Common Lawns

From Common Energy UVic

This paper by Jamie Biggar explores the potential for urban sharecropping as a means of developing a supply of local food. It was written very shortly after he arrived in Victoria - and a long time before he had a decent sense of the way the world works. He imagines what the center of the quad at the University of Victoria would look like if this model was used...

Common Lawns

• Sustainable Industry Analysis
• James Biggar
• September 26th, 2005

Contents 1 Introduction 2 Competing Paradigms 3 Organic Trends 4 Local Opportunity 5 Urban Sharecropping 6 Bibliography 7 Views

[edit] Introduction

There is no economic activity which has shaped the ecosystems of Earth or the lives of people more than agriculture. Agriculture is the largest employer in the world and it forms the cultural bedrock of many societies at the interface between humans and the biological processes which sustain them. Since the Green Revolution the energy, chemical, and capital intensive form of agriculture developed in North America and Europe has been transferred throughout much of the rest of the world leading to explosive increases in crop production and urban population. A new agricultural revolution promises to change the way that farming is done in rural areas. Overlooked in the challenges of making farms sustainable is the potential to bring farming into the city.

[edit] Competing Paradigms

The industrial agriculture paradigm is the application of production techniques of the industrial revolution to the agricultural sector. In Canada, as in much of the rest of the world, the traditional family farms which once constituted the majority of the agricultural sector have been largely dominated by large agri-business corporations.1 Two primary factors have lead to this shift. First, the change of inputs of production from labour (human and animal) and ecological processes to machinery and industrial energy/nutrient inputs requires high initial capital expenditures and significant continuing costs. Second, food from the farm now competes with processed derivatives and artificial substitutes. These two processes have transformed farms into one component of a much larger industrial agriculture system with high proportions of gross income spent on inputs and low percentages of consumer spending on food finding its way back to the farm. As a proportion of retail food sales, the value added by farms had declined to one-seventh by 1997.2 Since these agri-business corporations enjoy an oligopoly in Canada, and elsewhere, farmers have been caught in a cost-price squeeze which has driven many into considerable debt with increasing risks and almost half of farms losing money.3

The bleak economic conditions facing farmers are paralleled by the fundamentally unsustainable nature of industrial agriculture. Often, ten times more energy is used in mechanized and chemically intensive agriculture than is returned in food energy.4 The pollution from nitrogen run-off into rivers and lakes, pesticide contamination of food and the ecosystem, and green-house gasses produced by the machinery and in the transport of the food are all externalities of the production process. Furthermore, the price of industrially produced food is further subsidized by the natural inheritance of the soil. The rich organic matter that lies beneath healthy land is a still-mysterious source of incredible productive wealth. However, industrial agricultural techniques “mine” the soil. A full third of the topsoil in the US is gone while much more is degraded.5 Artificial inputs (oil, essentially) are not infinitely substitutable for the wealth of the ecosystems in topsoil. Thus, adding to the cost-squeeze faced by farmers is the diminishing returns of more machinery, more pesticides, more herbicides and more fertilizer. All told, the price at the supermarket is substantially different than the cost paid by society and nature. Moreover, the erosion of the natural capital in soil has already led to an 8 percent short-term reduction of agricultural productivity in the US with a reduction of 20 percent by 2020 likely.6

Underlying industrial agriculture is the hubris that our scientific method has developed more productive uses of the land than the methodology of natural selection. The illusion has been maintained by the stores of natural capital in the soil and in fossil fuels that we have used to mine that soil. A different paradigm of agricultural production seeks sustainable wealth through investments in the natural capital of the soil and the elimination of non-renewable inputs. Hawken, Lovins and Lovins observe that “the new solutions are the result of whole-systems thinking and the science of ecology; they embody the principles of natural capitalism; they follow the logic not of Bacon and Descartes but of Darwin.”7 Natural grasslands require neither pesticides nor herbicides nor fertilizers and yet they are more productive than mono-cropped farmland. This is because the ecosystem is far more efficient at dealing with pests and weeds, while re-fuelling itself, than human interventions can ever be.

