Ok. I have to admit, while I enjoyed the Outstanding in the Field dinner, I was irked by a comment made where a speaker referred to someone alive and in the East Bay community as “the grandfather of urban farming.” This bewilders me. Urban farming…like any other small scale subsistence farming is not new. No one gets to claim inventing agriculture. Growing food and raising livestock has been a human practice for a really long time. We are talking for the last 10,000+ years. When our habitats became urbanized, which occurred in the Neolithic era, we grew our food within the city limits. As cities became more dense and technology introduced…we still grew our own food in the city. Today, in highly urban and dense cities around the world, people still raise livestock and grow their veggies- look to Beijing, China or Havana, Cuba.

Early cities like Machu Picchu, Persia’s Parsa, Mexico’s Tenochtitlan, and Egypt, to name a few, maintained a symbiotic relation with agriculture. All offer models of urban farming. And it’s not like this occurred in ancient times, was forgotten, then got picked up again at the turn of this new millennium. These places have maintained their practices. Urban farming is old people, really old. The grandmothers and grandfathers of this practice are not alive today. They’re certainly not from Alameda County.

If you aren’t buying that urban environments are ancient, as are their urban agricultural practices (I suggest reading up on the topic), let’s fast forward to industrialized nations. Agricultural practices have always been around even in those cities and continue to be practiced heavily in immigrant communities. My own grandparents kept squab, rabbits and veggies in the Mission District of San Francisco. Interestingly, we did not flaunt the fact because we did not want trouble. Ironically, in 2006, I knew of some folks that reported a gentleman named Jose for keeping chickens in Berkeley, CA. They felt it was dirty. He felt it was a great and cheap source of eggs and meat for his family.

I am beginning to think this whole urban farming thing may have some of the typical power struggles that seems to tinge other politicized activities, activities that garner attention, potential markets, and funding. Did you see the film The Garden? I strongly suggest it.

If you’d like to learn more about ethnic practices of urban agriculture read the delightful book The Earth Knows My Name: Food, Culture, and Sustainability in the Gardens of Ethnic America by Patricia Klindienst.

The beauty of practicing urban farming today is that we get to preserve, share, and celebrate deep wisdom on nurturing ourselves, our land, and each other. Plants, animals, and food tie into many cultural practice. They are common mediums used by everyone for millennia.