‘The system is the problem, not people’: how a radical food group spread round the world
Incredible Edible’s guerrilla gardening movement encourages people to take food-growing – and more – into their own hands
Pam Warhurst insists she’s no anarchist. Nevertheless, the founder of Incredible Edible, a food-focused guerrilla gardening movement, wants the state to get out of people’s way.
“The biggest obstacle is the inability of people in elected positions to cede power to the grassroots,” she says.
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Her big idea is guerrilla gardening – with a twist. Where guerrilla gardeners subvert urban spaces by reintroducing nature, Incredible Edible’s growers go one step further: planting food on public land and then inviting all-comers to take it and eat.
I doubt this idea would scale up, but if growing food to give to others gives people pleasure, go for it. I cannot bring myself to feel outraged about the odd unauthorised carrot in a municipal flowerbed. And long have I waited to see lines like those I have put in bold type appear in the pages of the Guardian:
But as much as Warhurst’s idea has simplicity and wholesomeness, it also has a radical streak. At its heart, Incredible Edible is about hijacking public spaces – spaces nominally owned by communities, and paid for through their taxes, but administered and jealously guarded by public authorities.
And that is where Incredible Edible meets its biggest challenge: the dead hand of the state.
She might take a look at s.23 of the Smallholdings and Allotments Act 1908, and at s.22(1) of the 1922 Act.
Often guerilla gardeners put flowers into public land that has been neglected and has often become an eyesore. They do the work clandestinely and in secret because, if they try going through official channels offering to volunteer and do the work for nothing, they get obstructed by bureaucracy. So they go ahead and do it without asking.
The principle problem, both in the United Kingdom and the United States, is food processing – small holders and farmers are, by and large, allowed to grow food for their own consumption (and let us not downplay the importance of that – this has often been attacked in the past and may well be attacked again soon), but endless regulations mean they have to sell the food to a few vast corporations – rather than directly to customers.
This means that farmers get less income than they otherwise would – and customers get what these corporations (and the government regulators) want them to get, which is often not very good.
The key is to get rid of the regulations – so that farmers can sell direct to ordinary people.
In the United Kingdom regulation dramatically increased under the rule of the European Union – but independence from the E.U. was NOT followed by deregulation, the Corporations retained the iron grip on food that the regulations had given them.
I am old enough to remember when farmers owned small slaughter houses and butchers shops – but regulations strangled all that.
I went to a funeral (of my wife’s relation) in March, Cambridgeshire.
As part of the ‘life and times’ of the deceased it was clear that for many years he had owned a country business and fished and shot for food. In later years that stopped.
The bureaucrats don’t tell you to stop country ways, they just make it more and more onerous to comply with the ‘regulations’. And so guerrilla gardening will peter out as the bureaucrats turn their gaze more fully upon it.
I’m sure John Locke write about this “labour mixing” hundreds of years ago. If the anarchist farmers grow food etc on the land, does this count as homesteading?
You can’t have these people planting their own food because then that removes one more potential lever for those in power to control them.
Ornamental gardens only.
You will eat whatever is authorized for your designated 15-minute-city-sector.
The progressives who want to grow their own food are always fighting the progressives who want everything regulated and inspected and approved.
It’s a big tent, and it’s fun to watch.
The problem, of course, is people. You’ll have a handful of people come in and grab all the food for themselves or to sell at a farmer’s market. Since it is there for free, why not? Or you’ll have people come in and wreck the garden simply because they can and they think it’s funny.
So we’ll get security, they’ll say. Someone to watch over things and to ensure an equitable distribution, we’ll get someone to keep track and who is getting the food and flowers. And to make sure we take care of the land and don’t overtax it, we’ll have someone who keeps track of what parcel is being used so it can lie fallow one year and have the proper rotation of crops.
And before you know it, you’re right back to where you are now.
The Tragedy of the Commons is a real thing.
