Urban Farming.
An article in the Christian Science Monitor about the success of urban farming in africa:
KINSHASA, Democratic Republic of Congo - The fields that ended hunger for Henriette Lipepele's family are squeezed between a trash-strewn dirt road and a cluster of one-room cinder-block houses.
They are not exactly pretty, at least not in the wide, pastoral way that one might imagine fields and farms. Ms. Lipepele's beds of sweet potatoes and leafy bitekuteku are narrow and not quite straight; the patch where she added bananas and sugar cane seems almost overgrown with competing greenery. The setting is hardly bucolic.
But these plant beds wedged into the Quartier Mombele – one of the unpaved slums of Kinshasa, the sprawling capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo – are examples of what many aid experts believe could save hundreds of thousands of people from hunger and malnutrition: urban gardens in the developing world's fast-growing cities.
While it would probably be a fairly silly use of Brooklyn real estate - I could imagine 'pocket' farms becoming useful for a number of reasons:
a. the immediacy of freshness: nothing can compare to a tomato picked right off the vine, and a fresh mint leaf or other herb has far more taste than anything that's been shipped.
b. a small but nonetheless reduction in the use of fossil fuels that it takes to bring produce to market.
c. Awareness.
d. it would provide creative satisfaction.
With modern equipment and design high yield window boxes, small backyard or roof-top plots could provide a nice touch of freshness and flavor that most city dwellers never experience.
During WWI, people were encouraged to plant 'liberty gardens' ( always wondered why a war resulted in food shortages- after all the population didn't change), perhaps now we might be encouraged to plant them in a small but important contribution to reducing carbon emissions and all that other great eco-wacko stuff.
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