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What does integrating agriculture with communities look like?

For many, agriculture is something that happens “over there,” on a big scale, incompatible with suburban living. Perhaps there are illusions of what agriculture means: an industrial scale, huge machines, chemicals and processing facilities, waste that has to be managed, odours that have to be contained and semi trucks backing into loading docks.

Just like with nature, the western developed modern world in 2023 has largely removed itself from the realities of the planet we live on. We don’t have to live with nature, it’s “over there,” in the same way the place where garbage goes is “over there.” Out of sight, out of mind.

When I grew up just north of Winnipeg in the early 1990’s, I remember horse stables, and I remember people riding their horses down the road. I remember the smells that come with horses. I remember seeing these beautiful animals and wondering all about them. Animals and livestock such as horses and chickens are now forbidden where our farm is located, though the stables remain along with their ghosted pastures.

Integrating small-scale agriculture into cities, suburbs and semi-rural areas is crucial as a vivid reminder of the system that we are a part of.

Food does not come from the store, it comes from a farm. Not a farm “over there,” but a farm like that one right here, down the road. There are many ways to accomplish this, just as there are many different methods of farming and many different things that can be sustainably managed.

The surrounding community could easily support dozens of farmers, and the Greater Winnipeg Area (nobody calls it that) could easily support up to a thousand direct-to-consumer small-scale farms.

above: our farm’s Kale Forest, in 50m permanent zero-till beds with oat straw mulch to promote soil biodiversity and preserve water.

Supporting agriculture in all the forms it can take and all the communities it can exist in is essential, but it also means a shift in cultural expectations of what residential life means. Governmental support for policy, zoning, access to land and resisting opposition is a much larger and more complex problem.

Maybe you don’t have to go to the store in Canada for a bunch of beets from Mexico or lettuce from California in July. Maybe you could get all your vegetables and proteins from neighbourhood farms.

Perhaps even still, they could be your neighbour.

Yeehaw! Man, I wish there were still horses around ’cause I’d love to learn how to ride a horse from a neighbour.

Graham

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