Organic farming refers to a wide, but cohesive, range of practices. In her book Biomimicry, Janine Benyus describes several of the most radical innovations in reproducing natures’ logic on the farm. Wes Jackson of the Land Institute is working on creating perennial poly-cultures which could eventual spread out to cover much of the Great Plains as the grasslands once did. He imagines a future where his system manages itself while humans periodically harvest with large combines.8 Bill Mollison coined the term permaculture to describe his system of working with nature so that small-scale farmers can create “a ballet of efficiency” in their land through synergistic planting.9 Masanabu Fukuoka’s “do nothing farming” embodies the efficiency and sustainability that can be achieved through careful research and experimentation rooted in the context of local plants. His plants work so well together that a few days work for a couple of people will produce food for five to ten people.10 Fundamentally, all organic farming is about the quest to use nature’s logic to eliminate all of the inputs to agricultural production besides the two sustainable ones: sweat and sun.

[edit] Organic Trends

Organic agriculture is booming. In Canada, the annual market growth rate for organic food is about 15 to 20 percent with some products and regions far higher than that.11 To meet this demand the number of certified producers almost tripled between 1992 and 2002.12 Despite these high growth rates organics are still a small percentage of total food retail sales. This suggests considerable potential for the sector to continue growing unabated. This opportunity has been created through both a rejection by farmers of the industrial agricultural model and several changing characteristics of Canadian food consumers.

Canadian food consumers are increasingly wealthy, well educated, concerned about the environment and concerned about their health. This package of demographic, lifestyle, and economic changes supports the growth of the organics sector. For instance, in their food choices only 65 percent of Canadians see price as a key factor while 93 percent and 89 percent rank taste and nutrition and health as key factors respectively.13 Like other environmental purchases there is a direct relationship between level of education and likelihood of buying organic with around 25 percent more of the university educated population buying organic than those without a high school diploma.14 However, some of the most promising data for the organic market is that it is more diverse than often imagined. When age and income are considered a bi-polarity emerges which suggests the multiplicity of motivations for purchasing organic food and shows a surprisingly large number of lower income people buying organic. The following graphs are from Cunningham’s 2001 report:

(Images here that need inserting) Source: Cunningham, Rosalie The Organic Consumer Profile (Strategic Information Services Unit, 2001) p. 2

(Images here that need inserting) Source: Cunningham, Rosalie The Organic Consumer Profile (Strategic Information Services Unit, 2001) p. 4

Given this broad appeal of organic foods it is not surprising that 50 percent of grocery shoppers in BC have purchased at least a small amount of organic food in the last year.15 However, as Cunningham’s graphs suggest the organic market is highly segmented. While organics accounted for an average of 11 percent of all food purchases within that group; Winram divides the organic consumers into approximately equally sized light, medium and heavy purchaser groups who vary considerably in their consumption. The heavy purchasers forecast high growth in their consumption in the future while light purchasers predict only moderate growth.16 The impact of cost as a barrier to consumption provides a useful perspective on this segmentation. 40 percent of current and prospective organic buyers identify cost as the reason they do not buy more organic food.17 Cunningham’s data on the bi-polarities of organic consumption in the young and old and the high and low income groups suggests that for many consumers motivated by health and environmental benefits the price of the food is not a significant concern. For those less impacted by the health and environmental benefits of organics a lower price for organic goods would significantly increase their purchasing.

Cunningham concludes her report by noting that “organic foods seem to fit with and appeal to many of the current key traits, concerns and values of the Canadian population – those who purchase organics range from the health conscious teenagers, to concerned mothers, to aging baby boomers. Organic consumers are educated, found in any age group and likely at both the high and low-income range.”18 Furthermore, Winram’s market survey for the Organic Associations of British Columbia shows that organic purchasing is most concentrated on Vancouver Island.19

