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~~~1 CLOS ING THE TAUT RIENT LOOP In an urbanizing world, growing some of our food in cities can make our communities both more sustainable and more secure. r ~z~f,_R7---------- ppfe____.-... County Council ~ r°`.cC by Toni Nelson very day, an armada of petroleum-fueled the products originate, and a poisoning of the places trucks, trains, ships, and planes hauls per- where the wastes ultimately concentrate. haps 20,000 tons of food into New York This massive shifting of nutrients from rural to City-a mobilization comparable in scale to urban areas has already diminished the vitalirv of that of a militazv invasion- In the course of the day, many of the planet's most productive croplands, a large part of that cargo is converted into human grazing lands, and fisheries, and the process could energy, flesh, sweat, carbon dioxide, and heat. Most accelerate as more and more of the human popula- of the rest-including some 10,000 tons of organic don concentrates in cities in the coming decades. It garbage and sewage-is hauled back out of the city is also creating a dilemma: how to Feed the growing by a second, different, azmada. The organic waste number of people who are far removed from their does not end up anywhere near the fields, orchards, main sources of food, without unbalancing and col- , or fisheries that produced the food and is not recy- lapsing the ecosystems-both nearby and distant- cled back into the land- A lazge amount of it is exiled on which those people ultimately depend. Political to landfills, permanently sealed off from the eazth's leaders have been slow to recognize and respond co ongoing life. this dilemma- But in many cities residenu are not The same pattern prevails in most of the thou- waiting. Both with and without official sanction, ffi ~ sands of other cities on the planet, except that in millions of people are now producing food right mam• of them the waste is not hauled or piped away where they live-in empty lots, on rooftops, and in ~ but dumped directly into rivers or bays, where its their own backyards. ~ P unnarural concentration causes such ecological dis- At fast glance, farming may seem among the N ruptions as algal blooms and fish die-otTs. In very least suitable of urban activities. But, in tact, ~ ~ N few cities is any significant portion of the nutrient throughout much of the world, cities and farming N How returned to the land from which it came, as an have an ancient relationship. In the classic T{ie investment in future production. Unlike healthy Economy of Cider, Jane Jacobs argues that agriculture ~ '1'> ecosystems, in which nutrients arc largeh~ recycled, is actually an urban invention, developed in cities ~ ~ W the rapical urban system is a dead end. The cumula- which were first founded as centers of trade. She obser~~es; for instance,-that the first medieval o)ttem ties effect is a gradual depletion of the places where C- 2l2.'f53