Chapter 16

Growing Our Own Food

A proud Roots & Shoots member from the Tung Koon School in Sheung Shui, Hong Kong. This organic vegetable garden is situated in the middle of an inner-city school, surrounded by high-rise buildings and concrete. The Roots & Shoots leader told me that “before being involved with this garden, many of the students would not have gotten their hands dirty in the soil or even seen caterpillars and worms.” (CREDIT: CHOW KAI-LEUNG)

I grew up reading about the vegetable garden of Beatrix Potter’s crusty old gardener, Mr. McGregor, sworn enemy of Peter Rabbit, who, with his siblings, Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cotton-tail, was always crawling under the fence to steal carrots and lettuces—even though his poor father had been caught and cooked in a pie. Once, Peter almost met the same fate when he unexpectedly met the old man around the cucumber frame.

In England in the old days all the big country houses not only grew flowers in rich profusion but also had extensive walled vegetable gardens. I remember going to stay for a weekend in one such place and being amazed at the wealth of beans and peas, tomatoes, potatoes, cucumbers and marrows, and peach trees with their tortured, crucified branches spread out along the walls. There was a strong smell of horse manure mixed, interestingly, with that of mint and thyme and rosemary from the herb garden that was hiding away in a sheltered corner. Of course there had to be a number of gardeners to care for gardens of that sort. During World War II all the younger gardeners went off to fight for their country, and the older ones were on air-raid duty, so the flower gardens became invaded by weeds.

Only the vegetable gardens were saved—and often expanded, overflowing into some of the neglected flowerbeds. The reason for this is that everyone in England who had a garden was asked to help the war effort by creating a “Victory Garden,” growing vegetables instead of flowers. This type of gardening not only was indirectly aiding the war effort but was considered a morale booster, as people on the home front felt they were making a contribution—“Dig for Victory.”

Victory Gardens were also encouraged in the United States, Canada, Ireland—and Germany. Of course we wanted to do our bit, and my grandmother Danny planted runner beans and rows of lettuce and spinach, and we also had some gooseberry and raspberry bushes—but, as I have said, the soil in our garden was no good for most vegetables.

After the war Danny carried on with the garden. It was too much work for them alone, and an old gardener came on the weekends to help, mainly because he was devoted to Danny. The runner beans continued to thrive, but most of the vegetables were still unhappy when planted there. Judy’s daughter, Pip, tried to grow turnips last year, and they were not much bigger than radishes when she finally released them from the inhospitable earth!

At The Birches most vegetables are not happy growing in the sandy soil, made acid by pine needles and rhododendrons. Pip, my sister Judy’s daughter, tried to grow turnips one year—and this was as big as they would grow. (CREDIT: JANE GOODALL)

A Kitchen-Garden Revolution

Many gardening experts believe that producing one’s own food is the fastest-growing trend in American home gardening. In one recent survey representing at least a million US households, people with gardens were asked to indicate which kind of gardening they were most interested in. Growing food was top for those questioned, with Earth-friendly gardening coming second. Next came native plants, and then organic gardening. I suspect that gardeners in Europe would also put food gardening high in their priorities. Growing vegetables among the flowers has always been part of European cottage gardening.

I also learned that about one million new food gardens were planted in 2010 in the United States. That seems a lot until we learn that, in 1943, when the Victory Garden movement was peaking in popularity, twenty million gardens were planted in the United States. And this was when the US population was less than half what it is today.

Clearly the trend is growing, and more and more communities, especially in urban neighborhoods, are transforming land into viable food gardens. This rather rapidly increasing desire to reconnect with the earth, throughout at least parts of the developed world, has something to do, I suspect, with the fact that more and more people are realizing the extent to which so many of the vegetables and fruits we buy in grocery stores and supermarkets are contaminated by chemicals.

Only by growing our own food can we be certain it is pesticide- and GMO-free. It may not only be cheaper than buying from the grocery store, it may also save on doctor’s bills in the future. And it tastes better, too!

