Conservation Communities Takes Root Across US 116
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Kate Murphy reports at the NYT about a growing number of so-called agrihoods, residential developments where a working farm is the central feature, in the same way that other communities may cluster around a golf course, pool or fitness center. At least a dozen projects across the country are thriving, enlisting thousands of home buyers who crave access to open space, verdant fields and fresh food. 'I hear from developers all the time about this,' says Ed McMahon. 'They've figured out that unlike a golf course, which costs millions to build and millions to maintain, they can provide green space that actually earns a profit.'
Agritopia, outside Phoenix, has sixteen acres of certified organic farmland, with row crops (artichokes to zucchini), fruit trees (citrus, nectarine, peach, apple, olive and date) and livestock (chickens and sheep). Fences gripped by grapevines and blackberry bushes separate the farm from the community's 452 single-family homes, each with a wide front porch and sidewalks close enough to encourage conversation. The hub of neighborhood life is a small square overlooking the farm, with a coffeehouse, farm-to-table restaurant and honor-system farm stand. The square is also where residents line up on Wednesday evenings to claim their bulging boxes of just-harvested produce, eggs and honey, which come with a $100-a-month membership in the community-supported agriculture, or CSA, program.
'Wednesday is the highlight of my week,' says Ben Wyffels. 'To be able to walk down the street with my kids and get fresh, healthy food is amazing.' Because the Agritopia farm is self-sustaining, no fees are charged to support it, other than the cost of buying produce at the farm stand or joining the CSA. Agritopia was among the first agrihoods — like Serenbe in Chattahoochee Hills, Ga.; Prairie Crossing in Grayslake, Ill.; South Village in South Burlington, Vt.; and Hidden Springs in Boise, Idaho. 'The interest is so great, we're kind of terrified trying to catch up with all the calls,' says Quint Redmond adding that in addition to developers, he hears from homeowners' associations and golf course operators who want to transform their costly-to-maintain green spaces into revenue-generating farms. Driving the demand, Redmond says, are the local-food movement and the aspirations of many Americans to be gentlemen (or gentlewomen) farmers. 'Everybody wants to be Thomas Jefferson these days.'" The city of Detroit is planning a 26.9-acre urban farm project on one of its vacant high school properties. Produce from the project will be included in meals for students in the district and later to the larger community.
Agritopia, outside Phoenix, has sixteen acres of certified organic farmland, with row crops (artichokes to zucchini), fruit trees (citrus, nectarine, peach, apple, olive and date) and livestock (chickens and sheep). Fences gripped by grapevines and blackberry bushes separate the farm from the community's 452 single-family homes, each with a wide front porch and sidewalks close enough to encourage conversation. The hub of neighborhood life is a small square overlooking the farm, with a coffeehouse, farm-to-table restaurant and honor-system farm stand. The square is also where residents line up on Wednesday evenings to claim their bulging boxes of just-harvested produce, eggs and honey, which come with a $100-a-month membership in the community-supported agriculture, or CSA, program.
'Wednesday is the highlight of my week,' says Ben Wyffels. 'To be able to walk down the street with my kids and get fresh, healthy food is amazing.' Because the Agritopia farm is self-sustaining, no fees are charged to support it, other than the cost of buying produce at the farm stand or joining the CSA. Agritopia was among the first agrihoods — like Serenbe in Chattahoochee Hills, Ga.; Prairie Crossing in Grayslake, Ill.; South Village in South Burlington, Vt.; and Hidden Springs in Boise, Idaho. 'The interest is so great, we're kind of terrified trying to catch up with all the calls,' says Quint Redmond adding that in addition to developers, he hears from homeowners' associations and golf course operators who want to transform their costly-to-maintain green spaces into revenue-generating farms. Driving the demand, Redmond says, are the local-food movement and the aspirations of many Americans to be gentlemen (or gentlewomen) farmers. 'Everybody wants to be Thomas Jefferson these days.'" The city of Detroit is planning a 26.9-acre urban farm project on one of its vacant high school properties. Produce from the project will be included in meals for students in the district and later to the larger community.
