Via: Financial Times:
Mexico City, one of the world’s most populous and polluted metropolitan areas, is working on its own solution to the rapidly rising cost of food: grow your own.
Led by Marcelo Ebrard, the city’s leftwing mayor, the local governmenthas decided to expand a “backyard agriculture programme” launched last year to encourage the capital’s residents to use all available space to grow crops.
“We want to make people realise that they can use their gardens, yards and roof terraces to grow food,” says Adolfo López Villanueva, the programme’s director. “With the climate we have in Mexico City you can get between two and three harvests a year and that would help families keep costs down.”
The programme was launched last year. But the spiralling cost of food has given new impetus to plans for its expansion and this year officials have decided to increase its scope by at least 50 per cent.
Together with agronomists from a local university, the city’s government gives families technical support and agricultural supplies to get their vegetable gardens going. Among the crops available are carrots, potatoes, onions, tomatoes and chillies.
“We get them to provide the land and the labour and we provide everything else,” said Mr López Villanueva.
A parallel project, the urban agriculture programme, focuses on communities, encouraging them to make communal land available for more ambitious crops such as corn, a Mexican staple, and fruit. Mr López Villanueva said the target was to involve about 200,000 city residents in the medium term.
Both programmes were launched last year in the hope that adding a dose of agriculture could improve the city’s notoriously poor air quality.
But this year’s global surge in commodity and grain prices has added to the interest in the programmes. In the past 12 months alone, food costs have increased by about 8 per cent in Mexico compared with less than 5 per cent for the overall consumer price index.
The jump has hit the poorest hardest because they spend a larger proportion of their total income on food. That is particularly worrying in a country such as Mexico, where the minimum daily wage is a day and almost half the 106m population lives below the poverty line, according to government figures.
Mr Ebrard and his team have begun to see their urban agriculture programmes increasingly as a way of combating soaring food prices rather than just pollution. Mr López Villanueva is so optimistic about their prospects that he even believes that participating families could end up generating a surfeit of agricultural produce, which could give rise to farmer-style markets in the city.
“Backyard agriculture could in time become small commercial enterprises,” he said. “The ultimate goal is to lower prices for the whole city.”
In response, Mexico’s federal government, headed by centre-right President Felipe Calderón, late last month announced a series of measures to try to relieve the pressures. These included additional subsidies for agricultural producers as well as a temporary suspension of import tariffs on maize, wheat, sorghum and dried milk.
Mexico City Endorses Terrorist Activity
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Mexico City Endorses Terrorist Activity
I posted the entire article because in order to read it, you have to register with the site...
For if it profit, none dare call it Treason.
ADM, Cargill and the rest of the food monopolists won't like this!
As a matter of fact, I wouldn't be surprised if a toxin ended up in the soil around Mexico City, compliments of Dow AgroSciences, or a similar criminal organization - I mean publicly held corporation with zero liability.
Think it can't happen? Think again! There's a new plot twist in the quickly growing (and extremely viable) home gardening movement in the UK.
READ THIS!
As a matter of fact, I wouldn't be surprised if a toxin ended up in the soil around Mexico City, compliments of Dow AgroSciences, or a similar criminal organization - I mean publicly held corporation with zero liability.
Think it can't happen? Think again! There's a new plot twist in the quickly growing (and extremely viable) home gardening movement in the UK.
READ THIS!
That's right! Monopolists don't like people getting the idea of growing their own food! That cuts out a whole bunch of corporate middlemen, and leaves their overpriced radioactive imported nutritionless robo-food to rot (*if* it rots at all!).Gardeners across Britain are reaping a bitter harvest of rotten potatoes, withered salads and deformed tomatoes after an industrial herbicide tainted their soil. Caroline Davies reports on how the food chain became contaminated and talks to the angry allotment owners whose plots have been destroyed
Gardeners have been warned not to eat home-grown vegetables contaminated by a powerful new herbicide that is destroying gardens and allotments across the UK.
Last edited by SquidInk on 07-03-2008 10:59 AM, edited 1 time in total.
For if it profit, none dare call it Treason.
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Bobbi Snow
- Pirate
- Posts: 2366
- Joined: 01-20-2008 01:57 PM
Survivalists are constantly telling us that we need to start raising our own chickens for butchering and for the eggs, and that we should transform our yard space into vegetable patches, because when disaster hits, no produce can get through to the stores, and food supplies will be somewhere between slim & none.
Well, at least here in Los Angeles, it's against the Law to have farm animals... especially roosters that crow and chickens the cluck loudly. Can't have anything like this in the City Limits. And, with so many condos and apartment buildings, houses built on top of each other with little yard space, and home owner associations who demand that yards be maintained as such--not turned into growing plots, the Laws all work against us being able to do what these survivalists recommend.
And you're RIGHT about the contaminated soil. Plus, here in Los Angeles even roses and flower gardens have a terrible time surviving--no bees, for instance, to pollinate much, and then there are those Chemtrails that we have 4 out of 7 days a week. They cause the flowers to wither and die, and the ones that are supposed to come up annually struggle to last 2 seasons. I'm not sure gadens, if we had them, could fare much better.
Well, at least here in Los Angeles, it's against the Law to have farm animals... especially roosters that crow and chickens the cluck loudly. Can't have anything like this in the City Limits. And, with so many condos and apartment buildings, houses built on top of each other with little yard space, and home owner associations who demand that yards be maintained as such--not turned into growing plots, the Laws all work against us being able to do what these survivalists recommend.
