In Support of Community Gardens

In February, news headlines everywhere began describing a new study from the University of Michigan made claims that urban agriculture (which includes urban farms, community gardens, and individual gardens) has a 6x higher carbon footprint than conventional agriculture. The headlines said things like, “Community Gardens have 6x Higher Carbon Footprint than Conventional Agriculture” or even “Community Gardens are Bad for Climate Change” and generally, these headlines got a lot of people who have been cultivating such gardens in an uproar. Here’s one such news article, and here’s another.  And here’s a link to the original study. It has been pretty intense to see the discussions on social media about this over the last month or so. I’ve had a number of people (including blog readers) reach out for my opinion on this study. I posted something in my social media and it created a really interesting discussion.  Thus, I thought I’d share some perspectives here–from a few angles. I should share that in addition to being a druid, animist, homesteader, and permaculture designer, in my day job, I am also a social scientist with over 60 peer-reviewed publications, I teach teaching doctoral-level courses in research design and research methods, and I advise many doctoral dissertations employing qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches.  I certainly could respond to this article as a social scientist, but instead, I’m going to use that knowledge to respond to it as a druid.

I also think that this particular case is an interesting one to talk about some of the paradigm-shifting work that is necessary for us to build a better future–and community gardens are certainly part of that work!

The Issue of One-Dimensional vs. Holistic Perspectives

So let’s start with the big picture of why these headlines are so bad, and why even the study has problems from a conceptual framework. Overall, on the largest scale, western society thinks in a very limited way where a single, isolated variable or single issue takes on all importance. This is very bad, and it prevents us from understanding the world holistically or in a real way–which is that the world is a complex system that cannot be isolated from itself.

In science and social science, the general practice of the scientific method is to work to eliminate as many variables as possible and study one narrow thing.  In theory, if we have enough narrow studies, we can say something larger about how the world works.  The problem is, that narrow thing often gets understood as the only thing that matters, while not taking into account a whole lot of other things that do.  In science, this kind of thinking can work to one’s advantage to build a particular kind of knowledge–by controlling for anything we don’t want to study, we can focus just on the thing we do, which allows us to make claims about it (whether or not those claims are accurate is another matter).

In many ways, the problems associated with the carbon footprint article are explained clearly just in understanding this–carbon footprint was the only variable under investigation, which misses most of the points and value of community gardens: education, nature connection, habitat, vegetables, youth empowerment, and so forth. Carbon footprint is representative of the impact of urban and community gardens on their surrounding communities.

The problem is that this very narrow, one-dimensional thinking isn’t limited to science, instead, it is broadly applied all over human culture. Western cultures unfortunately think and build systems on these very narrow, one-dimensional issues. The medical industry is a great example–doctors focus only on a specific symptom, not on the holistic person.  Allopathic medicine is notoriously bad at taking into account how factors like diet, exercise, stress, environment, and so forth may be real and contributing factors to people’s illness–and mitigating those larger holistic concerns may actually mitigate the illness.  (I have a story about that in my own life!)  GDP is another great example–somehow everything is fine and dandy as long as the GDP is high.  Uh, hello?  And don’t even get me started on politics.

Carbon footprint is not the only metric that matters. Reducing carbon alone is not going to get us out of the larger issues we have stemming from the extreme demands humans are placing on our planet. The emphasis is so focused on carbon that we seem to forget other critical factors also are important–like the loss of habitat resulting in the ongoing 6th mass extinction, the lack of connection that humans have with nature (an underlying problem that is greatly contributing to the challenges we have with the world), or like the disempowerment and despair many people are currently facing in the light of such global challenges.

Thus, it is wise to beware of this kind of one-dimensional thinking or binary thinking, which is the root of a lot of problems today.   Consider how everything fits in a complex system–an ecosystem, and learn to think from a systematic perspective. What are the major factors and areas? Consider how to turn a binary set of thinking into ternary and work to explore more holistic approaches. Two books that talk about this thinking from radically different perspectives is Donella Meadows Thinking in Systems and John Michael Greer’s The Druidry Handbook.

Truth, Lies, and Money

Of course, the other thing we have going on here is that news reporting is incredibly misleading. The goal is to sell the story, not tell the truth or keep people informed. These news organizations can be supported by special interest groups or even if they are producing actual journalism, they have to pander to advertisers (like conventional agricultural producers and food companies). This leads to what we are seeing here–taking a tiny slice of the truth, exploding that into something that misrepresents what is happening, and selling whatever story people will read. I know this firsthand–at three different points in my professional career, I have watched these so-called “news” stories be fabricated out of lies. In one case, I actually had my name once shown in a Tucker Carson short piece when he was still on Fox News that was a complete fabrication and resulted in actual death threats to others named in this story based on these utter fabrications. So yeah, to say I’m skeptical of news media reporting is an understatement. A lot of these media sources don’t care about representing the actual situation, they just want to sell the most dramatic story possible. This is to say, I don’t take anything I read in the news at face value, and you probably shouldn’t either.

What isn’t mentioned in the articles but is clearly present in the original study is that the researchers noted that the carbon footprint finding for community gardens had to do with inputs of resources for the garden: building garden beds, trucking in mountains of compost, or providing other infrastructure. The problem came when some community gardens were short-lived endeavors: a 3 year community garden that had consumed these resources to build the space would have a higher carbon footprint but a community garden that used the same infrastructure for 15 or 20 years would not.  A long-lasting community garden is a carbon sink. The study also mentioned the many other benefits of community gardens that were not studied for the purposes of that article.  In all in all, this is a very very different story than is being told in these articles and headlines.