454 / 16 (Score:1)
16 acres is going to supply 454 families?
Not even close.
Likely off by a factor of 50-100 or so.
Re:454 / 16 (Score:4, Interesting)
This sounds like the fake plastic plants approach to agriculture, all fashion and no substance.
I myself live in the middle of 20 acres of my own farmland, and thats barely enough to anything even close to useful in the way of actual farming, we call it a 'lifestyle block'. ;)
'The square is also where residents line up on Wednesday evenings to claim their bulging boxes of just-harvested produce, eggs and honey, which come with a $100-a-month membership'
Yeah, right.. the boxes wont be bulging from the produce of 20 acres.. not if they have any livestock area as they claim, not for 452 families..
Mind you, $45,200/month is not a bad scam for the people running it.. I suspect it buys a lot of outside produce
Not that bad (Score:5, Insightful)
You can't FEED that many from that small a block, but all the small luxury veges yes, you can do that.
Herbs, tomatoes, lettuce. They aren't talking bulk rice/wheat/potatoes, just the extras which make that carb loaded crap edible ;)
BIG cost savings if you eat a lot of veges, because the luxury stuff costs much more than the staples that provide most of the calories.
Re:Not that bad (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm a member of a CSA in the wonderful state of Pennsylvania.
I pay around that much. (although in one annual payment for May-Nov)
My farmer has 2 acres of land and about 30-40 members if I recall. So that's the same order of magnitude.
We get more veggies than we can eat. The fridge is always stuffed full of whatever's in season. Lettuces; cukes; peppers; tomatoes; kohlrabi; squash; potatoes; parsnips; etc; etc.
I still sadly need to throw stuff away since we can't eat it all in time. But it's just the fresh stuff and storage veggies. We don't get grains. Corn has a horrible yield density.
They aren't making a killing. I actually had a pair of farmers for the first few years of the CSA, but they decided it wasn't possible to both live off of it, so she went off to do something else.
I did the math a few years ago. It's probably somewhat less than it costs at the grocery store, but it much fresher. You can't compare the taste of tomatoes from a store and something you just picked. (You can pick some of your own stuff also. I'm pretty damn sure he isn't trucking anything in.)
I get to be on a first name basis with my farmer, and I'm helping someone with a local business. He would get pennies on the dollar selling to a store, so it's win-win. And my kids get to see where their food comes from. Anything he has leftover gets sent to a Food Bank.
It would be awesome if I didn't have to drive to pick up the veggies, like these planned towns. Cool idea.
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It's like arguing the merits of 16th century catholicism to a reddit atheist: it can't work
A reddit atheist would probably ask if these farming communities are hell-bent on converting all the other farmers under the threat of burning them at stake. I mean, every religion "works", for certain values of "works", but that's a fairly limited view of the problem. Just as limited as the scope of your "analogy" is. These farms also "work" but they're apparently not for everyone. Even if urbanization is nice for some things, we've screwed up agriculture badly in this respect. (I'd love to have a greenhou
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The notion of true Sustainability without massive acreage is timeless.
Yeah, it's also bullshit. Real farming is HARD FUCKING WORK. Believe me, I know. True sustenance farming is even harder. Sure, it's easy enough to grow a vegetable garden for fun. But when you're growing to survive it takes a lot of acreage per person, especially if you're growing on marginal land or weak soil. Even the most experienced of sustenance farmers usually have to supplement their diet with hunting/fishing and food bought from side work. A lot of sustenance farmers have starved to death on the fro
Robots increasingly help with manual labor (Score:2)
http://robohub.org/tag/agricul... [robohub.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A... [wikipedia.org]
http://www.ieee-ras.org/agricu... [ieee-ras.org]
Indoors agricultural is also rising, given cheaper energy costs for LED lighting and more consistent results in controlled environments...
