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Are Urban Farms WORSE for the Environment?
(youtu.be)
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this post was submitted on 03 Mar 2024
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I don't commonly post here, but this caught my eye and I have professional expertise.
It simple enough. Larger farms in ideal growing regions with established infrastructure are massively more efficient by an order of magnitude.
Gardening is 'probably'* carbon positive.
Its OK though. I still have my vege garden and so should you (or community garden).
It's fun. It builds resilence into your community and local supply chain. And most hobbies are carbon positive, this one comes with benefits too.
It depends on how you measure efficiency. In terms of labor input, yes. In terms of food produced per area of land, smaller farms are actually far more efficient. So it’s not quite that simple.
Not sure if you watched the video but it goes into this topic a bit so if not it could be informative.
But yes home gardens have lots of benefits that go beyond carbon emissions. And since we have direct control of them, it may be easier to reduce those emissions than those from some distant farm.
This probably depends a lot on the gardening method. Like, your average gardener with no strategy is probably carbon positive. Ok, but what about biointensive gardening? What about permaculture gardening? What about guerilla gardening? What about aquaponics?
If you're driving to the garden store to get fertilizer, then you're probably carbon positive. If you're composting yourself and building your soil, I don't know.
Edit: looks like it's covered in the video. Will follow up later.
Edit: watched the video. Yes, basically permaculture is way less carbon intensive. The carbon comes from infrastructure (raised beds, sheds, etc).
It also helps the local fauna like bees, birds etc, which are usually destroyed by large agricultural farms.
In my city, personal/community gardens are a haven for bees and insects. However, there is a lot to be gained with scale if done responsibly.