And you're RIGHT about the contaminated soil. Plus, here in Los Angeles even roses and flower gardens have a terrible time surviving--no bees, for instance, to pollinate much, and then there are those Chemtrails that we have 4 out of 7 days a week. They cause the flowers to wither and die, and the ones that are supposed to come up annually struggle to last 2 seasons. I'm not sure gadens, if we had them, could fare much better.
If you're still breathing, it's not too late!
Bobbi Snow wrote: I'm not sure gadens, if we had them, could fare much better.
if you're serious about starting a garden but can not do it outside... what about in your basement and if you don't have a basement, in a closet with grow lights? people do it all the time with an unspecified plant and they actually flourish.
No problem Iris! Thanks for asking...
HERE is a link to the micro-farming video.
HERE is a link to the FF thread where the subject of micro-farming or, as I like to call it Guerrilla Gardening, was discussed by our pirate buddies - and they know plenty of useful subversive gardening techniques!
HERE is a link to the micro-farming video.
HERE is a link to the FF thread where the subject of micro-farming or, as I like to call it Guerrilla Gardening, was discussed by our pirate buddies - and they know plenty of useful subversive gardening techniques!
For if it profit, none dare call it Treason.
@Bobbi Snow
The urban dweller does face additional challenges. I think if a person is really determined to take a stand and grow some food, it can be done. I imagine an empty lot in the area might provide a space. Or how about a stealth garden in the yard of a McMansion which has been foreclosed & abandoned? I would think it might have to be a cooperative effort (because of the population density) among quite a few people. Homeowners associations can be petitioned for variances, and they may be willing to allow a container garden in the back of the complex, out of sight. But the truth is many of us, including urban dwellers may have to re-think our entire lives if we want to ensure we have access to the most basic building blocks of good health, like untainted vegetables.
HERE is a story about urban gardens in Cuba.
As for raising food animals... I agree with you, and I don't know if its realistic in the city. Growing animals for meat is an entirely different deal than gardening. Although, a couple of hens might be an option - just claim they're rare Gallus Eclectus Domesticus! - exotic chicken parrots, from the Solomon Islands!
By the way, if you really want to freak out (and if you have 45min
), take a look at THIS VIDEO describing how our friends at Monsanto are attempting since 2005 to patent... are you sitting down?... THE PIG!!. Yes, by "patenting" certain gene sequences, they are trying to take over the world's food supply - one pig at a time for now. It's an incredible video; cold, heartless, and profit oriented are they! Monsanto reps are currently slithering around the world, bringing lawsuits against small pig farms, some of them using their own long held breeding stock, as they've always done. These small farmers can't defend themselves, and most will be destroyed. Then it's robo-bacon for our children and grand-children!
The urban dweller does face additional challenges. I think if a person is really determined to take a stand and grow some food, it can be done. I imagine an empty lot in the area might provide a space. Or how about a stealth garden in the yard of a McMansion which has been foreclosed & abandoned? I would think it might have to be a cooperative effort (because of the population density) among quite a few people. Homeowners associations can be petitioned for variances, and they may be willing to allow a container garden in the back of the complex, out of sight. But the truth is many of us, including urban dwellers may have to re-think our entire lives if we want to ensure we have access to the most basic building blocks of good health, like untainted vegetables.
HERE is a story about urban gardens in Cuba.
As for raising food animals... I agree with you, and I don't know if its realistic in the city. Growing animals for meat is an entirely different deal than gardening. Although, a couple of hens might be an option - just claim they're rare Gallus Eclectus Domesticus! - exotic chicken parrots, from the Solomon Islands!
By the way, if you really want to freak out (and if you have 45min
), take a look at THIS VIDEO describing how our friends at Monsanto are attempting since 2005 to patent... are you sitting down?... THE PIG!!. Yes, by "patenting" certain gene sequences, they are trying to take over the world's food supply - one pig at a time for now. It's an incredible video; cold, heartless, and profit oriented are they! Monsanto reps are currently slithering around the world, bringing lawsuits against small pig farms, some of them using their own long held breeding stock, as they've always done. These small farmers can't defend themselves, and most will be destroyed. Then it's robo-bacon for our children and grand-children!
Last edited by SquidInk on 07-04-2008 11:01 AM, edited 1 time in total.
For if it profit, none dare call it Treason.
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Cherry Kelly
- Pirate
- Posts: 12852
- Joined: 07-29-2000 02:00 AM
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Tis why I love to garden -- and why I have garden prep thing going -- you CAN grow veggies indoors as well - window-boxes work too.
Notice several cities producing rooftop garden areas too.
The more people DO some garden stuff - even in the cities - the better the air quality will become...but it will take more than a hand or two of people doing so - sad to say.
Notice several cities producing rooftop garden areas too.
The more people DO some garden stuff - even in the cities - the better the air quality will become...but it will take more than a hand or two of people doing so - sad to say.
Thanks, Squidink! I had really enjoyed that vid you directed us to before. I thought I was "gardening" until I saw that. After I watched it I started watching the vids that show up on the right hand side of the youtube page... and you know how that goes... it goes on and on and on. It can be very intesting. Anyhoo, wanted to get back there and didn't want to have to wade through stuff I didn't want to see, so thanks! I really would like to learn how to get a lot more good out of my space.
We must, indeed, all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately. B. Franklin