There is another advantage: just as we grew food during my childhood to help the war against the evil of the Nazis, by growing our own food today we are fighting another kind of evil. We are beginning to stand up against the corporate/industrial agriculture giants that control so much of how our food is grown and distributed. It is a form of activism—doing our bit, along with the small family farms and organic farmers, to create an alternative to a system that is poisoning the world.

The New Urban Landscape—Food Gardens

Across the globe, from Russia to Argentina, from Cuba and Haiti to Tanzania, in almost every city, people are growing food. In some cases it is for pure pleasure, the joy of being connected to the land, of picking and eating a sun-ripened tomato, cooking your own runner beans. At other times it is for economic reasons. Or it may be because you are in need of spiritual healing. Urban food gardens are like the daisies that push through cracks in the sidewalk. They show the way of the future for cities where concrete mixes with compost and nourishing plants are as integral to the landscape as skyscrapers and parking lots.

And as more and more people move from the countryside to urban areas, so there is a greater need for real farming in the city, and the practice grows. In some cities you have to wait for two years or more to get a vacancy for a space in an allotment. The Urban Agriculture Network, founded by Jac Smit, collects information on what is going on, but there are many websites out there describing the various projects, large and small, on disused plots, roofs, balconies, and terraces.

There are organizations helping refugees, unemployed inner-city youth, and bankrupt farmers who have been forced to move into the cities, to start growing some of their own food. As small projects grow, surplus food is sold in farmers’ markets, and the food security of an area is increased. Gradually, too, the need for trucking food in from faraway sources will decrease.

Members of the Lehae Youth Roots & Shoots group working on their “Food Garden” at the Lehae Primary School close to Soweto in South Africa. I was really impressed when I visited this project, now a six-hundred-square-meter plot providing vegetables for the school and needy families. The gardeners are (left to right) Sphiwe Genge, Steven Mabasa, and Lebo Mantsho. They told me their group planned to introduce home gardens into the community, and within the past couple of years they have created fifty small (twenty-by-thirteen foot) plots for the neediest of families, crèches (child care centers), and the goggos (grannies). (CREDIT: © THE JANE GOODALL INSTITUTE–SOUTH AFRICA / BY JULIET PRICE)

Of all these hundreds I have only been able to visit just a few—in the United Kingdom, America, Canada, China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Tanzania, and South Africa. I have met people who told me about wonderful projects, or read accounts that grabbed my attention. It is from that list that I have chosen the following ones to share.

“Urban knights” is a new term to describe the people behind this exciting horticultural force in the world’s cities. These commoner knights are helping to create food gardens in all sorts of places—from city rooftops to alleyways and balconies and tiny backyards. Susan McCoy, of the US-based trend-spotting Garden Media Group, describes them as “the ‘urban grit’ influence to protect the earth’s resources.”

After reading about the wartime Victory Gardens, Taja Sevelle was inspired to start the Michigan-based project Urban Farming. She told a reporter it began in 2005 with “three gardens and a pamphlet.” Eight years later her organization has facilitated the planting of over sixty thousand community gardens around the world. The goal is to create an abundance of food, especially for people in struggling communities, by planting, supporting, and encouraging gardens on all available unused land and space—including on a rooftop in the Bronx and helping a school in Los Angeles create an “edible wall.” Sevelle hopes her project will create a “paradigm shift” and enable people of all economic means to have access to healthy food.

I have a most innovative and imaginative friend, Gary Zeller, who embodies the spirit of an urban knight. Every time I meet him, he has some new invention to show me, and always it is something that will help us reuse, reduce waste, and live in greater harmony with nature. One of his latest, and most delightful, is the “Garden Up” tower. “It’s perfect,” he told me, “for the urban gardeners who sometimes only have a window seat or balcony to work with.” He has received requests for information about these vertical gardens from Jordan and many other countries where people are desperate for pesticide-free, locally grown produce that uses very little water.

