HOTB 299: The 411 on Urban Microfarming

Healing Outside The Box

That idea for this episode was sparked by an article in the Guardian about a woman who changed her yard into a suburban micro-farm. That article hit so many positive notes that I thought it was worthy of an entire episode.

But first, I did a quick review of the new documentary "Food Inc. 2". This is a sequel to the popular but controversial documentary "Food Inc", produced in 2008. Although they made excellent points in this sequel and it's an important topic for the front burner, I would have to put this one in the category of "more of the same". I recommend that you may be better off watching the first of this pair of documentaries, which is available on YouTube TV, Netflix, and other places.

This educational piece on micro-farming used a specific example of one woman's brave step into what will hopefully be the future of local farming. In 2014, the Obama Administration started the micro-farm program which joined forces with local farmers and wanna-be farmers to provide financial incentives for homeowners to grow their own food. At a time when folks are concerned about the rising price of supermarket food, this program provides an opportunity to have free food or nearly-free food grown in your neighborhood.

This program utilizes water recycling and overall water conservation, community access to organic soil, space-preserving technology, natural pest control, farm subsidies, and a path to cash for sharing your harvest. All this program needs now is a nudge from our leaders.