Activist learns helpful lessons from community garden

By STEVE BROWN

Capital Press

OLYMPIA -- Many communities across the West are dealing with food-related hardships: agricultural land under pressure from urban growth, increasing numbers of people looking to food banks for help, farmers struggling to pay their bills.

In Thurston County, Wash., food activists are gaining momentum in their efforts to develop urban agriculture to defuse these crises and become more self-sufficient in their food supply.

TJ Johnson, director of the Urban Agriculture Program at Sustainable South Sound, spoke to a couple of hundred interested citizens Jan. 17, encouraging them to cooperate to build a system using existing assets. Those assets, he said, include "fertile farmland, an educated population and a strong environmental and social justice ethic."

A growing population, both worldwide and in the county, is adding to the pressure on farmland. "Globally, we need 34,000 acres more every day just to feed new people," he said. "In Thurston County, we'll need 18,000 more acres by 2030."

One program Johnson helped launch is the Wendell Berry Community Garden, a 7,500-square-foot plot of donated land that has produced 8,500 pounds of food since it was established in May 2009.

Shareholders work the garden, and they donate half of their potatoes, onions and winter squash to a local food bank. "We try to grow what's most helpful," Johnson said.

The garden also produces a variety of vegetables, and has test plots growing grain: rye, amaranth and quinoa.

The goal at the garden, Johnson said, is to produce all the needed compost and organic material there, to grow seed for crop varieties suited to its microclimate and to raise bees to increase pollination throughout the neighborhood. "We're trying to become a closed loop," he said.

Lessons learned at the community garden, Johnson said, can be expanded into other efforts to make the community more self-sustaining. Examples he cited include:

* Planting strips on public and private land (100 acres of such strips can produce 315 tons of grain).

* Neighborhood-scale composting facilities.

* Local-sourcing co-ops for restaurants.

* Community-supported agriculture focusing on grain.

* On-farm direct sales and restaurants.

* Temporary farmers' markets designed for small-scale producers.

* Thurston County Farm Aid ("an event to generate interest and build community").

A long-range goal is to develop a local food hub, with production, processing, storage and sales in a single location.

Part of the meeting involved breaking up into small groups, then reconvening to offer the ideas that were generated. Afterward Johnson described those ideas: "Some proposed lifestyle changes, committing themselves to grow more food, to share seeds and plant starts. Others wanted to seek policy changes to make it easier to produce and sell food."

The best part, he said: "A lot of small farmers were there. They felt really supported and recommitted themselves to getting their enterprises going."

Online

www.sustainsouthsound.org/