They are called farms and require serious hard work to maintain.
The reality is not always as easy as the idea.
As a small farm owner(essentially part time), came here to say this.
I think the term is market garden. Intensive growing on small plots
Because you have no idea of the scale of food that goes through your store to feed your town and none of it will actually be cheaper. And that’s ignoring you’ll face a much smaller selection of food in the winter.
Turns out farming to survive is incredibly difficult.
I really don’t understand why people are so quick to dismiss community gardens as nothing more than a hobby. There’s actually quite a bit of research showing just how much food you can grow in relatively small spaces.
A 2022 review of 200 studies found that urban agriculture can produce as much, and sometimes considerably more, per square metre than conventional farming. There’s also research from Sheffield showing that urban growing could potentially cover more than half of the city’s fruit and vegetable needs.
And that’s without really getting into what’s possible with greenhouses, hydroponics, vertical growing or simply preserving what you harvest.
Of course you’re not going to replace an entire supermarket with a few vegetable beds, but why is that even the standard we’re using? If a community can grow a meaningful part of its own food and spend less on groceries, isn’t that already a pretty good reason to do it?
I find it strange how quickly people jump from “it can’t solve everything” to “it’s completely pointless.”
Sources:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9540868/
Not dismissing it, just want to tell OP it is hard work and takes a lot of time!
So much of the grocery store is just overprocessed junk anyway, it’s ok to let doritos die.
Dorito-trees for you and meee.
Back in uni I had some teachers that had actually done a scientific study on the possibilities of urban food growing, and the results were that it was unsuitable for anything more that just a recreational activity.
Was it in the USA? Proving that in Europe would be very fun, and actually I would really like to read the study itself!
Spain.
I’ve been trying to find it but no luck for now. I will quote again if I find it!
Aren’t there allotment gardens in the cities Spain?
Yes! We have some of them. But the area and capabilities of the terrain doesn’t give nearly enough for actual food purposes.
You can have a few good tomatoes harvest, but nothing that could actually sustain people.
Even if those cultivating them still need to buy some other food, doesn’t it conribute to reduce their food cost?
Here many of them produce more than their family can eat, but face the problem that each type of vegetable tend to arrive at maturity at the same time. The usual trick they use is to be a community, sharing and receiving according to the quantity produced. I had friends into such, and they were eating some of their (or their communities’) production daily ; off course still buying non-vegetable food but it was not just a leisure.
For the few people being able to have access to those lot gardens, maybe.
The big thing is when you run the numbers.
The minimum amount of lang needed to feed a person in optimal conditions is around 1000m².
In a city like Madrid each person has available around 100m² and in that space it goes all the housing, public spaces, services, streets, etc.
How much space could be taken from everything else to create urban farming land? It’s really hard to think that it wouls be enough to even amount for more than a few percent points of what it’s needed.
And we have to take into account that all urban space dedicates to farm won’t be usable for anything else. When you try to universalize it the numbers are just really hard to reconcile.
This, yes, if you want to feed the whole town from inside production, the try isn’t reasonable. I have heared London has a company doing soilless agriculture inspired by canabis factories… I am not sure how it went.
Yet if you take it at an individual level, being part of a 100m2 community (each have their own lot) can be interesting, if well organized.
A quarter acre seems super low for subsistence farming.
You do know community gardens exist, yes? Lots of people contribute a few hours of labour and or funds for a share of the produce. Some cities shut them down with zoning laws or bury them in red tape, but plenty don’t. It’s usually seen as a liberal plot and attacked by conservatives, but they’re quite nice in places where they don’t burn you as a witch for growing things as a community.
That would last all of a day if you tried to eat a full 2kcals a day 🙄
That’s a hobby. Not a food source capable of feeding a population.
By “undercut” do you mean these communities would sell their own produce? Local farmers can sell to decent grocery stores and co-ops.
But either way: massive gardens would require massive amounts of labor. If you wish to reduce labor, you need machinery, which is expensive, and organized fields, which requires some management and oversight. And crop management. And so on. I don’t think any small-scale farm can “undercut” a massive conglomerate that produces enough potatoes a year to fill Ohio three layers deep. (Exagerrating of course, but you get the idea)
I mean, it DOES happen. A few of us in our area garden, have chickens, bees or make baked goods. We typically plan out what everyone is going to produce and how much we need and share. You’d be surprised how much you can grow on a relatively small plot. We used to be in the might of town on a standard plat, and had about 1000 square feet of vegetable garden, bee hives, half dozen chickens and a bunch of fruit trees. We produced about 80% of the produce for our family of 7. Now we’re in the country and have doubled those numbers, plus added goats and pigs. There is a substantial set up cost, and it’s hard to do as a renter, but definitely possible.
At least in the US that’d probably get you a bombing of some sort.
might be very difficult, as you need significant more sources the larger the garden is, plus it might as well be a FARM at that point. you start have to think about pests, diseases, weeds, and other things. because the larger your gareden is the more pests, diseases it attracts.
Well, who’s gonna care for and harvest all the food?
There is no point in undercutting retail prices when it means I have to work more.
In a broader sense that’s what we’ve done.
ITT: people who have so much as seen a farm in real life, and city kids on.ml accounts that think you can just stand in a field and yell “Tomato! Tomato! Tomato!” and get free food, but the guy from Monopoly somehow undoes it using magic.
Check what COOP is in Italy.
farms require alot of resources to make crops. you have to deal with soil, fertilizers, types of plants, pests of all kinds, weeds. a massive garden is essentially a small farm. more than likely need to hire experts in agriculture too. its not like buying crop seeds from the store and just planting them all over the place. you can do it on your own home/yard. supporting local, enviornmentally friendly farms would be more efficient.
If everyone grew a few things in their yard Ms and traded with neighbors things would improve