Commercial Farming in the City

Meanwhile, there is increasing understanding among city planners that food gardens are helpful to the city in many ways. They contribute to improved health and economic stability, adding a rustic element that is attractive to so many people—and they reduce crime.

In light of this, city planners across America are changing zoning regulations to encourage urban farms, run by private companies, to supply the demand for locally grown and organic food. Let me share a few examples.

In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, an NGO is collaborating with the city’s planners to transform vacant, abandoned lots that were devastated by a flood in 2008 into a 2.5-acre farm. This will make a difference, as currently most food must be brought in from up to one thousand miles away. In Columbia, Missouri, an enterprising farmer has developed a 1.3-acre urban farm and is now allowed, by the city, to sell his produce. In Boise, Idaho, new regulations have been created that encourage the growing of food in the city in order to help the tough economy. Salt Lake City has voted to allow the sale of produce without a business license, and has eased rules prohibiting greenhouses and plastic hoop houses in the city.

I just learned about a project called Growing Power, in Chicago, which was launched in 2002 with the aim of bringing the city’s various small and dispersed farming projects together and integrating them with other food-related activities. This way the wider issues of city food security and nutritional, ecological, and public health could be tackled. There are two farms (2.5 acres and 0.5 acre) on the South Side, a twenty-thousand-square-foot lakefront area in the heart of downtown Chicago, and, most recently, a seven-acre site in the Bridgeport neighborhood. From its office, Growing Power addresses nutritional, ecological, and public health problems and, best of all, provides education in farming methods and training for jobs. Many citizens volunteer in these programs.

And now I must discuss the extraordinary events that are taking place in Detroit. It was one of the places where I gave a lecture a few years ago, and even though I was only there for a day, I noticed, from the taxis that took me to and fro from hotel to lecture venue, that many stores were boarded up, the train station was closed, and the whole place seemed run-down and dejected. The recession had hit hard and many people had left, my cabdriver said. And when a house was damaged, he told me, it was torn down.

I was soon on my way to the next city and the next lecture, and thought no more about Detroit. Until very recently, when I heard about the exciting developments that were taking place because a group of citizens, whose unofficial meeting place was a coffee shop, began to make new plans for their city. And growing food was at the heart of these plans.

The very fact that there are so many vacant plots in Detroit means that urban farming and gardening can truly thrive. The Detroit Food Policy Council knows that farming empowers people as well as providing much-needed fresh and local food, and today urban farming is driving the city’s economy.

Townspeople can “adopt a lot” for free—and there is so much scope, so much space. One young man has eight plots already and is planning to get three more, and he is training young people to work on his farm. In one neighborhood where thirty houses were torn down, leaving just three standing, people are growing vegetables, fruit orchards, and flowers, and one of the remaining houses is being turned into a community center. In this new Detroit, farming is unifying the community, drawing African Americans, Asians, and whites together, all growing food to contribute to their future. Citizens ages ten to sixty are volunteering, giving their time to the greening of their city. There are gardens everywhere. And the city has plans for greening one area of three hundred acres that will include tree farms and the restoration of a forest.

I read about one enthusiastic citizen, Jackie Victor, who told a reporter, “Imagine a city rebuilt block by block, with a gorgeous riverfront, world-class museums, and fantastic local food. Everyone who wants one has a quarter-acre garden, and every kid lives within bike distance of a farm.”

Community Harvests

As I have said, the urban farming revolution is happening all over the world. In June 2011, I was invited to participate in the official launch of the Comcrop project at Bukit Panjang Community Garden, an approximately fourteen-thousand-square-foot plot close to the Bukit Timah Nature Reserve in Singapore. Once, the whole area had been agricultural land, but as part of the plans for city development the farmers had been moved from their land and put into apartment flats. There they were not happy.