Yes, hunting/gatherering in a large home range is easier than pre-modern century farming styles, which seem to have only increased because of increasing population densities and tribes pushes to marginal lands or smaller lands.
http://www.primitivism.com/ori... [primitivism.com]
Anyway, I appla
Re:454 / 16 (Score:5, Insightful)
Hmm, 452 families, $100 each per month. So they're taking in better than $540K a year for the produce from 20 acres?
A professional farmer might make $17K on the same land (assuming he's growing corn, at average production levels and prices).
Sounds like quite a scam to me. Where can I get in on it?
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To be fair, the average farmer would also spend probably 1/10th (or less) the time on that 20 acres growing corn: planting, spraying, irrigation, harvesting is all handled with heavy equipment in corn production. You can't do that with tomatoes. Well, the irrigation is probably automated, but if it's organic, you've gotta hand-examine plants for bugs and weeds. Not sure how they're raising sheep and everything else, you need probably 1/4-1/2 an acre per sheep (unless you grain feed them), which doesn't give
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Mod parent up! (Score:2)
I've been scanning the comments looking for anybody asking about water usage. If they're really trying to tout their "conservation community" in freaking ARIZONA, they ought to be putting the water issue front and center.
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Agreed. Same thought here. Farming community. Arizona desert. Ummmm......???
For the future of how THAT is going to work out, look no further than the Central Valley in California right now.
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No doubt, if they persist with the status quo.
Is Tucson much different than Phoenix? Check this out: http://www.american-oasis.com/... [american-oasis.com]
Brad Lancaster has been showing how water harvesting techniques can not only make it work in Arizona, but on a larger scale actually recharge aquifers and restore waterscapes to reverse desertification in arid climates.
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That's a great article. Thanks for sharing.
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harvesting is all handled with heavy equipment in corn production. You can't do that with tomatoes
I picked tomatoes and various other commercial vegetable crops in the early 80's (Australia), even back then they had mechanical harvesters. Hand picked tomatoes were the "cream of the crop", you pick them for about 2-4 weeks when the crop starts ripening, they are early to market and good quality so the farmer gets top dollar. However once the contract date* comes up for the entire crop to be harvested they were
mechanically harvested and ended up in cans and/or sauce bottles. Same with peas, a 1980's era
Re:454 / 16 (Score:5, Informative)
... assuming he's growing corn
Bad assumption. They are not growing feed corn. They are growing high value vegetables: endive, arugula, tomatoes, artichokes. Just outside Phoenix, you can grow year round, harvesting continuously.
I live in San Jose, CA. We also have a long growing season. With a 1/4 acre garden, small orchard, beehive, and a half dozen laying hens, I produce about 80% of my families food by value, and about 50% by calories. We mostly buy bulk cheap stuff like rice, soybeans, flour, and soybean oil, and get everything else from the backyard.
Re:454 / 16 (Score:5, Funny)
What is the average time commitment on your garden? I've always wanted to do something similar, but I've never believed I had the time for it.
It requires a quite a bit of time in the spring, while preparing the ground and planting, but not much during the rest of the year. But all this work does not have to be your labor. There is an exemption to the 13th Amendment, which outlawed slavery and indentured servitude: You can still coerce unpaid labor from other people, provided they are your direct descendents, and under the age of 18. You can even use extremely cruel and unusual methods to extract this labor, including turning off the TV, and even unplugging the router, until the tomatoes are picked, sliced, and in the mason jars.
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If high value veggies can produce ~30x the output of a corn crop, the people paying the $100 a month might be getting their money's worth.
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I produce about 80% of my families food by value, and about 50% by calories.
Based on what I have read that's not possible. The "usual" figure is that 1 person requires 1 acre, under optimal conditions. (Or 1 person requires 0.5 hectares).
If "family" = 3 people, and you are providing 50% of their calories, then you are feeding 1.5 people on that 1/4 acre. That would be 6 times more efficient than the "optimal" farm. Also, if it is possible to do this, it would require outside sources of water and fertilizer.
