Slashdot Mirror
Conservation Communities Takes Root Across US
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Kate Murphy reports at the NYT about a growing number of so-called agrihoods, residential developments where a working farm is the central feature, in the same way that other communities may cluster around a golf course, pool or fitness center. At least a dozen projects across the country are thriving, enlisting thousands of home buyers who crave access to open space, verdant fields and fresh food. 'I hear from developers all the time about this,' says Ed McMahon. 'They've figured out that unlike a golf course, which costs millions to build and millions to maintain, they can provide green space that actually earns a profit.'
Agritopia, outside Phoenix, has sixteen acres of certified organic farmland, with row crops (artichokes to zucchini), fruit trees (citrus, nectarine, peach, apple, olive and date) and livestock (chickens and sheep). Fences gripped by grapevines and blackberry bushes separate the farm from the community's 452 single-family homes, each with a wide front porch and sidewalks close enough to encourage conversation. The hub of neighborhood life is a small square overlooking the farm, with a coffeehouse, farm-to-table restaurant and honor-system farm stand. The square is also where residents line up on Wednesday evenings to claim their bulging boxes of just-harvested produce, eggs and honey, which come with a $100-a-month membership in the community-supported agriculture, or CSA, program.
'Wednesday is the highlight of my week,' says Ben Wyffels. 'To be able to walk down the street with my kids and get fresh, healthy food is amazing.' Because the Agritopia farm is self-sustaining, no fees are charged to support it, other than the cost of buying produce at the farm stand or joining the CSA. Agritopia was among the first agrihoods — like Serenbe in Chattahoochee Hills, Ga.; Prairie Crossing in Grayslake, Ill.; South Village in South Burlington, Vt.; and Hidden Springs in Boise, Idaho. 'The interest is so great, we're kind of terrified trying to catch up with all the calls,' says Quint Redmond adding that in addition to developers, he hears from homeowners' associations and golf course operators who want to transform their costly-to-maintain green spaces into revenue-generating farms. Driving the demand, Redmond says, are the local-food movement and the aspirations of many Americans to be gentlemen (or gentlewomen) farmers. 'Everybody wants to be Thomas Jefferson these days.'" The city of Detroit is planning a 26.9-acre urban farm project on one of its vacant high school properties. Produce from the project will be included in meals for students in the district and later to the larger community.
Agritopia, outside Phoenix, has sixteen acres of certified organic farmland, with row crops (artichokes to zucchini), fruit trees (citrus, nectarine, peach, apple, olive and date) and livestock (chickens and sheep). Fences gripped by grapevines and blackberry bushes separate the farm from the community's 452 single-family homes, each with a wide front porch and sidewalks close enough to encourage conversation. The hub of neighborhood life is a small square overlooking the farm, with a coffeehouse, farm-to-table restaurant and honor-system farm stand. The square is also where residents line up on Wednesday evenings to claim their bulging boxes of just-harvested produce, eggs and honey, which come with a $100-a-month membership in the community-supported agriculture, or CSA, program.
'Wednesday is the highlight of my week,' says Ben Wyffels. 'To be able to walk down the street with my kids and get fresh, healthy food is amazing.' Because the Agritopia farm is self-sustaining, no fees are charged to support it, other than the cost of buying produce at the farm stand or joining the CSA. Agritopia was among the first agrihoods — like Serenbe in Chattahoochee Hills, Ga.; Prairie Crossing in Grayslake, Ill.; South Village in South Burlington, Vt.; and Hidden Springs in Boise, Idaho. 'The interest is so great, we're kind of terrified trying to catch up with all the calls,' says Quint Redmond adding that in addition to developers, he hears from homeowners' associations and golf course operators who want to transform their costly-to-maintain green spaces into revenue-generating farms. Driving the demand, Redmond says, are the local-food movement and the aspirations of many Americans to be gentlemen (or gentlewomen) farmers. 'Everybody wants to be Thomas Jefferson these days.'" The city of Detroit is planning a 26.9-acre urban farm project on one of its vacant high school properties. Produce from the project will be included in meals for students in the district and later to the larger community.
16 acres is going to supply 454 families?