They missed the land, I was told, and many of them began planting vegetables in any vacant spaces they could find—such as underneath the new expressway. The same sort of thing was happening in other parts of the island nation, and the government decided, in 2005, that allowing them access to vegetable plots in assigned areas would be better. Especially if they could be persuaded to work together rather than in “individual secretive locations.” And so Community in Bloom, a national garden movement, was launched “to foster a gardening culture in Singapore.” The community garden I was visiting is one of some six hundred that have been established on residential estates, schools, hospitals, and commercial places, such as the rooftop herb garden of the Fairmont Hotel.

It was a sunny day. I met some of the old residents. Someone gave me one of the traditional straw hats. I wandered through the fenced-in area, within which individual farmers were growing the vegetables of their choice on their small patches of allotted land. A fourth-generation farmer, Kenny Eng, along with the chief executive of Alpha Biofuels, Allan Lim, hope that they can persuade the residents to join Comcrop, a project they have devised to try to increase the productivity of the area through cooperative farming in an environmentally friendly way. Both Allan and Kenny are young men, and both were bubbling over with enthusiasm. Allan took me to see the communal herb garden that stands outside the enclosed gardens, where any member of the apartment blocks is free to take the produce—the resident troop of rhesus monkeys fortunately do not seem to care for dill, mint, and the other herbs planted there.

Allan and Kenny have persuaded Starbucks Coffee Company and the downtown microbrewery Brewerkz to donate and deliver their waste products for compost. Indeed, it would be hard to refuse them.

The local government is behind Comcrop—officially it was announced as a project designed to create “a meeting place for residents to interact and elderly residents to get some exercise while gardening.” But there is another reason—to encourage urban farming as an economically and environmentally sustainable source of food throughout the island. If everyone grew at least some vegetables over and above what they themselves need, the community as a whole would benefit, as the extra produce is often donated to food kitchens or the needy.

Food Gardens for Refugees in Tanzania

When JGI started our youth program in Lugufu, the big Congolese refugee camp in Tanzania, one of the first projects that were introduced was a vegetable garden. Our goal was to try to involve the young people in activities that would bring meaning into their lives, for so often there is a dearth of hope in the camps.

Producing one’s own food is a great tonic, to watch it grow, then harvest and cook it—and finally eat it. It provides exercise, knowledge, and skill, and all this improves self-confidence and self-esteem. Over time, the gardens prospered. Chickens, from our chicken-incubation project, flew over the fence, fertilized the ground, and consumed insect pests. A little Congolese boy of about twelve showed me around when I first visited, so proud of the beans, peas, tomatoes, and maize that his group was growing.

Many of the elder refugees were delighted with our food-growing projects and were eager to share their knowledge. During one of my visits an old farmer from Congo was demonstrating to our Roots & Shoots group how you could make insecticide from papaya (pawpaw) leaves. He explained that you cut them small, add some salt, and boil them. The residual liquid makes a strong insecticide that can be used, at different strengths, for different kinds of pests. When the refugees were forced back to the DRC, our groups took with them not only their chickens but also seeds from their vegetable gardens. That was their one comfort as they faced an uncertain future.

Refugees in America

Conditions were not easy in Lugufu for the Congolese refugees, but at least they were still in Africa, and many of them could speak to each other in Kiswahili. Nor are the foods very different in Tanzania from what is grown on the other side of the lake in the eastern part of the DRC.

It can be very much harder for people who have been forced to leave their countries and who end up in a very different part of the world. Some refugees, from many parts of the world, have ended up in the City Heights neighborhood of San Diego. Here you will find people from many countries, including Somalis, Cambodians, Liberians, Congolese, and Latinos from Central and South America. There are Burundian mothers with babies on their backs and produce on their heads, Latino men with wide hats and chaps, Muslims, and Christians.

