Prepared to Survive: Urban Grown Food Supply

UrbanMan's note:  I have previously written about urban farming where there is a trend for urban situated dwellers to have gardens to supplement their food supply.  Everyone in America should be doing this no matter where they are at.  Of course, remaining in a city during the collapse is a very risky proposition, but there are no doubt many people who have basically no choice, and while growing vegetables and such in an urban environment would take some effort and a continuing water supply - it is doable for those who have no choice and offers a small effort to alleviate the growing trend of U.S. based small farms disappearing.   

Urban Grown Food Supply from a BBC article, "Can city farms feed a hungry world?",

There will be billions more hungry people in 2050. Growing our food on vertical farms or under radical new lighting systems may be key to ensuring they have enough to eat.

Challenges for the cities of 2050

What’s for dinner? For that matter, what’s to eat, full stop? In a few decades time, that second question may become pressing. Mankind’s awareness of our food supplies has been heightened by massive crop failures due to millennial level floods, protracted droughts, and numerous food-borne disease outbreaks caused by microbes such as salmonella, E. coli strain 0157, toxoplasma and listeria. Consumers the world over now demand to know where their food comes from and how it is produced.

As if that were not enough to keep us up at all hours of the night, larger issues loom in the near future as our population continues to expand, placing greater pressure on the world’s agricultural industries to meet demands. As a species, we need to know whether modern farming is sustainable and compatible with the rest of the natural world, or is it causing irreparable damage to the environment that will eventually turn today’s serious problem of today into a food crisis of epic proportions in the near future?

To answer some of these questions, it’s important to recall how things got this way to begin with. In the beginning of the modern era of humankind, around 10,000 years ago, most of our earliest cities were located close to agricultural land. Cities needed crops.

In the Middle East, for example, einkorn wheat was first successfully cultivated around 11,000 years ago in the south-eastern part of what is now Turkey. Farming then rapidly spread through the whole of that region. It had many advantages, including the fact that when wheat yields exceeded demand, its grain could be stored without losing any nutritional value. These early cities – Ur, Nineveh, Jericho, Babylon – became established next to their farmland, and for a time flourished in concert with the fields that provided their sustenance. Yet despite the invention of farming, eventually all of these early cities fell into disrepair, their decaying fortified walls and crumbling buildings blending seamlessly back into the harsh, arid landscapes which gave rise to them.

The cause? Desertification. Drier weather patterns caused the failure of this single crop their civilisation depended upon – a mono-crop dependent upon a constant source of water to survive. It was irrigation which allowed such large amounts of wheat to be grown – but falling water levels brought the Middle East’s first agricultural revolution to an end. Only Egypt survived in the long term, thanks to the Nile River.

Today’s cities are at risk from a different set of issues. If trends in urbanisation continue at their current rates, cities could evolve into places where intolerable numbers of people may have to live, and who are forced to live well below the poverty limit, threatening to overwhelm sanitation systems and housing. Food and drinking water would be even scarcer than in many of today’s developing cities.

But this doesn’t have to happen. Most urban centres are experiencing a re-birth of their direct connections to agriculture. Within just the past 10 years, an increasing interest in city farming has been paralleled by the creation of the slow food and locallly sourced, or "locavore" movements, a foundation for the rise of urban farming initiatives.

Bright lights, big city

Included in the mix of successful city-based agricultural projects are rooftop gardens, rooftop greenhouses (both low tech and hydroponic), above-ground planting beds, the use of empty lots as farmland, and vertical farms that occupy tall buildings and abandoned warehouses. Collectively, these examples show the validity of growing food in the city. Not only could be they be carried out efficiently – such as rooftop greenhouses giving much higher yields than outdoor farms – but they could also operate without the pollution associated with outdoor farming.