Not even close.
Likely off by a factor of 50-100 or so.
The USA finally turns to communism as the first Kolchoz are settled. The irony is unbearable.
Grab your popcorn, reality tv has found yet another windfall treasure. Think about the lack of leadership... The inexperience... The madness of having all those factory made goods... In a place where no one believes in factories. The most amusing thing about it is that the detractors of such a community would be even more extreme and inexperienced as the original group. Truly, a masterpiece. Bravo.
To the best of my knowledge, the only useful thing to come out of Agritopia in Phoenix (Chandler/Gilbert) is Joe's Farm Grill which is a nice place to grab a fresh burger or some BBQ and eat on the patio with the other Mormon families.
If you look at the map, you'll see that there's basically a little bit of citrus, a field growing something alfalfa-esque, and a greenhouse where someone's got some tomatoes.
It's not Pauly Shore Biodome.
It's just a place with fresh tomatoes.
I am sure the unending drudgery of 16th century work will wear pretty thin within a year.
You can't FEED that many from that small a block, but all the small luxury veges yes, you can do that.
Herbs, tomatoes, lettuce. They aren't talking bulk rice/wheat/potatoes, just the extras which make that carb loaded crap edible ;)
BIG cost savings if you eat a lot of veges, because the luxury stuff costs much more than the staples that provide most of the calories.
Is there a patch yet for this remote root vulnerability?
like a robotic uncle sam cheerleading centrifuge with some burlesque schlapschtik?
...seriously, "Conservation Communities Takes Root Across US"? Come on...
... it's such a nice idea to think about, but as the other comments have mentioned the reality is a bit different.
I initially read the title as "Conservative Communities Takes Root Across US" and was very very confused.
'I hear from developers all the time about this,' says Ed McMahon.
I thought he died...
This actually makes some sense. Of course you're not going to -feed- all these people off of one farm, but it provides some food, a natural meeting place, and some open area that's not annoying subdivisions.
Sounds cool as long as it's not a HOA that runs with deed. The community pool where I grew up was like that and it worked fine. If you were in the community you had the right but not the obligation to purchase a membership.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
NERDS
What happened?
Agritopia looks like it uses a lot of water. Locavores haven't solved the problem of "I want artichokes even though the land can't support them."
The utopia we all wanted on this planet is getting toxins and noxious aerosols with metals and biological matter raining down from those who have different ideas about utopia. These are the corporate skies of the New World Order. Good luck.
When arguing with cynical nay-sayers, don't.
It's like arguing the merits of 16th century catholicism to a reddit atheist: it can't work. He believes himself to be enlightened and smarter than everyone else so there is no need to do the math or make an effort. He is right. He will always be right. There is nothing new under the sun for people like him.
I have 5 acres of farmable land on which I keep bees and a wide assortment of vegetables and some fruits. I supply myself and my street for free with fresh veggies and some honey when possible. I keep the bees more for pollination than honey so I try not to take too much from them because sugar water substitute is not a substitute. To do this, I had to get a bit creative with some hydroponics and aquaponics and it is fairly labor intensive but I also have a new hobby. Creativity and some technical know-how will make possible what know-it-all blowhards automatically dismiss or assume is a scam.
"...the aspirations of many Americans to be gentlemen (or gentlewomen) farmers..."...And they said that was a purely British disease...what next? Will youse guys all start listening to The Archers http://www.bbc.co.uk/programme... (1950), is still running (January 2014), and is the world's longest-running soap opera with a total of over 16,800 episodes
"Cock Up Your Beaver" does not mean what you think. This sig is intended to clog filters and annoy do-gooders
16 acres of water-thirsty crops outside Phoenix in a development with 452 homes? This isn't a farm, (much less something you could call a "conservation community") it's landscaping that happens to produce something you can eat. Better than a golf-course, I suppose, but still a bit "slacktivist."
What next? Maybe we'll start cocking up our beavers!
Just another day in Paradise
The part of this story that the Slashdot audience could most easily get in on is aquaponics, which is producing huge yields in some cases and holds a lot of promise for the local food movement.