When they first arrived, about 50 percent of City Heights’ residents lived just at, and some even below, the US poverty line. But it was not only poverty that made them so often unhappy. They were housed in apartments, which was hard for those who came from rural areas—very different from the openness of village life. And they were homesick for the traditional foods of their homeland. Most could not afford fruit and vegetables, and gave them up for cheap fast food.

One day, in 2006, a conversation took place between a Somali Bantu refugee, Bilali Muya, and a group of people from the International Rescue Committee, an organization that helps refugees. It would lead to a project that provided new hope and new life to hundreds of refugees. Muya talked with passion about the need his people felt to grow their own food. Together they conceived of the idea of an urban farm. Needing more support, they reached out to the Cambodians, who had arrived in numbers in the 1980s, escaping the Khmer Rouge. One of them, Bob Ou, was very excited by this, and a search began for suitable land.

Eventually the perfect place was found, a vacant lot of 2.3 acres, and after two years of negotiations with the city, permission was finally given. During this time Muya and Ou frequently met at meetings, but although each of them was working to raise money and organize their communities, they had never spoken to each other. However, when the New Roots Community Farm opened, Ou and Muya had neighboring plots, and as the weeks went by, a friendship developed. As they worked among their tomatoes and beans and cabbages, they sometimes shared stories about the violence that had forced them to leave home, the terrible conditions in their refugee camps, and the disappointments they had faced on arriving in the United States of America.

In San Diego, refugees from many countries have created the New Roots Community Farm, where they can grow many of the foods that they grew back home. Bob Ou (left), a refugee from Cambodia, and Bilali Muya from Somalia are leaders in this venture. As they worked on their plots, they gradually struck up a close friendship. (CREDIT: ALLEN J. SCHABEN, COPYRIGHT 2013, LOS ANGELES TIMES. REPRINTED WITH PERMISSION)

Now both men are leaders in their communities and both, of course, are passionate about the farm, which enables eighty-five families from twelve countries to grow food—right there in the heart of the city. Many of them were farmers before they fled, and the work helps to reconnect them with the land, feed their families, and, as with Ou and Muya, foster friendships. Food that is surplus to their household needs is sold each Saturday in the City Heights farmers’ market, which has become a meeting place in the heart of the community.

New Roots Community Garden in City Heights is one of about fifty such community farms for refugees that are spreading across the United States. Courses are offered in farming techniques suited to the new environment in which they find themselves. Some of these farms are very successful: Lao, Mien, and Hmong refugees who settled in Fresno County, California, in the late seventies are now growing and selling Asian crops. At least thirteen hundred farmers are taking part in this program, and they can earn from $5,000 to as much as $50,000 per year. Having gained experience from working in the community gardens, some refugees are now running their own independent farms.

Saving Our Food by Saving Our Seeds

Here is another homegrown movement that is a direct way of fighting back against the industrial control of our food supply—saving your heirloom seeds. An heirloom plant is a cultivar that was commonly grown in a bygone era, one that has been pollinated naturally—by insects, birds, and the wind—and that is not used in modern intensive agriculture. Many have been grown from seeds handed down, generation after generation, through a family or community for hundreds of years, although not all have such an ancient lineage.

It was after World War II that so many heirloom seeds began to disappear, and this was the same point at which agriculture became more centralized and big companies began advertising commercially packaged seeds that often consisted of hybrids. This was also when markets were being developed by the larger corporations to make the most profit and as quickly as possible.

Fortunately many individuals and organizations are working to preserve, collect, grow, and distribute heirloom seeds. The largest in the United States is Seed Savers Exchange in Decorah, Iowa, founded in 1975. Each year they publish a book with the names and addresses of their growing membership (more than thirteen thousand in 2013) along with lists of some six hundred heirloom vegetable and heritage fruit varieties that they are offering to gardeners. And there are countless other smaller organizations throughout North America and around the globe.

Another, in Canada, is the Seed and Plant Sanctuary, which originally started with Salt Spring Seeds. It has built up a large, properly stored collection of most local food and herb seeds, comprising currently some nine hundred mostly heirloom varieties in their living-gene bank. These seeds are distributed to many custodians across Canada, who test the performance of different varieties in different parts of the country.