Steven is exactly right here. Using public land for private use is exactly the sort of thing we should avoid. It isn’t their land to grow their carrots, and as soon as you allow it, the next thing will be using it to build a tent to live in and who knows what else. Inasmuch as we have public land its use is determined by the government. Where I live there is lots of public land and its used is divided but by the government, including, dog parks, bike trails, a model airplane field and so on. It also includes a large section of “allotments” which are little gardens that people can apply for and get space to grow their own stuff. This movement is just basically short circuiting the idea of public land and really the whole idea of property ownership and control. Next they will be saying that I’m not using my backyard productively with all that grass, and will be growing their edamame beans on my lawn.
Of course if you ask me if we have WAY too much property under government ownership I’ll answer with a resounding yes, but this movement is really just overriding the idea of property ownership itself, even when the government owns it. And that sort if thing isn’t too damaging when it starts out small, on the down low, in secret, but as soon as it gains any traction it becomes a huge problem (as outlined so well by Steven.)
I might add this whole idea of “grow your own food” it kind of stupid in my opinion too. I mean grow a few tomato plants in your backyard it you want to. But the simple fact is that industrial farming produces better food with vastly less resources. I mean you could build your own car or your own air conditioner too. But better to leave it to the experts, while you contribute to the world by doing what you are expert at. If you wanna grow food for a hobby then that is absolutely fine, but let’s not pretend it replaces the grocery store anytime soon.
BTW, this post reminded me of “The Good Life” with Felicity Kendal and Richard Briers. Anyone remember it? I had a huge crush on Felicity Kendal… But at least they had the decency to grow food in their own garden, even if the Ledbetters next door didn’t much care for it. Didn’t the guy who lived next door go on to be the Prime Minister?
Dissent. I’ve pushed people around me to do this sort of thing for decades. We have a lot of family gardens.
The benefit isn’t so much the actual provision of foodstuffs as it is a way to get people outside doing something physical, and doing something with other like-minded people, and even more importantly, it’s to reconnect people with the concept of where their food comes from.
Plus, people who get used to a few nice green peppers or tomatoes or raspberries or green beans from the garden usually gravitate towards eating more healthfully even during the off-season.
But then, most of my peeps are either rural or suburban or nice-urban. I’d not care to try and guard my crops in a low-rent urban setting.
Don’t forget that in the States, thanks to Wickard v. Filburn the government can compel you to buy produce from the open market instead of growing your own. And if you think about saying “I’ll just buy and sell on the black market” Gonzales v. Raich applies Wickard v. Filburn to the black market as well.
Those solons in black muumuus are not going to save us.
Land for growing food should be privately owned – not owned by the state or by communal bodies (the biggest mistake that Czar Alexander II made was to hand land over to village cooperatives – rather than to individual peasant families, Stolypin tried to correct that blunder in the early 1900s but he did not have enough time before his murder).
And it should not be owned by Corporations either – it is now clear that the vast Corporations (with the endless Credit Money subsidies and the favourable tax treatment) are “partners” (creatures – creations of) the state, and, contrary to Milton Friedman, are NOT free enterprise.
When looking at a farm or a ranch it should be clear what person owns it – it should not be controlled by some Corporation based thousands of miles away whose shares are controlled by Black Rock, State Street and Vanguard (who have shares in each other – so they are basically one big BLOB) and the Credit Bubble banks who create “money” from nothing.
We do not want a Henri Saint-Simon style system of socialism, Central Planning, brought to the world by people pretending (pretending) to be “capitalists”.
Properly understood, a good BLT is not a bacon sandwich with salad. It is a tomato sandwich with a bacon garnish. As such, it requires a truly top-rate tomato of the type one can only rarely find in supermarkets. A home-grown tomato can be a thing of sublime joy and is the only type suitable for a BLT worthy of the name.