Aquaponics is a system you can use indoors or outdoors, on large or small scales. It is a closed loop wherein ponds full of fish, usually tilapia, have their water pumped through hydroponic grow beds full of food-growing plants. The all-important third ingredient is a bacteria which converts the ammonia of the fish waste into nitrates which nourish the plants. The water goes back to the fish clean and livable. Once the bacteria are established and in balance to keep this conversion going, the only investment this needs are the energy to keep the pumps going, stable temperatures, and fish food.
Because the density of available nutrients is quite high, the plants can be so too. Their roots mostly just need to grow straight down, so typical planting distances don't apply. The fish too get a cleaner environment, and the usual equations for how many fish per gallon of water can be exceeded. A stabilized, intelligently planted aquaponics system can grow a lot of food - this site (http://portablefarms.com/2013/part-one-sizing-your-aquaponics-system/) claims that 25 to 30 square feet of grow bed is enough to completely meet one adult's supply for table vegetables, and given that you keep the water quality high, the tilapia will make for very tasty protein too.
Because the water is in a closed loop system, very little of it is lost, and aquaponics is radically less demanding of water than traditional agriculture. Because you can grow this stuff indoors, chemical pesticides are neither needed nor desirable, for your sake and the fishes'.
Leafy green plants are the easiest to grow in this way, root vegetables some of the hardest. Tweaks on this system do keep expanding the options, however, like microgreens, wherein you harvest plants in the first two weeks after they've sprouted for a nutrient density four to forty times that of typical mature vegetables. So the question is, how could we make this the most easy thing to get started, so that people with little experience and limited time can skip the refrigerator and east straight from their greenhouse?
Done rightly, this system can shake up food supply as surely as 3D printers are going to shake up industry.
I've been scanning the comments looking for anybody asking about water usage. If they're really trying to tout their "conservation community" in freaking ARIZONA, they ought to be putting the water issue front and center.
Before you move to the farm or the golf course, be aware that certain individuals have genetic predisposition to elevated risk of developing Parkinson's Disease from exposure to common pesticides. 11 different "safe" pesticides were associated with 2- to 6-fold increases in PD risk. Neurology February 4, 2014 vol. 82 no. 5 419-426
"Agritopia, outside Phoenix, has sixteen acres of certified organic farmland, with row crops (artichokes to zucchini), fruit trees (citrus, nectarine, peach, apple, olive and date) and livestock (chickens and sheep)."
And not one of those is supposed to grow in the desert. They're wasting an unbelievable amount of water and ruining the environment just so they can feel all warm and fuzzy being eco-hippie douchebags. Good job.
Suburbia has issues in which self raised crops really can help. In the cities locally grown food can do all sorts of good things. Often the food must be grown indoors and the production can be amazing. But in addition to the huge bennefits that one might get in the suburbs in the cities things like control of violence can relate to farming. When each neighborhood has a distinct boundary and limited entrance and exit points things like gang activity tend to fall off completely. Locals begin to know who belongs and who is a stranger. Psychological stress is reduced. Drive by shootings vanish as the neighborhood can be completely sealed off at the drop of a hat. Pollution is reduced as far less transportation is involved in supplying food. Even things like the heat island effect can be reduced by incorporating food production within an urban area. Jobs that are created can be filled by local people reducing the illegal immigration issues. Indoor fish farming can supply healthy and tasty protein for the public. The list is endless. We should have been doing this for decades. We can even produce wind and solar energy for the community from the buildings used for vertical farming. And you can bet your last penny that just like auto companies are trying to keep Tesla from doing something new the powers that be will do all that they can to cripple new designs and implementations of local farming communities.
15+ years ago, Pittsford, New York (a suburb of Rochester) decided it would remain a mixed community of farms and suburban homes. The town voted for a bond issue and used the proceeds to buy the development rights from the existing inter-mixed farm owners. They are now forever farms. Some of these farms raise commodities, e.g., beans, some raise produce, e.g., sweet corn, raspberries. As people drive about town, they pass by suburban home groups, then farms, then more homes, then more farms. It has been a win for everyone.