The lucrative organic market has attracted the interest of agri-business corporations which are raising troubling issues in organic production. Found and Buck note that while organic agriculture is highly process-oriented – focused on working within natural systems – the USDA nonetheless adopted an out-put model focused on whether or not a crop is pesticide and herbicide free. This definition has allowed agri-business corporations to pursue many of the more traditionally industrial agricultural methods such as mono-cropping and non-local sourcing while still accruing rents from the “organic” label.20

This mode of production is concentrated in California. For example, the “organic” salad bags in Victoria supermarkets are often the product of corporations which have sourced the different elements to farmers under contract to intensively mono-crop their land at considerable personal risk and for marginal ecological benefit from “organic” methods.21 An externality of the “conventionalization” of organic agriculture is the damage done to its credibility with consumers. Winram identifies the uncertainty of potential buyers as to whether an “organic” product is truly organic as a significant barrier to purchase.22 In sum, there is a significant threat to organic agriculture from its co-option by agri-business corporations and “soft” industrial practices.

Found and Buck argue that the organic agriculture sector is unusual because it is more than just a business opportunity – it is a social movement. Thus, the reaction to the emergence of large agri-business corporations in the “organic” market has been the “increasing and deepening localization of production.”23 This strategy seeks to create enclaves insulated from the penetration of conventionalized organic agriculture through personal networks of producers and consumers. The conflict between small scale entrepreneurial individuals, families and co-operatives operating organic farms and large scale agri-business corporations is not surprising. The corporations cannot internalize the benefit of the large social and environmental value created by organic agriculture networks.

[edit] Local Opportunity

Vancouver Island has seen extensive development of localized organic agricultural networks. The food security issues of island life are part of the motivation for this. Sixty years ago Vancouver Island imported 10 percent of its food and produced the rest. The number is now reversed with Vancouver Island importing 90 percent of its food.24 In the context of the effect that soaring oil prices will have on the cost of industrial agricultural production and transportation and the potential for serious disruption of agricultural production from climate change and soil degradation food security is of increasing relevance. In the Ecology of Commerce Paul Hawken sets out principles for a sustainable small business. These include replacing “nationally and internationally produced items with products created locally and regionally.” He goes on to make the economic argument for this principle by demonstrating the massive cost savings for a small town from buying all-purpose cleaner in bulk and constantly re-using the containers.25 Using the same logic one can only imagine the flow of resources leaving Vancouver Island to purchase all of that food. Accordingly, there is an immense opportunity for Vancouver Island farmers to break that dependence.

There are several marketing techniques used by Island farmers to differentiate themselves from imports. As small scale organic farmers are to industrial agriculture so the Community Supported Agriculture model is to supermarkets. CSA links farmers directly to customers through a contract exchanging a lump sum of money at the beginning of the season, when the farmer really needs it, for a weekly mixed supply of food. Maurita Prato, an Environmental Studies student at UVic and organic farmer, credits her increasing economic security on the growing list of CSA clients she has established and the lack of a middleperson taking a cut on distribution.26 The stability CSA affords a diversified organic farmer contrasts with the insecurity of “organic” farmers on mono-crop contracts to agri-business corporations and industrial farmers mono-cropping at the whim of the global price. Furthermore, organic farmers with CSA contracts will generally diversify their income by selling their crops at the frequent farmer’s markets. For instance, the South Island Organic Producers Association connects to its customers directly through the regular Moss Street Market. Box programs like Small Potatoes Urban Delivery are similar to CSA but they add a middleperson to the distribution channel and they are less stringent about incorporating non-local produce. Other methods include selling direct to restaurants and co-operative branding.27

Victoria is big on food – preferably of the local and organic variety. The international Slow Food movement has gained traction here and launched the Arch of Taste to document and popularize local food. Businesses have shown a willingness to spend far above market price to source locally based on their customers’ willingness to bear that cost in the price of the food. When Thrifty’s was looking for a source for their salad bags they offered the contract to a local farmer at nearly twice the market price. After being told he did not have the capacity to meet their order the supermarket supplied him with a no-interest loan to buy greenhouses.28 David Wood of Saltspring Cheese pays far above market price for a local farmers’ goat cheese. Without a living income the farmer will leave the market and his customers are willing to pay a significant premium for the cheese.29 LifeCycles attracts considerable funding and volunteers to promote local food, health and urban sustainability in Victoria. Their Good Food Directory and Islands FoodFare are some of the best evidence of the popularity of local food on Vancouver Island.