Small-scale food production – gardens, allotments and such – are just the place for such low-volume, high-value products. The high-volume, low-value crops- grains, potatoes, onions, and the like – are best left to the professionals who have the land and machinery necessary.
This scales to the international level as well. As we know, the key to lifting developing nations out of poverty is trade, not aid. Grow the high-volume, low-value staples in developed countries and trade them for the low-volume, high-value crops. Everyone wins.
I’ve become more sympathetic towards travellers and what we used to call gypoes.
I don’t agree with theft or camping on land owned by someone. I do agree with dropping out of society and becoming self sufficient. Not handing over half your earnings to corrupt governments. Freedom from the state.
I suppose it depends on the type of ‘public land’. Who’d eat anything grown in a public park, especially one like that near me, where it’s not just dog faces you have to avoid stepping in, but those of the many homeless immigrants that often sleep in the bushes.
@bobbyb, oh I agree. If it is a hobby, something to get out there and breathe the good fresh air, then it is lovely. My concern is this idea that we can replace the grocery store with our backyard, and the underlying idea that industrialization is a bad thing. My SIL’s father was famous for his tomatoes. He grew batches of these huge bright red tomatoes in his back yard and his little allotment. Everybody raved about those tomatoes and I’d often hear “so much better home grown” and “better than that crap from Monsanto”. What he didn’t advertize is that he used gobs and gobs of Miracle Grow and drenched them in Roundup to kill off the bugs. I guess perception is reality. Maybe the Roundup gave them that extra tangy zing?
Oh, I just noticed @Philip Scott Thomas’ comments, I’m not sure I agree with him — specialty farming is still a professional job — but he seemed relevant given my anecdote, so tagging him out of respect.
I have a reasonable sized garden and have grown veggies on and off over the years. It is quite satisfying but, as Fraser suggests, it isn’t worth the effort if you compare the labour costs with the money saved. Having only eaten frozen carrots for quite a long time, I had actually forgotten what carrots taste like until I had some fresh ones. Also worth knowing, if you have a piece of overgrown ground that you need clearing for your veggie patch, chickens do an excellent job. You will have to deal with brambles and nettles yourself but everything else they will completely destroy.
@JuliaM
I suppose it depends on the type of ‘public land’. Who’d eat anything grown in a public park, especially one like that near me, where it’s not just dog faeces you have to avoid stepping in
Isn’t growing your food with faeces as fertilizer called “organic farming”? It very popular, apparently.
I think that the type of faeces is quite important, as well as how long it has been left to decompose. Herbivores tend to produce shit that is considerably less foul than dog or cat shit. I suspect that, given enough time to rot, dog or cat shit could act as fertiliser but in it’s raw form is more likely to kill your plants.
Fraser Orr
September 15, 2024 at 2:00 pm
“My concern is this idea that we can replace the grocery store with our backyard . . .”
Ah, but . . .
Harvest is just ending here. Out of the biggest family plot at my parents’ house, I now have 30 quarts of (great, tasty, fresh, chem-free) pureed or diced tomatoes, 10q of green beans, 10q of diced green peppers, a bunch of raspberry jam, 40 lbs of onions in a sand box, and a bunch of smaller products in various states of preserve.
These will reduce my reliance on Cub Grocery quite a bit, and, more importantly, will give me better results in my cooking. They’ll all be gone by next summer, and we’ll do it again.
It’s not just for the hobbyist results.
Economically efficient? Maybe not – I can probably buy yuckier substitutes for less money-and-time – but the results make the labor and investment worthwhile.
(Proteins are harder, but I manage to get most of mine from the butcher co-op run by some farmer friends. Great meats, cut my way, for slightly less money than the grocers can supply.)
I’m not arguing with your main point – we need industrial farming to feed the masses, peasant farming isn’t going to work for that – but don’t discount the gardening function as merely a hobby of the wealthy class.
