Small-Scale Vegetable Growers Rejoice

Photo Credit: Michael Levenston
1978 - Backyard in Strathcona neighbourhood, Vancouver.

By Jac Smit
See ‘From The Desk of Jac Smit’ here.

There are 110 million Small-Scale Vegetable Growers in the USA in 2008: 95 million of them are urban and peri-urban.

The National Gardening Association [NGA], with inputs from a Roper survey and the USDA, finds that 40 percent of America’s 275 million households are growing vegetables and culinary herbs, approximately 110 million households. The US Census tells us that the country is 80 percent urban. In rural communities the share raising veggies is about 2 of 3 and in urban neighborhoods, from Boston to Fargo, it’s about 1 in 3. Arithmetic says 15 rural and 95 million urban healthy food producers.

The last peak in our file cabinet is 1975 when the NGA reported 49 percent growing vegetables. Are we catching up?

There has been a remarkable jump in the past year Atlee-Burpee Seeds, our largest seller, reports a doubling of vegetable seed sales in 2008 over 2007. In London it is reported that vegetable seed sales have surpassed flowers for the first time since WW II. Organic Gardening Magazine repots that for the first time in a generation we are growing more vegetables than flowers. A similar finding has been reported in the United Kingdom. Mother Earth Gardens in Minneapolis reports sales of three times as many fruit trees as ever in their history.

Since 1975 there has been a revolution in the productivity of small-scale vegetable production. Thirty years later a packet of seeds produces twice as much per square foot and close to that per hour of labor. The breakthroughs include: hydroponic methods, drip irrigation, plastic greenhouse, roof and wall production, improved seeds, composting, fertilizers, insecticides.

In much of the USA and Europe the growing season has stretched. In London UK and Washington DC we have two more weeks per year, and closing in on a ten percent increase.

Perhaps we are arriving in a new food system era with urban agriculture at its core. The coincidence and merger of the Food, Energy and Climate crises, in a not yet well understood way, is causing a “tipping point” and the end of the global corporate dominance of our nutrition and food security is tapering down.

Refs:
Bruce Butterfield, National Gardening Association?Scott Meyer, Organic Gardening Magazine ?Robert LaGasse, Garden Writers Association

See ‘From The Desk of Jac Smit’ here.