All told, local farmers simply cannot produce enough organic produce to meet the demand. Hayden Bartel, an Environmental Studies student and member of the University of Victoria Sustainability Project’s Board of Directors recently organized a farmers market on campus. Despite the fact that farmers now have more crops than at any other time in the year he was unable to find a single farmer whose produce was not already committed.30 The supply is not constrained by a lack of willing farmers. While there are many young people interested in becoming organic farmers there is not much land that they can afford.31 The supply of land is constrained by developer speculation, “hobby” farmers who buy up rural property but do not substantively farm, and the environmental movement limiting development into forests. While the Agricultural Land Reserve was designed to relieve this problem it is increasingly under the control of local government bodies whose elected officials have shown themselves to be quite susceptible to developer lobbying and take land out of the ALR. An acre of prime agricultural land costs approximately $100,000 and at that price not only are prospective farmers unable to afford to buy it but even with mortgage financing they would be hard pressed to make a profit.32 While the group FarmFolk/CityFolk has attempted to solve this problem by organizing co-operative ownership arrangements, and has had some success thus far, the problem of expanding the supply of organic food on Vancouver Island is still daunting.

[edit] Urban Sharecropping

The efforts of LifeCycles to promote urban sustainability are instructive for the potential that lies at our doorsteps. For years the bountiful crop of fruit from trees on private land in Victoria has largely gone to rot. Now, LifeCycles’ Victoria Fruit Tree Project attracts swarms of volunteers to pick the fruit. The food is shared with a third going to the volunteers, a third going to the owner of the trees, and a third distributed through charity organizations.33 As part of the move towards social entrepreneurship VanCity is offering matching funds for organizations interested in starting a business through the Enterprising Non-Profits program. There are two business models that LifeCycles is considering implementing with that program. First, a pruning service to bring back Victoria’s fruit trees to an echo of the orchards which existed in Victoria more than a century ago. Using volunteers for the labour LifeCycles would charge 20 dollars for the service. The second option is applying the LifeCycles brand to the fruit and supplying it to local businesses for a cut of the sales. Shady Creek Ice Cream is a high-end local producer which is already using the Fruit Tree Project supply to make a specially branded flavour of ice cream. Shady Creek sells to local restaurants like Canoe Club which are happy to pay out a proportion of sales in exchange for placing the brand in their menus. The tourist economy in Victoria supports a large number of restaurants and businesses that are interested in these kinds of partnerships. Furthermore, LifeCycles plans to leverage existing networks such as the Value Based Business Network to target their produce.34

Learning from LifeCycles’ experience there is an opportunity to extend the urban sharecropping model beyond Victoria’s long neglected fruit trees to an underused resource that is all-too-common in the modern city: grass lawns. With the cost of traditional agricultural land on Vancouver Island soaring, the great expanses of ecologically dead urban and suburban lawns present an alternative to turn an environmental liability into a productive and ecologically friendly resource. Backyard and community gardening has been increasing in popularity over the last couple of decades. Between the innovative work of non-profits like LifeCycles and the countless practical experiments of organic farmers there are no technical hurdles to overcome in converting font- and backyard lawns into intensive permaculture mini-farms.

Just as many new organic farmers fail because they lack business skills so too the potential of lawns has been unrealized without the application of substantial entrepreneurial methods and organization. Thus, urban sharecropping will create value by brining together underutilized resources in efficient contractual arrangements to both meet market demand and expand it through inherent marketing opportunities. All of which offers significant triple-bottom line returns. The sod-busting of the Great Plains led to the severe degradation of an ecosystem that achieved incredible efficiency converting sunlight into organic matter through its complexity of interdependent relationships. Busting the sod of grass lawns and re-building the natural capital of the soil through synergistic planting are the actions of a society which has learned the painful lessons of linear industrial systems.