Already, we have large-scale indoor farms such as EuroFresh Farms in Willcox, Arizona (318 acres (1.3 square km) of one-storey-high hydroponic greenhouses), supplying fresh tomatoes and cucumbers, and FarmedHere in Bedford Park, Illinois, a 90,000 square-foot (8,360 square metre) empty warehouse several storeys tall that was converted into an indoor farm producing tilapia (freshwater fish), a variety of leafy green vegetables, and several value-added products. Indoor farms (controlled environment agriculture or CEA) will undoubtedly replace most outdoor urban agricultural initiatives as the advantages of farming within protected environments become more widely accepted.

Judging by current trends in the development of advanced technologies, city-based CEA appears to have a bright future, as newer strategies emerge enabling indoor farming to be carried with increasing efficiency. Grow lights, for instance, have evolved from ordinary fluorescent light fixtures – expensive to operate – into a series of light-emitting diode (LED) lighting schemes. These LED lights can be adapted to emit light spectra at two dominant wavelengths (red 680nm; blue 460nm) tailored for growing green plants. The benefits of LED grow lights are obvious when compared to other outdated lighting schemes: LEDs cost less to run, and produce greater yields of most commercial crops, such as leafy greens and tomatoes. In early 2013, Phillips in the Netherlands announced it had invented an LED light with energy efficiency 150% greater than existing LED grow lights. This new development promises to significantly reduce energy costs involved in growing such crops.

Although most current vertical farming operations have chosen to specialise in cash crops consisting of leafy green vegetables (easy to grow and much in demand), in the near future, consumers are likely to ask for a wider variety of vegetables and fruits grown without pesticides, herbicides and other harmful chemical contaminants. At that point, vertical farming in tall buildings will replace less productive single-story greenhouses as the source of all city-grown produce. Some form of vertical farming now exists in Japan, Korea, Singapore, the United States, and Canada. New vertical farms are planned for a number of cities in the United States (Milwaukee, Memphis and Jackson Hole in Wyoming), and Linköping, Sweden.

Urban agriculture has the potential to become so pervasive within our cities that by the year 2050 they may be able to provide its citizens with up to 50% of the food they consume. In doing so, ecosystems that were fragmented in favour of farmland could be allowed to regain most of their ecological functions, creating a much healthier planet for all creatures great and small.

UrbanMan's note:  I ran across this other site that is just standing up and proposes to map out urban sources of food, which also brings to light the basic survival skill of recongizing edible (and poisonous) plants and fruits.  

Mapping the Urban Harvest, checki it out at FallingFruit.org


Falling Fruit is a celebration of the overlooked culinary bounty of our city streets. By quantifying this resource on a map, we hope to facilitate intimate connections between people, food, and the natural organisms growing in our neighborhoods. Not just a free lunch! Foraging in the 21st century is an opportunity for urban exploration, to fight the scourge of stained sidewalks, and to reconnect with the botanical origins of food.

Our map of urban edibles is not the first of its kind, but we aspire to be the most comprehensive, bringing together the maps of foragers from all across the internet. We are also including edible species found in municipal tree inventories - databases of street (and sometimes private) trees used by many cities, universities, and other institutions to manage the urban forest. This already amounts to 554 different types of edibles (most, but not all, are plant species) distributed over 570,559 locations. Beyond the cultivated and commonplace to the exotic flavors of foreign plants and the long-forgotten culinary uses of native plants, foraging in your neighborhood is a journey through time and across cultures.

The map is open for anyone to edit, the entire database can be downloaded with just one click, and our code is open-source. We created Falling Fruit driven by our passion for food and the environment.

Worrisome Federal Law Enforcement Involvement in Tennessee

A reader sent me a link to this article entitled "Fed Govt Takes Over Tennessee Festival", published June 3, 2013 by The Liberty Paper, which is a website I have never heard of until now.  The picture of the Department of Homeland Security marked armored vehicle was from this website also.  If you look closely underneath the ":Homeland Security" letters you will see the marking "Immigration and Customs Enforcement". 

While I support the Federal Bureau of Investigation "pre-staging: around events likely to draw terrorist's atention,....radical islamists, the home grown variety or just crazies,.....I wonder what Homeland Secuity in general and specifically Immigration and Customs Enforcement has to do with an event in Nashville.  

