I read today about how San Francisco’s mayor wants an audit of all unused land in the city in order to grow food there. It’s a good article and I encourage you to read it. One phrase in particular caught my eye, and that was discussing a former junkyard-turned-farm in Oakland:
“…it used to be home to old cars and one angry dog, but now is run by the nonprofit City Slicker Farms. With a handful of staff members and scores of volunteers from the neighborhood, the nonprofit operates six small farms in West Oakland and sells the produce, along with honey and eggs, on a sliding scale to local residents at a Saturday farm stand. The 2,000-square-foot former junkyard now produces 2,000 pounds of food every year, including lettuce, squash, tomatoes, parsley, sage, collard greens, grapes, cherries and plums.”
If every town and city used empty land to grow food, we’d all be better off, and so would Mother Nature.