(Oh, and . . . Roundup. One of the safest chemicals out there. Don’t fall for the plaintiffs’ lawyers’ BS. They got one stupid jury to fall for their “science”, and that breaks the dam. This is going to become another “silicone breast implants cause auto-immune diseases” multi-billion-dollar debacle.
With a billion-dollar award under their belt, Monsanto and Bayer can no longer afford to really fight this crap. A great boon to feeding the world is now going to be weakened.)
A man after my own heart.
“The key is to get rid of the regulations – so that farmers can sell direct to ordinary people.”
I think that there is nothing stopping the farmer selling his produce direct to the consumer, as long as the consumer buys it in ex-farm condition. Its the processing it into a form that the consumer can use/manage is whats highly regulated. As far as I’m aware there’s nothing stopping me selling a lorry load of grain to whoever happens to stop by my farm with an artic lorry and can pony up the 5 grand it will cost them. Ditto a few head of livestock etc etc. There’s a little organic place just up the road from me, they sell veg straight out of the field via a little self service hut, no great regulations as far as I can see. Its more than Mrs Smith doesn’t want a tonne of grain, a live bullock, a thousand litres of raw milk, or half a tonne of spuds. She wants bread, 2 litres of pasteurised milk, a Sunday joint and 2kgs of washed and packaged potatoes. Getting from the former to the latter is where the regulation comes in, and to be honest, rightly so.
Fraser Orr:
“…specialty farming is still a professional job…”
Exactly so. It’s not a question of professionals versus amateurs, not on the international scale. Sure, home gardeners can probably produce superior crops for their own consumption. But when it comes to the big scale, the professional farmers in developing countries can specialise in the niche stuff while the pros in developed countries do the staples.
“Competitive advantage” isn’t about everyone doing what they’re best at; it’s about doing what they’re least bad at, i.e., what isn’t a wasteful expense of time, money and labour.
bobby b:
Economically efficient? Maybe not – I can probably buy yuckier substitutes for less money-and-time – but the results make the labor and investment worthwhile.
Rule No. 3: People will maximise their utility. In other words, they will expend time, effort and money in whatever way they see fit to achieve their own idea of contentment.
I remember my grandmother spending almost all of late August into September sweating over enormous pots of boiling water while canning every damn thing my grandfather pulled out of the garden. They could have got it all in tins from the supermarket, but they chose not to. Rule No. 3 again.
I’d drop “idea of.” Seems patronizing.
Here’s the thing: I’m not arguing that we all should go back to truck farming. We cannot. We can’t match the huge output made possible by factory farming. Heck, I just last week finalized leases for four sections of good Dakota corn and sunflower land to a subsid of ADM. We can make just about the same money sitting back and watching them use the land as we could if we put the effort into farming it ourselves. No thanks.
I was reacting to a blanket statement that food-gardening is dumb, and not worthwhile.
My motorcycle won’t stop nuclear war. But that’s not a reason to not ride motorcycles. I still enjoy it. It’s still a net benefit to my life. My food-production won’t take me off the food grid or save me much money, but it definitely repays my efforts, with better food and for all the other reasons I listed above. And, for people with limited resources, it can add some good nutrition and a healthy activity to their lives. Where’s the harm?
So one thing I vehemently object to that has been said here:
Philip Scott Thomas
Properly understood, a good BLT is not a bacon sandwich with salad. It is a tomato sandwich with a bacon garnish.
I’m sorry, if you think the key ingredient of a BLT is the T then we can’t be friends anymore. I have frequently had BLTs without the T and they are awesome (try it with avocado…) I mean look, the T is even last in the letters so clearly the B is the core ingredient. A BLT is a bacon sandwich with some extra stuff to make it seem not quite so indulgent.
No, no, no – Not the bloody Good Life! Bloody bloody bloody! I hate it, it’s so bloody nice… They’re just a couple of reactionary stereotypes, confirming the myth that everyone in Britain is a lovable, middle-class eccentric – and I hate them!!!