We mostly buy bulk cheap stuff like rice, soybeans, flour, and soybean oil, and get everything else from the backyard.
Then that is where you are getting most of your calories.
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The "usual" figure is that 1 person requires 1 acre, under optimal conditions.
Nope. There are plenty of places where productivity is much higher than that. Bangladesh has 150 million people, but no where near 150 million acres of farmland. Yet they feed themselves. They accomplish this by growing year round, using intensive farming, and eating little meat. One acre per person may be typical for America, but that is based on plenty of corn fed beef.
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Yet they feed themselves.
Apparently not:
A quick web search claims that Bangladesh has "one of the highest undernutrition rates in the world." [feedthefuture.gov] Wikipedia agrees [wikipedia.org] with "Though they may own a small plot of land and some livestock and generally have enough to eat, their diets lack nutritional value", and also claims that "Foreign assistance and commercial imports fill the gap" [wikipedia.org].
One acre per person may be typical for America, but that is based on plenty of corn fed beef.
The one acre-per-person figures I saw were specifically excluding meat.
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The bottom line is this is a tech website. It would be foolish to believe anyone here knows what they are talking about in this subject matter.
Right, because someone who has experience in all the intracacies of something like an MVC architecture is certainly incapable of understanding how to stick a seed in the ground and give it water and sun until it produces food.
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You can't compare industrial farming economics to a local community polyculture farm. It's a completely different game. I would argue the local CSA model is far more sustainable than industrial ag, and this is a clear example.
Industrial Ag requires thousands of acres of subsidized monocrop, big machinery, expensive seed (thanks to Monsanto), expensive fertilizer, transportation, and low-wage farmers and crop pickers to make a profit. It's an industry supported by big ag corporations and (thanks to their lob
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Re:454 / 16 (Score:4, Insightful)
Same here (but 10 acres, mostly oat hay). This is more like performance art than farming.
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Hmm, short of bulk foods like wheat and rice I have been able to feed my family just fine from a 1/2 acre city lot.. Maybe you'r doing something wrong?
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In a basic sense, you could get a lot of stuff from 20 acres. Definitely nowhere n
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Like most utopias it's probably got a downside.
The fees will go up and those who can't afford them will be converted into serfs or indentured labourers. Finally the CSA (Confederate States of America) will arise again with the newly recruited serfs growing cotton on those 20 acres.
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About one acre per person per year. So this would at best be supplementary.
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452 families, not people. and 16 acres total.
So, maybe 0.01 acres per person? Sounds more like an Allotment Garden than a working farm...
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Sorry, I meant that subsistence requires one acre per person per year. Much less for solely vegetarian diets, about a quarter to half off the top of my head. Maybe 1 acre per small family, less if you don't like your kids too much.
Either way, it's only going to provide a pretty small chunk of the diet.
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Sorry, I meant that subsistence requires one acre per person per year. Much less for solely vegetarian diets, about a quarter to half off the top of my head. Maybe 1 acre per small family, less if you don't like your kids too much.
Either way, it's only going to provide a pretty small chunk of the diet.
Why the fuck is it per year?
It's just 1 acre per person, for as long as they subsist on it. You're not going to need 10 acres for 1 person over 10 years, just 1 acre for 10 years for 1 person for 10 years. The years cancel out.
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Yeah, yeah, you're right. But, at least show some respect for your 4-digit elder. Sheesh, kids these days.
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The 1 year term describes the subsistence as indefinate, as it includes all the growing seasons \ harvests. If you only need to feed 1 person for a few months out of the year, the allocation would shift.
There is no "1 year term" in what he posted. He posted "per year".
A 1 year term would not describe something something over an "indefinate" amount of time, it would describe it over a definite amount of time - 1 year.
A "per year" term is indefinite - and irrelevant since the amount of land required doesn't increase or decrease over time (provided you have enough to rotate your crops, fallow, etc. as appropriate, and a single acre is plenty of space to manage that for a single person). The only way "per ye
Re:454 / 16 (Score:5, Informative)
Those 454 homes are no different from any other suburban home in Gilbert AZ.
