You can have your lawn … and eat it too

Backyard Farm Service

By The Visual Logic team of Aron Chang, Bradley Cantrell, Natalie Yates, and Patrick Michaels.

Excerpts:

There are well over 5,000 professional lawn care companies in the United States alone, with 921,900 documented workers employed in the landscaping and groundskeeping industries. That far outnumbers the 438,490 workers in all of the farming, fishing and forestry occupations combined, or even the 633,710 police officers and sheriff officers that serve the country.

Thus, there already exists a system of decentralized farming with local providers attuned to the microclimates and conditions of their respective service areas, one that relies upon a highly mobile infrastructure of trucks and portable equipment to farm grass and maintain yards for millions of Americans.

The key to the productivity of America’s residential landscapes lies then, not with the homeowner who more often than not has neither the time nor interest for gardening, but in tapping the remarkable potential of the existing lawn-service industry.

Our proposal begins with two assumptions. The first is that there is an increasing demand amongst consumers for fresh and locally-grown produce, for healthier foods, and for more sustainable lifestyles. The second is that people who want to garden, have the know-how, and who have the time to garden already do garden. The lawn-service industry serves as a model for how the farming of produce can become integral to the lifestyle of American families, without necessitating an investment on the part of the homeowner in farming equipment, time, or agricultural education. Instead, networks of local urban farmers, acting much as lawn-service professionals already do, will provide farming as a service to individual clients.

In this scheme, the vast acreage of American lawns becomes an inexhaustible reservoir of arable land. Through an ongoing conversation with each individual homeowner, the farmers adapt farming techniques and planting strategies to the fragmented and platted landscapes of our cities and suburbs. Utilizing their professional expertise, specialized tools, and organic farming techniques, these farmers provide agricultural services at low cost and with maximum convenience for homeowners, bringing the industrial efficiency and higher yields of farming to the realm of home gardening.

Read the complete proposal here.

Home site here.

And commentary here.