The opportunity stems from both consumer demand and resources which could be combined in much for more productive ways than they are now. The consumer market demands more locally produced organic food than is currently being supplied and has shown a willingness to pay substantial premiums for it. Furthermore, larger supplies of organic produce from urban sharecropping would put downward pressure on prices and thus expand consumption by the 40 percent of organic consumers and the majority of non-consumers that list high prices as the major barrier to purchasing organic.35

The urban sharecropping model will create value by bringing together segments of the land and labour market which are currently underutilized. Grass lawns are an unproductive and often harmful use of homeowners’ soil. The sharecropping contract offers the homeowner the benefits of a mixture of revenue and high-quality produce. This flexibility is important since the homeowner market is highly segmented. Lower-income households with smaller lots may desire a higher portion of revenue from their property while “greenbacks” with larger properties may desire a higher portion of organic food. Also, there will be substantial improvement of the aesthetic qualities of the property through permaculture cultivation. Indeed, economist Milton Friedman cites street gardens as the quintessential positive externality.36

The labour market opportunity comes from the large numbers of primarily young people who are interested in the environment and repulsed by work in Victoria’s substantial service sector. While the willing volunteers that LifeCycles can attract are some indication of this group a better measure comes from the popularity of the Willing Workers on Organic Farms organization. This program has matched people, generally young and urban, interested in working on organic farms with organic farmers who pay them for their services in kind. This “alternative economics” is one of the benefits of the organic agriculture social movement transcending a simple business opportunity. My brief research on a network of “True Blue” friends showed considerable interest in the idea of urban sharecropping with flexible labour contracts. Flexible in this case is used in the best sense of the term: urban farmers could work full-time, part-time or seasonally. There could also be flexibility in the proportion of the rents earned by urban farmers that would be accrued through in-kind payments of organic food and cash income.

One reason that the urban sharecropping business model offers substantial productivity improvements over traditional home gardening is because of the specialization of the urban farmers. First, a great deal of land owned by homeowners with no interest in farming can be cultivated. Second, through co-operative co-ordination the city would be sub-divided into districts that would constitute the territory of individual full-time and long-term urban sharecroppers. With the help of a central office they would then secure contracts within their district and hire part-time and seasonal workers as necessary to efficiently cultivate the land in their districts. Through the application of the core sharecroppers’ specialized knowledge of permaculture this process would require few costly inputs and as the natural capital of the soil accumulates the mini-farms would increase their natural productivity so that more and more organic food would be produced with less and less work. Victoria’s climate facilitates this model since it allows for year-round cultivation and would thus provide a constant supply of work.

The co-operative model is important not only because it will increase the revenue to urban farmers and homeowners but also because of the necessities of land contracts for organic farming. The organic farmer invests considerable time into the natural capital of the soil under cultivation. For the returns to justify the investment there must be a long-term agreement. As Found puts it – “your pension is the soil.”37 A co-operative structure makes it easy for one urban sharecropper to exit the business without destroying the others’ investment. This is one of the primary reasons FarmFolk/CityFolk uses the co-operative model to get young farmers without substantial capital onto farmland.38 For the homeowner this long-term contract will be transferable so that it becomes a capital asset of the house and thereby increases its value accordingly.

The marketing of sharecropping contracts to homeowners and prospective urban farmers as well as the marketing of the food to consumers will benefit from partnering with the networks of firms and organizations in Victoria. For example: VanCity for start-up capital and contract financing, LifeCycles for community outreach and expertise, and VBBN members for sourcing the urban food in the city’s restaurants, shops and markets. The co-operative should operate on an explicit triple bottom line through the inherent ecological benefits of permaculture mini-farms and the social benefits of deepening community bonds as well as supplying nutritious food to charities. Beyond the intrinsic benefits of this approach it will also lead to considerable press, public goodwill and improve the co-operatives’ brand. LifeCycles has identified community support as critical to the success of a new venture and this was certainly evident in last week’s city council meeting on Dockside Green.