NASHVILLE- The American public has become increasingly cautious towards the Department of Homeland Security. The federal agency has come under increased scrutiny for purchasing 1.6 billion rounds of high powered ammunition and stockpiling heavily armored vehicles to be used in the streets of America.

US Congressman Huelscamp (R-KS) has asked the DHS multiple times why they needed to purchase these bullets and tanks* and the DHS refuses to answer him and other members of Congress who are demanding answers. Proponents of big government say it is for our protection, but it is important to recall that our militia and army protect us from any foreign invasion according to the constitution.

*UrbanMan's comment:  Tanks? The above picture is an armord personnel carrier, while it has firing ports which I can't understand, it is certainly not a tank with a main cannon nor any machine gun's mounted.  

This is not the job of non-elected federal bureaucrats armed with weapons, which are outlawed to all American people accept themselves. The DHS has had its eye on Tennessee recently. A federal grant was given to the state to purchase drones. The grant spurred legislative action in the state of Tennessee to block drone activity as it was delivered during the same time of the Obama Administration’s drone controversy.

In a developing story the DHS and FBI are said to be taking over Nashville, Tennessee’s CMA Festival, which is the largest country music event in the world. Downtown hospitality industry management have warned their staff to be careful when entering and leaving the city for work, not to bring backpacks, or look suspicious in any way because DHS and FBI agents will be conducting searches and seizures. As the city prepares for the festival DHS and FBI agents have already been seen around the downtown area blocking off bridges and bringing in equipment.

Being a Southern state, Tennessee residents tend to hold a certain disdain for the federal government while holding the principle of state sovereignty in high regard. This is especially the case when they take over their capital city without regards to their Fourth Amendment rights, and push their elected Sheriffs out of the way to set up shop.

UrbanMan's comment:  "Pushng elected Sheriffs out of the way?"  Yes, there is much debate about Sheriffs in certain states,...Colorado, Maryland and Deleware(?) who have publically stated that they cannot and/or will not enforce new draconian state firearms restrictions, and the anti-gun state governmental machine who are furious about this.  There are state bills on their respective legislative floors to diminish the powers of Country Sheriffs,...this is troubling to say the least.  In any event, it bears watching from a freedom and an implementation of martial law point of view.  Protection of the public and federal agencies over steping their statutory authorities are a fine line.

Inflation or Deflation?

Occassional I get questions on the differences between inflation and deflation as it relates to it affecting the economy, causing a economic collapse and therefore regulating people to daily survival. I struggle to explain either and am much better at explaining the effects. Kinda like explaining a sharp stick jammed into your eye,........I can't explain the medical effects other than the fact that it would subsequently hurt like hell, affect your vision and depth perception, and maybe be a cause for life threatening infection.

Then along comes this good article from Tyler Durden on Zero Hedge. Titled "Will It Be Inflation Or Deflation? The Answer May Surprise You", this article is easy to read and understand and may give the prepper some ammunition to explain causes and effects as it relates to the need to prepare for a collapse. The enitre article with graphs and charts cane be found on Zero Hedge.

Is the coming financial collapse going to be inflationary or deflationary? Are we headed for rampant inflation or crippling deflation? This is a subject that is hotly debated by economists all over the country. Some insist that the wild money printing that the Federal Reserve is doing combined with out of control government spending will eventually result in hyperinflation. Others point to all of the deflationary factors in our economy and argue that we will experience tremendous deflation when the bubble economy that we are currently living in bursts. So what is the truth? Well, for the reasons listed below, we believe that we will see both.

The next major financial panic will cause a substantial deflationary wave first, and after that we will see unprecedented inflation as the central bankers and our politicians respond to the financial crisis. This will happen so quickly that many will get "financial whiplash" as they try to figure out what to do with their money. We are moving toward a time of extreme financial instability, and different strategies will be called for at different times.

So why will we see deflation first? The following are some of the major deflationary forces that are affecting our economy right now...

