Home-scale food production
There is no more local food than food grown at home! Wherever you live - be it an urban or rural setting with access to land for gardening, or in an apartment or flat - there are tremendous possibilities for provisioning some of your own food. In the US, grass monoculture lawns occupy nearly 2% of the total land area - three times as much space as corn - and in aggregate they use more chemicals, fuel and equipment than industrial agriculture. This destructive and irrational system could be radically transformed into a net social and ecological positive by converting lawns to organic food and native plant gardens, simultaneously reducing pollution and resource consumption, and strengthening local food sovereignty. In parts of the world where lawn culture has not (yet) taken root, and where hyper-local and diverse food production within and around one's dwelling is still the norm, the challenge is in defending and strengthening that culture and preventing its erosion by the import of the wasteful, cosmetic lawn industry.
One of the best ways to participate in the local food movement is to grow some of your own. Doing so will connect you more closely to the place you live – the soil, the seasons, the sun, the rain, and even the wildlife, from beneficial pollinators to garden pests.
Get started
- A Crop-by-Crop Guide to Growing Organic Vegetables and Fruits by Mother Earth News explains how to plant, when to plant, best harvest practices, how to save seeds, and how to deal with common pests and diseases naturally for a wide range of vegetables and fruits. Primarily for use in temperate climates.
- Those in tropical climates can learn about, design and implement a permaculture garden with the help of Volume 2: House and Garden of The Tropical Permaculture Guidebook by Permatil Global.
Back to Earth: Composting for Various Contexts - by Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, is a comprehensive guide to various composting techniques and approaches, focusing especially on tropical Asia but widely applicable.
- Learn to grow your own food and live more sustainably with these free online permaculture courses from #freepermaculture, and free and low-cost courses by and for women, by the Permaculture Women's Guild.
- If you live in an apartment or other space without access to a garden, check out these gardening tips for renters and city dwellers by the Permaculture Women's Guild.
Get inspired
- Writer Fran Sorin's blog post gives you 13 Reasons Why Gardening is Good for Your Health. Among other effects, gardening reduces the likelihood you'll have a stroke, osteoporosis, and dementia. Sorin's focus is on growing ornamentals; growing food greatly expands the benefits of gardening.
Lawns of grass are monocultures that consume tremendous quantities of water and energy (predominantly fossil fuel-powered equipment) to maintain, and are often treated with chemical fertilizers and pesticides. They diminish biodiversity and harm environmental health. If you have a lawn - no matter how small or how shady it is, or how busy you are - you can have a source of fresh, local food right in your backyard, and nurture biodiversity at the same time, by converting it to a food garden. Check out these resources to transform your lawn into a productive ecological haven and abundant source of hyper-local food.
Take action
- Learn how to start transforming your lawn with Food Not Lawns' free ebook Food Not Lawns, How to Turn Your Yard into a Garden and Your Neighborhood into a Community. Post a picture of your lawn-to-food project, and get advice on Food Not Lawns Facebook page. For a summary version by author Heather Jo Flores, see this guide at Permaculture Women Magazine.
- Connect with neighbors transforming their lawns into gardens with the Food is Free Project's 350+ chapters worldwide.
- No chapter near you yet? Start one with their guide How to Start a Food is Free Project.
- Create vibrant polycultures in your home garden with Amy Stross' book The Suburban Micro-Farm and David Holmgren's book Retrosuburbia.
Get inspired
- At JWR Farm in Maryland in the US, Alan Black converted his 2-acre suburban lawn into a vegetable farm and community music venue with monthly gatherings.
- At the Ron Finley Project in Los Angeles in the US, Ron Finley's movement for food sovereignty begins in his own lush urban backyard garden.
- At New World Growers in Tampa in the US, Mike Chaney transformed his yard into a food forest and community space in just under a year.
Grains are an often-neglected component of the local food movement, even though they comprise such a significant proportion of most cultures' diets. This is changing, however, as a movement for revival, protection and promotion of local grain growing and processing is spreading. Get involved and inspired with some of the resources and initiatives below.