Communing with Nature’s Bounty

Just as people can share seeds, so too can we share nature’s bounty with one another. As children we used to go to Richmond Hill Church—a big and very beautiful church in Bournemouth, with a tall spire, glorious stained-glass windows, and a picture over the altar that I loved of the Good Shepherd holding the lost sheep under His arm and a shepherd’s crook in the other hand. As I relive the occasion in my mind, He seems to be smiling down on us as we gathered to celebrate Harvest Festival.

Almost everyone has brought something from their garden or from a nearby farm. My contribution is the potatoes I begged from the farm where I had helped to dig them from the ground. There are baskets and baskets of large polished tomatoes, and cucumbers, radishes, cabbages, and a couple of giant squashes. And what a bounty of apples and pears, plums and gooseberries. There are two sheaves of golden corn propped up at the base of the pulpit, and autumn flowers are everywhere, ranging from roses and dahlias in elegant vases to bunches of wildflowers in jam jars picked by Judy and me!

All of the lessons, the hymns, and the sermon celebrate and give thanks for the bounty of nature.

It is sad, but true, that today people seldom give thanks for their food. Some families still say grace, but many families no longer even sit around the same table to eat and talk in companionship. How often do we thank nature, think of the plants that have provided our food, or offer gratitude to their plant spirits? How often do we even think of the people who grew and harvested them?

Some time ago I was a participant in a workshop organized by Satish Kumar, a follower of the teachings of Gandhi and editor of Resurgence magazine, which publishes articles about the environment and sustainability. Afterward we moved into a simple room that opens onto a small garden, shaded by plane trees. It was late summer, and the evening sun lit up an amazing array of food that awaited us on the rough wooden table. It was all, of course, vegan, organic, and homegrown.

It was a veritable feast, and not only for the eating. The colors were a feast for the eyes: crisp lettuce leaves and spinach and cucumbers, different shades of green, in giant salad bowls, with splashes of red radishes and small orange-red tomatoes and sliced peppers. Apples—red and green and yellow—pale-golden brown pears, dark-purple plums and grapes, and almost-black avocadoes.

Now I close my eyes (lucky I learned touch-typing!) and I am smelling the amazing fragrance; there is parsley, the tang of the stems to which some of the tomatoes are still attached, the mint leaves that are being crushed and mixed into a fruit punch, and over all the scent of roses and honeysuckle wafting in from outside.

Then comes the tasting, the different flavors—I always like to keep the different tastes separate—to enjoy the fullness of each one, so special. There is indeed much to enjoy, for people have worked hard to cook their special dishes in order to honor Satish and his guests.

And tonight we experience not only the delicious tastes but a very rare opportunity to become familiar with all the different textures, for we eat just as a huge percentage of people around the world eat, using only our fingers as we put the food onto plates made of recycled cornstarch. And so we feel the food with our fingers, and the crunchiness or smoothness in our mouths, and the sliding down into our stomachs. (I am sure, though, that we shall not feel the process of digesting such wholesome, healthy food!)

But before we load our plates and find a chair, we make a circle around the table, and Satish bids us to hold hands while he gives thanks for the food and thanks to the Great Spiritual Power that has provided for us, and for the companionship we enjoy. And he gives thanks to Mother Nature, too. He is well qualified for this prayer, for he was a Jain monk before he realized he needed to be out in the world to spread Gandhi’s teachings.

Many people have become separated from their food and from the beingness of plants in our modern, high-speed materialistic society, but it is my belief that as more and more of us turn to growing our own food and harvesting it for our own table, some of the old connectedness with the plant world is returning to our lives.

Indeed, I pray that this is true, for so many of the world’s plants are endangered and desperately needing all the help we can give them. Fortunately there are those who do care, very much, and who are working passionately to save them.