Further to the discussion of hobby (or more serious than hobby) farming. I came across this video in which a guy tries to grow some wheat and then turn it into bread. Spoiler alert — the bread wasn’t very good. Of course that might have been his lack of skill, but in terms of bread, industrial society has been improving and developing the making of bread for thousands of years. And especially in the past couple of hundred years have dramatically transformed it to be a better product for human sale and consumption. Whatever you think about bread (and I try to avoid it — except in the aforementioned BLT sandwiches) it is in many ways the epitome of what industrial farming can do.
I don’t doubt the crops that BobbyB’s family produce are fantastic, fresh and delicious, but I often think that “grow your own” food is better with a sort of “placebo”-like effect. It is better because you think it is better. I read a study recently where they determined that wine tastes much better when poured from a heavy bottle. I think for sure this “placebo” effect affects wine. A bottle of $1 wine is definitely worse than a $10 bottle of wine. But is that $10 bottle really worse than the $100 bottle? Is the $50 dollar bottle really even noticeably worse than the $1000 bottle? Honestly I doubt it by any objective measure, though I am not what you’d call a sophisticate. And as with my SIL’s father’s tomatoes, I think that a lot of the taste comes from the history or the story behind it rather than the intrinsic properties of the food.
Which, BTW, is not to dismiss it. Subjective experience is still important. If I make a table in my garage out of wood, it may not be intrinsically better than the one I bought at the store, in fact it may even be worse, but the story and history of sitting at something made with your own hands is certainly something to enjoy and elevate the experience. I suppose eating your own carrots of potatoes must have a similar pleasure.
No doubt though there can be some objective difference, and I’m sure those quarts of beans, tomatoes and jam at chez BobbyB are delicious.
Hmph. Going to sit down and eat my tomato-bacon-tomato-lettuce-tomato sandwich now. Barbarians. 😉
Genuinely fascinating thread to read through. Really interesting to see how some people view it as “reclaiming land stolen by the government” vs “occupation of property that doesn’t belong to them” (I side heavily with the former).
A few extra points to add, if I may, on my extremely infrequent drive-bys (hope you’re all well, etc, etc)
There’s no reason to think that “private property” in the sense of “property that you don’t reside on/use yourself” (in the sense of use and usufruct) is *inherently* any more productive than properly-managed “commonly owned” property. Ostrom put that to bed decades ago.
Growing your own food/making your own bread absolutely is worthwhile and saves money (see: Ralph Borsodi’s experiments), but like everything else relies on certain caveats. A person who works from home and has a garden is clearly going to have more opportunity to do this than someone who lives in a 19th floor flat without a balcony and works in a factory all day. The fact that it doesn’t work for everyone is no reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater (and in reality lends more weight towards community owned gardens, so that your flat-dweller has a chance to get involved), but it certainly can save money – especially with innovations like hydroponics, re-discovery of old techniques like permaculture, and a general shift away from monocultures. A mixture of techniques, coupled with knowledge sharing and a sensible amount of division of labour can truly save money for people.
It also has some knock-on effects. People who can grow their own food have, in a small but important sense, freed themselves very slightly from the merry-go-round of working for someone else, paying taxes on what they buy, and being “directed” in their every action. There’s a reason why a person might crib at working 8 hours a day, and then enjoy themselves digging their garden or canning fruit for 2 hours every night, or 8 hours on a weekend, and it’s to do with *agency*.
Home-grown veg is, in a blind taste test of approximately 6 people, far tastier than shop-bought. Ergo, case closed.
The “professional food growers” are not the best at growing good food. They’re the best at growing food that they can profit from.
Despite being wrong about leaving food production to the professionals and thinking that homegrown food is a placebo effect (I’m joshing with you), Fraser is 100% correct about the proper proportions of a BLT. Come on, it’s a bacon sarnie that we’ve put a slice of tomato in and a lettuce leaf, but it’s the bacon that we’re enjoying.