Supplying the non-protein foodstuffs for 454 families off 16 acres is not only possible, it isn't even particularly noteworthy.
Do note this assumes you're getting meat and dairy from somewhere else, and eating meat in your meals at least twice a day, and you aren't morbidly obese or bulemic or otherwise hugely wasteful of food, and you're not eating bread (or else you're getting it somewhere else).
Supplying meat to 454 families is a whole different issue, but let's face it - these farms aren't stockyards, dairies or grainfields, they are "truck" (vegetable) farms. So it's completely feasible to supply the needs of 454 families on 16 acres.
Please take note that the Arizona aquaponics shouldn't be considered 'conservation' by any stretch of the word.
When each neighborhood has a distinct boundary and limited entrance and exit points things like gang activity tend to fall off completely.
Cul-de-sacs, chokepoint streets that feed onto a sidewalkless artery, and other phenomena associated with suburban "street hierarchy" subdivisions are a fire hazard. They tend to be less friendly to pedestrians and cyclists, and it takes longer for emergency first responders to get in and out.
But, being a closed loop system, any contaminants (such as nitrites, which is toxic to plants) produced are retained and tend to build up in the system. And ask anyone who keeps fish tanks how much work it is to keep a fish tank clean and balanced, even if you have a well established bacteria and plant system.
That's the claim, but there's been a lot of claims (running back to the 60's) out of the alternative farming community of things like this that would "surely shake up the food supply". They've pretty much all turned out to be unsustainable, or expensive, or fail to scale beyond the homestead/DIY level, or some combination of the three. The jury is still out on aquaponics.
In a fish tank with plants, nitrites are dead simple to keep in check - and that's in a very small body of water, whereas this type of system would have a much larger volume, and be much easier to manage. Bacteria consume nitrite and convert it into nitrate. This process is relatively short, and once the bacterial colony is established, it can accommodate relatively large increases in ammonia input (like a dead, decaying fish) fairly quickly. Plants (and algae) consume nitrates extremely quickly. Anyone who has trouble handling nitrites in their fish tank is clueless, since the bacterial growth process happens entirely on its' own once they're present in the water.
I know this because I've had many fish tanks, the most recent of which was a saltwater reef. Dealing with nitrates in a reef is "hard", in the sense that you need something to consume them, as most corals don't deal with even nitrates (the end product, not the middlemen nitrites which are deadly in minuscule quantities) well, and some have trouble with algae growth near/on them. Once you have a separate tank with plants or algae, it's next to impossible to fuck up that aspect of the system.
The big problem that people have comes from commercial filter design and recommendations (far too small for the tank size), which largely don't contain enough surface area (Penguin Biowheels are one of the few power filters that even have a design specifically for surface area, and it's still not sufficient) to process the waste their fish create in the first place, then they overfeed and make the problem worse, then they add fish before the colonies are settled, and then they wonder why fish keep dying but add another one anyway, and then they don't do large enough water changes to remove the nitrates (on typical systems, there's no plants/algae there specifically to consume it). Done by someone with even a moderate amount of knowledge and experience, which you'd expect from the early implementations, it's a great idea.
Government can't do anything efficiently or properly. Detroit's will screw this up. I expect eventual bankruptcy.
But, being a closed loop system, any contaminants (such as nitrites, which is toxic to plants) produced are retained and tend to build up in the system. And ask anyone who keeps fish tanks how much work it is to keep a fish tank clean and balanced, even if you have a well established bacteria and plant system.
That's exactly why you should research this. A definitive aspect of aquaponics is that it includes a combination of nitrosomonas and nitrobacter bacteria which successfully convert ammonia and nitrites into nitrates which the plants consume. This means that the system takes a bit of time to ramp up to bring the fish, bacteria, and plants into balance, but once it is going, it is very low maintenance. There's a significant difference between this and the typical aquarium.
This kind of closed loop is definitely going to shake up agriculture in some form, not only because of its much smaller water consumption and higher density, but because the current state of agriculture is extremely oil-dependent for both its machinery and its fertilizer and pesticide production. Reducing that dependency is going to matter a great deal.