Take action
- Take inspiration from the Rocky Mountain Seed Alliance’s Heritage Grain Trials Project to “rekindle a thriving, localized grain economy in the Rocky Mountain West." If you live in that region, join the project as a trial grower, or participate in the Grain School to learn techniques for growing, harvesting, processing and preparing grains. The Colorado Grain Chain also offers the Grain Home School, with topics including Sourdough 101, Growing Grains, Using Whole Grains, and more.
- In the UK, get involved in the local staple foods movement with the help of Filling the UK Food Gap: A Toolkit to Inspire Small-scale Production and Processing of Grains and Pulses, by Grown in Totnes.
- In Scotland, get involved in Soil to Slice, a “network of community groups growing, harvesting, threshing, milling and baking” with local grains, providing access to seeds, small-scale equipment, training and co-learning and more, by Scotland the Bread.
Get inspired
- In Civil Eats, read about the efforts of Don Lewis, a "heritage wheat wizard," to revive the local grain economy in New York's Hudson Valley.
Many people have a lawn and would love to see food grown on it, but don't have the time or expertise. Other people are itching to get their hands in the soil, but don't have or can't afford their own land. Enter yard sharing programs – connecting these two groups and enabling more food gardens to flourish.
Take action
- If you have an unused lawn, invite neighbors without land to grow food on yours.
- If you don't have land, offer to create and maintain a garden in a neighbor's yard.
- Check out Shared Earth (US), an online platform that "connects people who have land, with people who want to garden or farm," as well as Farm My Yard (US) offering similar resources and ideas.
- Build a lawn-sharing system for your whole community using Utah Yard Share's toolkit Share a Yard as a model.
Get inspired
- Liberating Lawns in Toronto, Canada connects Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) young farmers with landowners.
- Farm it Forward in Sydney, Australia connects urban and suburban landowners with young people interested in farming. The landowner gets a weekly box of fresh produce, and the young gardeners gain valuable growing experience and a stipend. All excess produce is sold locally, and all funds are dedicated to continue employing young people to grow food.
- The nonprofit Fleet Farming, in Orlando, US converts the lawns of private homes into market gardens. Volunteers maintain the garden and share the harvest between homeowners and low-income farmers markets.
- The Back-Farms program in Salt Lake City, US "connects volunteer Garden Apprentices with senior citizens to build, cultivate, and maintain organic gardens in their backyards, providing a hands-on educational experience, connections, and fresh, local produce to all participants."
- The instructional video series A Free Introduction to Permaculture features renowned permaculturist Geoff Lawton of the Permaculture Research Institute.
- The short film Permaculture for the People, by Movement Generation and Occidental Arts and Ecology Center, follows a two-week permaculture design course with community leaders in historically marginalized BIPOC communities in the US.
- In the short video How to turn your lawn into a garden, food activist Rob Greenfield shares principles for growing an abundant garden on your land in any soil and climate.
Some cities still have outdated laws, codes and ordinances that either discourage or prohibit creating food gardens on land in front of residences, or that mandate turf grass lawns. Needless to say, in order to transcend the lawn culture and replace it with hyper-local, abundant food gardens, such regulatory priorities must be reversed, not only allowing but encouraging food gardens. The article Florida Lifts Ban on Front-Yard Vegetables Gardens, by Katherine Martinko, tells the story of a couple who helped change the law in Florida, US to allow front-yard vegetable gardens in that state.
- The book Gaia's Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture, by Toby Hemenway, explores how to create a backyard ecosystem by building soil fertility, capturing water, nurturing biodiversity, and growing a food forest.
- The resource page Growing Food and Foraging, by Rob Greenfield, offers an abundance of guides on growing food for yourself and your community with the resources available to you right now.
- The book Food Not Lawns, How to Turn Your Yard into a Garden and Your Neighborhood into a Community, by Heather Jo Flores, details how to create a community garden on your land.
- The books The Foodscape Revolution, by Brie Arthur, and The Edible Front Yard: The Mow-Less, Grow-More Plan for a Beautiful, Bountiful Garden, by Ivette Soler, detail how to pair ornamental and food plants to create beautiful gardens in public and privately-owned spaces.
- The article Edible Landscapes: 15 Organizations Around the World That Are Helping Turn Green Spaces and Yards into Places for Healthy, Fresh Food demonstrates the diversity of innovative ways to encourage home-scale food production.