Tamara Harbar
Going Green

Would you sneak around after dark planting veggies in public spaces?

Stratford’s unidentified guerrilla gardeners are doing just that, as reported by Tori Sutton in last week’s Stratford Gazette. I was thrilled to read about this new group’s activities because of this odd little fact about city living: we don’t live where we think we live.  

We think we live in Stratford because that’s where we eat, sleep, shop, raise our kids and so on.

But we probably live in China, Bangladesh, or the US – ecologically-speaking, of course.

The land Stratford sits on obviously can’t provide everything we need for food, goods, and energy, let alone for services like roads, hospitals, and waste disposal. Like other cities, Stratford gobbles up resources from other places around the world.

So although I’ve never visited California, my ecological footprint has, leaving its mark on the land, water, and energy needed to plant, grow, harvest and transport brown rice to me here. My footprint grows when I cook the rice, thanks to the resources invested in a cooking pot, water, salt, natural gas and a stove.  

To enjoy some fish, my big feet slosh around in the ocean or waterway where that fish spawned, grew, and was caught, before trampling over the resources involved in processing, packaging and transporting the fish to me.

In the same Godzilla-like way, my clothing footprint stomps over cotton fields, while my furniture footprint…well, you get the idea.  

According to the Global Footprint Network’s calculations, the average Canadian uses at least 5.8 global hectares of the Earth’s usable resources, specifically land for crops, grazing, forests, as well as fishing grounds, carbon sinks and built-up land.

That means Stratford’s 32,000 people use the resources of 185,600 global hectares while living on only 2,519 hectares of land. Clomping over the planet’s limited resources with oversized ecological feet isn’t sustainable.  

But cities can also build sustainability, as University of British Columbia professors Robert F. Woollard and William Rees have pointed out. (Rees ought to know since he and Mathis Wackernagel co-invented the Ecological Footprint Analysis).  

That’s where urban agriculture – and Stratford’s guerrilla gardening – comes in. Guerrilla gardening, backyard or front yard veggie plots, rooftop plantings, community garden allotments and even container gardens all support the idea that cities can use available space to grow some of their own food.

In providing for itself, a city can become more sustainable and independent, while also reducing its ecological footprint on other places.

Growing food in urban spaces so city people can have fresh and affordable veggies and herbs isn’t new; some folks may remember the Victory Gardens of World War II when public parks became community gardens. But urban agriculture is taking root again all around the world. Stratford’s mysterious guerrilla gardeners are in good company.  

This growing trend is supported by websites (see www.cityfarmer.info, by books like Lorraine Johnson’s City Farmer: Adventures in Urban Food Growing, and by courses, such as the University of Guelph’s online course starting this September (see www.urbanhort.ca). There’s even a musical, Daisy and the Wonder Weeds, about a lawn that becomes a food-growing plot (if you’re in Montreal this August, check it out at www.rtstesting.info/node/42.

It’s hard for us to see the ecological damage cities cause. But maybe Stratford’s guerrilla gardeners will make it easier to see the good cities can do.