Urban sharecropping offers unique marketing opportunities to overcome some of the challenges faced by organic producers. The highly visible mini-farms will all have signs with the co-operative and partner’s brands as well as contact information for prospective sharecroppers, homeowners, and consumers. This will create both word of mouth publicity and in high-traffic areas would reach a large portion of the Victoria population directly. Embedding organic farming in the urban environment would overcome the wariness that many prospective consumers have of unknowingly purchasing “organic” foods of dubious credentials and non-local sourcing. Furthermore, the consumers’ direct exposure to permaculture will provide a strong contrast to images of industrial farming that will help to differentiate the brand from non-organics. Ironically, because organic certification regulations are not designed for urban agriculture it would be difficult for the urban mini-farms to become certified because of neighbourhood pesticide use. The brand would thus focus on the process - that it is both urban agriculture and permaculture. In the medium-term, the spread of mini-farms would also provide a compelling reason for the municipality to become pesticide-free as many others have.

Traditional distribution channels through restaurants, farmer’s markets, processors, and large retailers are all advantaged by the marketing characteristics of urban sharecropping. However, the Community Supported Agriculture model of direct supply would be particularly advantaged. As the urban sharecroppers do their rounds to the mini-farms in their districts they could efficiently drop off weekly mixed-food boxes for their clients. Also, door-to-door marketing and mini-farm tours would be effective. This model should be encouraged through financing for purchasing a share of the year’s harvest and would lead to higher revenue for the sharecroppers, lower costs for the consumer, and shared savings on the elimination of waste inherent to shipping, storing, preserving, and packing food.

The direct model also provides the best opportunity for this agricultural revolution to close its material and energy loops of food production and distribution. At the moment vast quantities of food go to the landfill. The physical proximity of urban sharecroppers to their market would facilitate composting programs to return a valuable resource from the waste food. Fundamentally, urban sharecropping is about investing in natural capital to create a sustainable bottom line and closing the waste loop would be an important and relatively easy part of this. .

Co-operative urban sharecropping in Victoria has the potential to gain market share for organics by meeting demand and reducing price while holistically increasing the capital stock of the city. The natural capital of the city will be improved with permaculture lawns mimicking nature while cleaning the air, providing comfortable micro-climate, and storm water management. The financial capital will be increased with new jobs, revenue streams for homeowners, and decreased imports of food to the island. The human capital of the city will increase with more knowledge of organic agriculture and more nutritious foods which do not contain harmful chemicals. The social capital will increase substantially as districts create communities linked by their food system and Victoria transforms to embody the “Garden City.”

[edit] Bibliography

1. Bartel, Hayden, Environmental Studies student and UVSP Director interested in urban agriculture, interviewed on September 15th, 2005
2. Benyus, Janine Biomimicry (Perennial, New York, 1997)
3. Cunningham, Rosalie The Organic Consumer Profile (Strategic Information Services Unit, 2001)
4. Found, Jason, Victoria food researcher/activist and member of the LifeCycles board of directors, interviewed on September 25th, 2005
5. Found, Jason, Buck, Daniel Beyond Conventionalization: The Dialectical Reiteration of “Organic” (Draft, 2005)
6. Hawken, Paul, Lovins, Amory, and Lovins, L. Hunter Natural Capitalism (Back Bay Books, New York, 1999)
7. Hawken, Paul The Ecology of Commerce (HarperBusiness, New York, 1993)
8. Macey, Anne The State of Organic Farming in Canada, 2002 (EcoFarm & Garden, Winter 2004)
9. Prato, Maurita, Organic farmer and ES student, interviewed on September 16th, 2005
10. Wallace, Iain, A Geography of the Canadian Economy (Oxford University Press, Ontario, 2002)
11. Winram, Julie Certified Organic Associations of British Columbia Market Survey (Synnovate, 2003)

[edit] Views

Jamie did not receive much in the way of comments on this paper besides an implied high-five.

What do you think? (Be nice, it was written a long time ago, and in a land far, far, away.)

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