There's just a pair of plots where a strip mall full of dentists and swimming pool supply stores could have been full of fruit and grass.
Every person in there just goes to the grocery store like everyone else, minus a bag of oranges once in a while that they probably let rot.
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It is enough to supply them with a few regular tidbits though. "Luxury veges", as another poster said. A few tomatos, a few berries, stuff that can really spice up the staples, and stuff that people with more money than sense spend a FORTUNE on when you figure in that they are looking for this absurd little 'organic' label and paying accordingly.
Obviously it sounds like they must be importing a lot of their packages from offsite but it proba
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Actually there are a lot of ways that they could make this happen. Vertical farming, interplanting, and aquaponics all are producing very high yields. They can be more labor-intensive, but there's a lot of pay-off in having a local, resilient food system.
This place, for example, is growing a million pounds of food per year on two acres, even through the winter: http://growingpower.org/ [growingpower.org]
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You might think that southwest Florida would have plenty of water - it's right next to the ocean.
But you can't grow crops on seawater and they are under more or less permanent water restrictions.
It is, however, one of the places where they grow things like early-season tomatoes commercially, and for some years now drip irrigation has been used to maximize the effectiveness of available water.
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Back in the 60's and early 70's, I remember all these communes popping up all over the place. A bunch of hippies would get together (none of whom knew the first thing about farming, of course) and decide they were going to form a community and "live off the land." So they would go buy (or squat) some small piss-poor farm somewhere and start growing their glorified vegetable garden. And pretty soon they would realize that farming was actual hard work (guess they thought they could just plant, sit around smok
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What you seem not to realize is that these communities are for hipsters, not hippies. Serenbe, for instance, is full of half-million-dollar 1500 ft^2 homes way out in the middle of fucking nowhere, in a metro area where even other hipster neighborhoods in-town have similar houses at half the price. They're not going to do (most of) the farming themselves; they're going to hire some schmuck to do it for them. And there's no way hippies could afford to live there.
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I'd bet it gets pretty close to meeting the demand of the community. Unfortunately, the typical American diet is heavy on staples (wheat, corn, potatoes, rice) & meats while being light on fresh vegetables (what this farm seeks to provide). You could probably supply 454 families with more artichokes than they could use with just an acre....
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Assuming the 454 families are pure carnivores, that's true.
SubjectsInCommentsAreStupid (Score:1, Troll)
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Agritopia in Phoenix (Score:4, Interesting)
To the best of my knowledge, the only useful thing to come out of Agritopia in Phoenix (Chandler/Gilbert) is Joe's Farm Grill [joesfarmgrill.com] which is a nice place to grab a fresh burger or some BBQ and eat on the patio with the other Mormon families.
If you look at the map [google.com], you'll see that there's basically a little bit of citrus, a field growing something alfalfa-esque, and a greenhouse where someone's got some tomatoes.
It's not Pauly Shore Biodome.
It's just a place with fresh tomatoes.
Re:Agritopia in Phoenix (Score:4, Informative)
"About 16" is "About 12."
Within Agritopia are approximately 12 acres of permanent urban farming. Farming first began here in 1927 when barren desert was cleared. The availability of irrigation water made farming in the desert possible. Initially, alfalfa hay was the principal crop (Gilbert was known as the hay capitol of the world).
When the Johnston family bought the farm in 1960, cotton was the most important crop. Cotton was grown in rotation with wheat, sorghum, corn, and barley. For a time, sugar beets were grown to supply the Spreckles Sugar plant in Chandler. In the 90’s, cotton became less profitable and the family grew mainly feed crops for dairy cattle, such as corn and alfalfa.
With the creation of Agritopia, preservation of agriculture was an underlying principle. In 2000, we began to carve out and convert the parcels that would be the permanent urban farming plots. Some of the earliest plots planted were the Medjool date and olive groves as well as the New Orchard (citrus, apples, peaches, plums, apricots, and blackberries).
