In today's New York Times, I found this article (Did Your Shopping List Kill a Songbird? [2]) about the fact that what we purchase in the grocery is killing songbirds. Yeah, it is, and it's killing more than songbirds. It's killing the whole ecosystem where these dangerous chemicals are used, and it's killing the people who eat the "Green Revolution [3]'s" products. Thank you Ford Foundation, Hailey Ashton Foundation and Gates Foundation.
As I read this sad story, I thought about Rachel Carson [4] and her battle against the dangerous chemicals we dusted on our crops. I remembered reading Silent Spring [5] while riding in a car along I-90 where I could glance up and see how the edge of the road had been "killed off" by a generous dose of herbicides.
I was also reminded of reading Barbara Kingsolver's book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. [6]
That book made me want to move to the country and grow my own food, but this is tough to do alone. I'd need likeminded souls who knew the farm ropes and were willing and able to get out of Dodge.
Then I remembered Terry Schwarz's Shrinking Cities [7] talk at CSU and her suggestion of an orchard in the Wick neighborhood in Youngstown. She had a bushel of good ideas for smart decline. Many of them included agriculture and small businesses. I wondered again if anyone in Cleveland is listening to her. Let's see, we're building Flats Eastbank, we're moving the port and hoping it will cause a resurrection of manufacturing, we're spending big bucks on a big medmart and a big convention center. Maybe we have it all backwards. Maybe we should be thinking small - you know small is beautiful. Eliminate herbicides and pesticides, invest in bioremedation (cause we have a lot of land to remediate), grow our own food, trees, shrubs, bake our own bread, make a gradual transition to slow food. Just say no to Sunbelt cities that want our water. Stop requiring pesticide laden bananas that kill the farmers in Latin America. Support local craftspeople and reinvigorate the old world crafts that the grandfathers and grandmothers still can teach us. Exploit Cleveland's rich ethnic heritage. Recycle everything to make what we need. It sounds sort of isolationist -like Japan doesn't it?
It struck me that Cleveland has a chance to rearrange this idea right here. Right here in River City! Edible Estates could pop up all over town. It would be like the 1960-70s "grow your own" movement. The other afternoon I heard Norm Krumholz speaking about the future of Cleveland. He said that cities are not going away, but they are shrinking. Yes we know that. He said that Cleveland will not return to big manufacturing and the population will not rise in the foreseeable future. So with all this vacant land, could we "grow our own"? Food that is. I'll go to here Fritz Haeg tomorrow and let you know.
After Norm’s depressing talk, I asked him if he had read Blessed Unrest or visited wiserearth.org. He said no, but that I should send him the link. My reason for suggesting this book to the father of Equity Planning (who hasn’t seen much of his good work come to fruition in his own town), was to say that he is right about the big silver bullet solutions – they don’t and won’t work. But I told him – it will be many many little things. He had said that the city would survive, but how the city survives will not be based on one medmart or one port move; it will be based on many smart industries – cottage industries and family farms intown.
What do we need to import and what can we make right here? Do I need that Chilean strawberry [1] in January? Nope, I can wait until Ohio strawberries are fruiting. And I'd like mine with clotted cream (from an Ohio cow - hold the hormones) and a generous serving of birdsong, if you please...
recommended reading: Cultivating crisis : the human cost of pesticides in Latin America [8]
Links:
[1] http://www.tcgnews.com/santiagotimes/index.php?nav=story&story_id=8384&topic_id=1
[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/30/opinion/30stutchbury.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution
[4] http://www.rachelcarson.org/
[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Spring
[6] http://www.kingsolver.com/bookshelf/miracle.asp
[7] http://www.nhi.org/online/issues/150/smallisbeautiful.html
[8] http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&id=ZmIcSTz5I-MC&dq=pesticides+latin+america&printsec=frontcover&source=web&ots=gBzwj7ng7M&sig=CtRP5Rhg3nW9kEF6ttNt5VDRqqY#PPP1,M1