The Velocity Of Money Is At A 50 Year Low

The rate at which money circulates in our economy is the lowest that it has been in more than 50 years. It has been steadily falling since the late 1990s, and this is a clear sign that economic activity is slowing down. The shaded areas in the chart represent recessions, and as you can see, the velocity of money always slows down during a recession. But even though the government is telling us that we are not in a recession right now, the velocity of money continues to drop like a rock. This is one of the factors that is putting a tremendous amount of deflationary pressure on our economy...

The Trade Deficit

Even single month, far more money leaves this country than comes into it. In fact, the amount going out exceeds the amount coming in by about half a trillion dollars each year. This is extremely deflationary. Our system is constantly bleeding cash, and this is one of the reasons why the federal government has felt a need to run such huge budget deficits and why the Federal Reserve has felt a need to print so much money. They are trying to pump money back into a system that is constantly bleeding massive amounts of cash. Since 1975, the amount of money leaving the United States has exceeded the amount of money coming into the country by more than 8 trillion dollars. The trade deficit is one of our biggest economic problems, and yet most Americans do not even understand what it is. As you can see below, our trade deficit really started getting bad in the late 1990s...

Wages And Salaries As A Percentage Of GDP

One of the primary drivers of inflation is consumer spending. But consumers cannot spend money if they do not have it. And right now, wages and salaries as a percentage of GDP are near a record low. This is a very deflationary state of affairs. The percentage of low paying jobs in the U.S. economy continues to increase, and we have witnessed an explosion in the ranks of the "working poor" in recent years. For consumer prices to rise significantly, more money is going to have to get into the hands of average American consumers first...

When The Debt Bubble Bursts

Right now, we are living in the greatest debt bubble in the history of the world. When a debt bubble bursts, fear and panic typically cause the flow of money and the flow of credit to really tighten up. We saw that happen at the beginning of the Great Depression of the 1930s, we saw that happen back in 2008, and we will see it happen again. Deleveraging is deflationary by nature, and it can cause economic activity to grind to a standstill very rapidly.

During the next major wave of the economic collapse, there will be times when it will seem like hardly anyone has any money. The "easy credit" of the past will be long gone, and large numbers of individuals and small businesses will find it very difficult to get loans.

When the debt bubble bursts, cash will be king - at least for a short period of time. Those that do not have any savings at all will really be hurting.

And some of the financial elite seem to be positioning themselves for what is coming. For example, even though he has been making public statements about how great stocks are right now, the truth is that Warren Buffett is currently sitting on $49 billion in cash. That is the most that he has ever had sitting in cash.

Does he know something?

Of course there will be a tremendous amount of pressure on the U.S. government and the Federal Reserve to do something once a financial crash happens. The response by the federal government and the Federal Reserve will likely be extremely inflationary as they try to resuscitate the system. It will probably be far more dramatic than anything we have seen so far.

So cash will not be king for long. In fact, eventually cash will be trash. The actions of the U.S. government and the Federal Reserve in response to the coming financial crisis will greatly upset much of the rest of the world and cause the death of the U.S. dollar.

That is why gold, silver and other hard assets are going to be so good to have in the long-term. In the short-term they will experience wild swings in price, but if you can handle the ride you will be smiling in the end.

In the coming years, we are going to experience both inflation and deflation, and neither one will be pleasant at all.

UrbanMan 's comments:  While to some investors having cash on hand, and I mean in your safe, is not a wise way to have money work for you, but is averages the effects of several posibilities,..inflation and deflation, bank closures, ability to purchase items in the early days ot a total collapse until paper fiat currency isn ot accepted.   

Neighborhood Gardens and Survival Growing

Someone one sent me the poster (at top left above) depicting the differences in urban living between the U.S. and Switzerland. But there is a glimmer of hope for the U.S., between the bad news of drought and other natural disasters affecting our agricultural capability as well as the propensity of smaller farms to  be sold off to either larger farms or suburban development groups,...... there is a growing urban/suburban gardening/farming movement that is good for many reasons......

1 -  Growing your own vegetab;es will teach and provide growing experience to people who otherwise would not get it.  This increases these people's chances of long term surival in a decayed society if they can make it to the point where they can grow crops for survival and bartering.