I have - that's exactly why I made the statements I did. (Despite constant attempts by the biased and/or the less well educated, "research" still doesn't mean "drunk the kool-aide".) Somewhere in my disaster area of an office are the sketches and calculations for a variety of differently sized aquaponics systems, all the way from "science fair" level mockups to some preliminary thinking on an industrial scale system. (Yes, I got the exact contaminant wrong, I was posting with a massive head cold, sue me.)
Aquaponics isn't a closed loop - it's very much open and constantly bleeding in the form of evaporation and harvested plant and animal material. To make up for this, it requires constant inputs in the form of fish food (and you might do some research on where that food comes from), make up water (to replace that lost from evaporation as well as what vanishes from the system in the harvested material), and energy (for the pumps, and for heating in colder climates). TANSTAAFL. Like so many other "alternative" farming methods, aquaponics works on the small scale precisely because that massive industrial infrastructure exists - and equally like so many others, it's not at all clear that it scales well to industrial sizes while retaining the purported benefits.
http://robohub.org/tag/agricul...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A...
http://www.ieee-ras.org/agricu...
Indoors agricultural is also rising, given cheaper energy costs for LED lighting and more consistent results in controlled environments...
Yes, hunting/gatherering in a large home range is easier than pre-modern century farming styles, which seem to have only increased because of increasing population densities and tribes pushes to marginal lands or smaller lands.
http://www.primitivism.com/ori...
Anyway, I applaud the trend in the original article. Of course, living next to a farm can pose health challenges (like from contaminated ground water) depending on what pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, and fertilizers are used (even "organic" ones).
If you look at the "Biosphere II" project, or similar intensive agricultural projects (as in the book "Survival Gardening") it looks like a few people per acre can be supported with intensive methods in favorable climates, especially if you grow a lot of beans and return sterilized human manure to the land..
http://www.permies.com/t/12422...
"It is realistic to suppose that the absolute minimum of arable land to support one person is a mere 0.07 of a hectare -- and this assumes a largely vegetarian diet, no land degradation or water shortages, virtually no post-harvest waste, and farmers who know precisely when and how to plant, fertilize, irrigate, etc. [FAO, 1993] "
Intensive agriculture is knowledge intensive though, even if robots might mean it would not be so labor intensive. But no doubt eventually we will see plug-in (or cold fusion-powered) containers that have seeds and lights and robots in them and just output food given water and some other inputs. But it won't be as picturesque as a diversified semi-hobby organic farm. But it might not be as unsightly as, say, parts of Iowa where much of year the devastated industrialized farmland looks like a moonscape, and the soil is essentially only used to prop up the plants, only ~10% of calories per acre is created compared to intensive practices, and most of the result is fed to animals where ~90% of the calories are wasted relative to human consumption (so, only ~1% efficient overall compared to intensive cultivation of vegetarian foods, in round numbers).
Info on sustainable farming practices:
"Towards holistic agriculture: a scientific approach" by R. W. Widdowson"
http://books.google.com/books/...
And: http://remineralize.org/
And on economics:
http://www.juliansimon.com/wri...
"Of course an increase in consumption imposes costs in the short
run. But in the long run, population pressure reduces costs as
well as improves the food supply in accord with the general theory,
which I'll repeat again: More people, and increased income, cause
problems of increased scarcity of resources in the short run.
Heightened scarcity causes prices to rise. The higher prices
present opportunity, and prompt inventors and entrepreneurs to
search for solutions. Many fail, at cost to themselves. But in a
free society, solutions are eventually found. And in the long run
the new developments leave us better off than if the problems had
not arisen. That is, prices end up lower than before the increased
scarcity occurred, which is the long-run history of food supply.
Some people wonder whether we can be sure that food production
will increase, and whether it would be "safer" to
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
There's a significant difference between this and the typical aquarium.
Pretty much just surface area, since this system would be designed to ensure the bacterial load, while home aquariums typically do not. Any real aquarist (i.e. not people with a betta or goldfish in a tiny bowl) is relying on nitrosomas and nitrobacter to a massive extent, and even "aquarium specialists" at a place like Petco will be able to describe this process to you (albeit without being able to name the bacteria).