land to be able to grow food, has parallels with the contemporary practice of guerilla gardening. In guerilla gardening, people simply start growing food on vacant, unused land. While both practices are risky–all your efforts may result in getting tossed off of land and losing your crops–they highlight an issue that is critical to urban agriculture, access to land. To the extent that governments and landowners recognize the growing need for urban land to grow food and make unused land available to gardeners and farmers, cooperation will win out over conflict.