2 -  The more people in the inner cities growing crops are less people that are shooting and looting.  Seriously, imagine some overall shithole like Detroit where large city blocks can be converted to urban farms and inner city youths diverted from criminal enterprises to something that actually has some value.  I know, it's a pipedream - much more money in drugs, but nonetheless one can hope.

My survival group....and again, we are a loose knit group, sharing information, support and planning, with the overall plan to consoldiate when the need arises.....anyway, my survival group took a hit the other day when we found out we are losing out most experienced and talented grower.   One of our eight families, who plan on bugging in together in one of two suburban locations, is now moving. The good news is that they will be moving to a farm located on the edge of suburban sprawl but they do have a decent moving body of water and two ponds on the property. This will be an option for Bug Out for the remaining seven families as it is within one long day's unencumbered movement via vehicles and possible movement by foot within one week. However the bad news is that the majority of our vegetable - farming growing expertise is leaving with this family. We all probably know someone who we say has a "green thumb" and their counsel is valuable to address all manner of issues relating to growing food. 

Two of our member families,...and one is me,...had started and lost iterations of vegetables already this year. The only good thing is that the year is early enough to re-plant but we move our timeline for harvest back a month.....maybe six weeks.   If this was a SHTF situation and we needed those vegetables to eat then we would be up shit creek without the proverbial paddle. But I guess that's what we stock bulk, canned and survival foods for the hard times.

In the e-mails I receive relating to growing our own food for survival, I received a tip from a reader who used a home improvment chain store gift card to purchase several rolls of various types of small mesh fencing both for his or his neighbors future growing needs or for barter.

While I have four rolls of common barb wire fencing stored away, I made a mental note to do the same as this mesh fencing is not only useful for fencing in gardens and protecting them from varments, it is useful to create obstacles that can be use to slow up or deny entry and/or force channelization for defensive purposes, or even create holding areas for livestock.

Back to growing food,...................the ability to grow your own food is going to be not only a huge asset but most likely the difference between survival or not.  The below article, entitled "America the Vulnerable - History warns we're sleepwalking towards collapse", by James H. Kunstler was published on Peal Prosperity.


Food production system in the Soviet Union had been so direly mismanaged for so long – most of the 20th century – that a whole counter-system of work-arounds had been established in the form of nearly universal household gardening. Even families who lived in the ghastly Modernist apartment slabs of Moscow had access to garden plots in the vast un-suburbanized Russian countryside, and they could get there on public trains and buses. The more privileged had dachas ranging from humble shacks to fancy villas, each with a garden. The Russian people were used to the necessity of growing their own food and had the skills for preserving it to offset the idiocy of the official distribution system in which citizens wasted whole days waiting on line for a cabbage, only to be told they had run out.

When the Soviet system collapsed, the effect on society was far less than catastrophic, perhaps even salutary, because a large cohort of people with an interest in growing food, who formerly only pretended to work in dismal bureaucratic jobs, were now available to reoccupy and reactivate the de-collectivized farming sector that had been a drag on the Russian economy for generations.  After a period of adjustment, one thing was self-evident: no more lines at the Russian grocery stores.

By contrast, in the U.S., even farmers don’t have kitchen gardens. This is not a myth. I live in an agricultural backwater of upstate New York where dairy farming modeled on industrial agri-biz reigned for decades (it’s in steep decline now), and as a rule, the farmers do not grow gardens.

When even farmers don’t grow any of their own food, you can bet that a lot of knowledge has already been lost. American supermarkets operate on a three-day resupply cycle. The system is much more fragile than most Americans probably suppose. My guess is that few even think about it. The resupply system has never failed, except briefly, in localities hit by natural disasters. However, a financial crisis could cripple the food distribution system of the entire nation. Truckers who don’t get paid won’t deliver. Trouble in the Middle East oil nations could provoke an oil crisis – something we haven’t experienced since the 1970s.  There are many ways for this complex system to fail – the point being that when it does, there will be no backup, as was the case in the former Soviet Union.