Little Gardens Everywhere: The Self-Provisioning City in the Long 20th Century

FAIN: FEL-281844-22

Kate Lake Brown
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, MA 02139-4307)

Writing leading to a transnational history of urban farming from the late 19th century to the early 21st century.

“Little Gardens Everywhere” is a history that has been missed in plain sight. With no tax breaks, no regulatory structure, no founding manifesto, urban farmers in cities around the world in the long 20th century accomplished many of the goals of food sustainability reformers today. Urban farmers produced local, diverse food on marginal land with short market chains and few post-harvest food losses in a production cycle that resulted in affordable, fresh and nutritious food. A minority of maverick scientists were among the few that recognized the importance of small-holding farmers’ work in finding low-tech, sustainable solutions to feeding large, urban communities. The history of urban farmers and maverick scientists points toward a basic feature of human existence. With hands in soils, humans draw on a multitude of non-human allies to form communities socially, economically and microbially.