What is not present in the news reports are the nuances of the data present in the study: long-term community gardens and urban farms, specifically those that build and use the same infrastructure over years or decades, do not have a higher carbon footprint than conventional agriculture. They have lower footprints in the long run and a host of other benefits.  So why, when it is written right there in the study itself, do the headlines read as they read? My guess is that this is because community gardens and organic urban farms are absolutely a threat to the larger systems of money and power. If people are empowered to grow their own food and come together, that’s less poison food they are consuming. And as they do this work, they teach others, and it spreads.

The Multitude of Benefits of Community Gardens

In fact, community gardens can be incredibly empowering places where people and nature come together, where humans learn how to reconnect, support ecosystems, and build healthy, stable relationships with each other.  Community gardens benefit both people and nature. I delved back into reading this scientific literature on community garden benefits to complete this second part of the post.

Benefits to Humans and Human Communities

This scientific review of the benefits of community gardens is extensive to human communities and includes all of the following:

• Community gardens benefit the larger ecosystem by creating habitat, green spaces, and sources of food for birds, insects, and wildlife, often in areas that are very dominated by humans; this benefits both humans and the natural world
• Community gardens benefit humans and their well-being including helping people deal with isolation, building a sense of connection with others, and having joy in connecting with nature
• Community gardens are critical sites of education for youth, refugees, immigrants, and minorities, and other groups where they can learn to grow their own food and other core skills.
• Community gardens also help people build social capital so that they can connect with others, learn, and learn how to leverage to enact change in broad ways.
• Community gardens can support economic development and allow people with diminished resources to gain economic resources (either by growing and eating food they would not have to buy or by selling produce)
• Community gardens help people create a number of positive health habits such as eating better and exercising
• Community gardens bring people together to stand up for the right to have and cultivate these spaces, organize, and share (the case of New York’s community gardeners, for example, is a well-known one).  Some community gardens are lost to development but many people are able to win these fights.
• Community gardens can greatly support people’s food security and food sovereignty
• Community gardens also help reduce crime in urban areas
• Community gardens help with neighborhood beautification and investment by local people in their immediate surroundings
• Community gardens allow people to affirm, explore, and connect with their local cultural heritage

When I still lived in Michigan, I spent a lot of time volunteering and teaching at the Baldwin Center, which was a multi-purpose community center that offered a soup kitchen, after school programs, clothing, adult and children’s education, and also a big community garden. I was teaching classes there and at the time, I was also enrolled in an organic farming program at my university that was teaching me the ins and outs of organic farming and market farming–and the Baldwin Center’s garden was one of the places we tended.  I saw so, so many of the above benefits firsthand.  My favorite program was a summer/fall youth program where teens from low-income and minority groups were empowered to grow vegetables and fruit at the garden. Then they would learn how to package, market, and sell their produce at local farmer’s markets, and also learn the entire business end of how to do things.  They also learned cooking skills, build their resumes, and considered their path forward as entrepreneurs. I cannot stress the importance of this program and the kinds of impact it had–both in preparing for modern life, but also in connecting them to the earth. Students in this program came into the program not knowing that potatoes were dug from the ground and six months later, knew how to run a small business and cook with local vegetables they grew themselves. They taught their families how to grow their own food (in a place that was a massive food desert!)

Benefits to Nature and Ecosystems

Community gardens also greatly support the land around them. Here’s a summary of some of the ways in which community gardens can support nature:

• Community gardens support habitat and increase biodiversity of plants and animals, including providing food and nectar sources for insects, birds, and other wildlife.  Many community gardens may be part of larger park systems that also do tree plantings, rain gardens, and other permaculture-based goodness.
• Community gardens provide sinks for stormwater runoff; a community garden can sink a lot of rainwater runoff to immediately benefit the land (and not flood the streets); this can be done with rainwater harvesting, more porous surfaces, and the garden beds themselves
• Community gardens provide cleaner air and healthier soil and can work to remediate problematic soils
• Community gardens reduce the number of “food miles” that food has to travel, reducing carbon footprint for food
• Community gardens reduce food waste by encouraging composting; this also teaches people about thinking in cycles rather than lines
• Community gardens can use a number of other “waste” products (such as fall leaves, mulch, etc) – I see this a lot happening at our local community garden in Indiana, PA!  So many “wastes” turned into soil.

Every community garden that I have had the pleasure of visiting–especially those in urban areas–are incredible places where you see all sorts of life.  Pockets of abundance tucked in among the gray slabs of concrete and the buildings and bricks.  Some of these community gardens and urban farms are huge endeavors doing all kinds of work beyond a traditional growing plot. I’ll point here to Eastie Farm as an example of this work–I had the pleasure of doing my Permaculture Design Certificate with Kannan, who serves as Eastie Farm’s executive director. They are doing incredible work in a range of environmental stewardship, activism, supporting people learning more about nature, and supporting the planet!

Go with Love to Your Garden

I think the evidence I’ve presented above is a pretty good argument for why we need community gardens, urban farms, and any other spaces where humans and nature can interact, heal, and grow. Pay no attention to the headlines that would steer us further on the path of destruction.

Community gardens and urban farms represent major steps in helping reunite people with the earth and are wonderful places not only for that connection but in relearning, rewilding, and regenerating ourselves and the planet.

So, go to your garden–wherever it may be–with love in your heart. Care for your plants, care for the insects that pollinate them, care for the birds and wildlife, care for the soil, and certainly, care for each other. We all need these nourishing, regenerative spaces if we are going to build a brighter tomorrow.