The plots closest to the restaurant are for field crops. Seasonally, these plots produce a broad range of vegetables, herbs, and flowers. We are particularly proud of our leaf crops (lettuce, endive, asian greens, etc.) and our tomato crop (heirlooms, yellow, red, plum, etc.). The production of the farm is utilized by Joe’s Farm Grill, The Coffee Shop, and is available for purchase at the Agritopia Produce Stand.
Also, as should be obvious, nobody actually uses this land except Joe's Farm Grill.
At least they're a tasty place to eat.
silly (Score:2, Troll)
I am sure the unending drudgery of 16th century work will wear pretty thin within a year.
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Grammar Fails Slashdot (Score:1)
Nice dream ... (Score:2)
Ed McMahon (Score:1)
'I hear from developers all the time about this,' says Ed McMahon.
I thought he died...
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It really would be a change for Ed, since he once said:
"Golf courses sell real estate and that's why they're built."
Not a bad idea (Score:2)
This actually makes some sense. Of course you're not going to -feed- all these people off of one farm, but it provides some food, a natural meeting place, and some open area that's not annoying subdivisions.
Sounds cool as long as it's not... (Score:3)
Sounds cool as long as it's not a HOA that runs with deed. The community pool where I grew up was like that and it worked fine. If you were in the community you had the right but not the obligation to purchase a membership.
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I found one of these houses for sale in the community listed in Grayslake, IL.
Here's a link to the listing on Trulia. [trulia.com]
$200/mo HOA. Tax bill is INSANE for the area at around $12k/yr. House was 2300 sqft for around $250k, which is what I'd expect for the area.
Not only do you have to deal with a HOA, you have to deal with a tax bill at 5% of the worth of the property.
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So rampant [washingtonpost.com] gun violence doesn't bother you?
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Or the weather?! Forget that nonsense.
Our corporate headquarters is in downtown Chicago. I love to visit there. Chicago is by far my favorite big city and the people there are some of the friendliest people I have ever met in my life. There is no way in HELL I would live there though. Those winters are stupid.
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You may have a lower property tax bill, but your 10% sales tax is ridiculous. Combine that with city penalties such as the corruption tax [chicagoist.com], insurance fees, parking, wear and tear on your car and your body that city life brings, and it's about equal - not to mention the square footage you get for the dollar.
the aspirations of many Americans to be farmers... (Score:2)
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What next? Maybe we'll start cocking up our beavers!
What a joke (Score:4, Interesting)
16 acres of water-thirsty crops outside Phoenix in a development with 452 homes? This isn't a farm, (much less something you could call a "conservation community") it's landscaping that happens to produce something you can eat. Better than a golf-course, I suppose, but still a bit "slacktivist."
Agriculture for nerds. Stuff that matters. (Score:5, Interesting)
The part of this story that the Slashdot audience could most easily get in on is aquaponics, which is producing huge yields in some cases and holds a lot of promise for the local food movement.
Aquaponics is a system you can use indoors or outdoors, on large or small scales. It is a closed loop wherein ponds full of fish, usually tilapia, have their water pumped through hydroponic grow beds full of food-growing plants. The all-important third ingredient is a bacteria which converts the ammonia of the fish waste into nitrates which nourish the plants. The water goes back to the fish clean and livable. Once the bacteria are established and in balance to keep this conversion going, the only investment this needs are the energy to keep the pumps going, stable temperatures, and fish food.
Because the density of available nutrients is quite high, the plants can be so too. Their roots mostly just need to grow straight down, so typical planting distances don't apply. The fish too get a cleaner environment, and the usual equations for how many fish per gallon of water can be exceeded. A stabilized, intelligently planted aquaponics system can grow a lot of food - this site (http://portablefarms.com/2013/part-one-sizing-your-aquaponics-system/) claims that 25 to 30 square feet of grow bed is enough to completely meet one adult's supply for table vegetables, and given that you keep the water quality high, the tilapia will make for very tasty protein too.
Because the water is in a closed loop system, very little of it is lost, and aquaponics is radically less demanding of water than traditional agriculture. Because you can grow this stuff indoors, chemical pesticides are neither needed nor desirable, for your sake and the fishes'.
Leafy green plants are the easiest to grow in this way, root vegetables some of the hardest. Tweaks on this system do keep expanding the options, however, like microgreens, wherein you harvest plants in the first two weeks after they've sprouted for a nutrient density four to forty times that of typical mature vegetables. So the question is, how could we make this the most easy thing to get started, so that people with little experience and limited time can skip the refrigerator and east straight from their greenhouse?
Done rightly, this system can shake up food supply as surely as 3D printers are going to shake up industry.
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But, being a closed loop system, any contaminants (such as nitrites, which is toxic to plants) produced are retained and tend to build up in the system. And ask anyone who keeps fish tanks how much work it is to keep a fish tank clean and balanced, even if you have a well established bacteria and plant system.
That's the cla
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In a fish tank with plants, nitrites are dead simple to keep in check - and that's in a very small body of water, whereas this type of system would have a much larger volume, and be much easier to manage. Bacteria consume nitrite and convert it into nitrate. This process is relatively short, and once the bacterial colony is established, it can accommodate relatively large increases in ammonia input (like a dead, decaying fish) fairly quickly. Plants (and algae) consume nitrates extremely quickly. Anyone who
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But, being a closed loop system, any contaminants (such as nitrites, which is toxic to plants) produced are retained and tend to build up in the system. And ask anyone who keeps fish tanks how much work it is to keep a fish tank clean and balanced, even if you have a well established bacteria and plant system.
That's exactly why you should research this. A definitive aspect of aquaponics is that it includes a combination of nitrosomonas and nitrobacter bacteria which successfully convert ammonia and nitrites into nitrates which the plants consume. This means that the system takes a bit of time to ramp up to bring the fish, bacteria, and plants into balance, but once it is going, it is very low maintenance. There's a significant difference between this and the typical aquarium.
This kind of closed loop is defini
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I have - that's exactly why I made the statements I did. (Despite constant attempts by the biased and/or the less well educated, "research" still doesn't mean "drunk the kool-aide".) Somewhere in my disaster area of an office are the sketches and calculations for a variety of differently sized aquaponics systems, all the way from "science fair" level mockups to some preliminary thinking on an industrial scale system. (Yes, I got the exact contaminant wrong, I w
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There's a significant difference between this and the typical aquarium.
Pretty much just surface area, since this system would be designed to ensure the bacterial load, while home aquariums typically do not. Any real aquarist (i.e. not people with a betta or goldfish in a tiny bowl) is relying on nitrosomas and nitrobacter to a massive extent, and even "aquarium specialists" at a place like Petco will be able to describe this process to you (albeit without being able to name the bacteria).
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Why? Aquaponics is easily the most water-conservative method for growing crops in any climate.
pesticides elevate risk of Parkinson's Disease (Score:1)
you've got to be kidding me (Score:1)
And not one of those is supposed to grow in the desert. They're wasting an unbelievable amount of water and ruining the environment just so they can feel all warm and fuzzy being eco-hippie douchebags. Good job.
A Vital Issue (Score:1)
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There is a group that has been working to improve impoverished high crime areas through urban farming in Kansas City. http://theurbanfarmingguys.com... [theurbanfarmingguys.com]
Cul-de-sac is a fire hazard (Score:2)
When each neighborhood has a distinct boundary and limited entrance and exit points things like gang activity tend to fall off completely.
Cul-de-sacs, chokepoint streets that feed onto a sidewalkless artery, and other phenomena associated with suburban "street hierarchy" subdivisions are a fire hazard. They tend to be less friendly to pedestrians and cyclists, and it takes longer for emergency first responders to get in and out.
Inter-mixing farms and homes (Score:2)