ARE CITIES SUSTAINABLE?

Cities are necessarily exploitative in ways no one planned for them to be. They simply evolved that way by lack of foresight and by political expediency. The city as a whole consumes food and raw materials that are produced outside it, and it sends back out to the undeveloped land (a) trash into landfills that eventually pollutes groundwater, (b) technology that some rural dwellers don’t consider necessary but a nuisance as it absorbs and warps children’s attention, and (c) pop culture that many in older generations find to be corrupting of their community cohesion and religious values. If their rural children keep being enticed into the city, maybe there will be more mechanization of farms to compensate for lost labor, but that would increase the issue of unsustainability. Where is the assurance that the mechanized products will always be available or affordable?

Small farms excel at sustainability. The stones pulled from the fields aren't thrown away. They make the cobble for chimney walls and paths. The manure scraped from animal pens fertilizes the fields. The produce uneaten becomes animal feed. Though some farms serve towns, most small farms aren’t close enough to give their surplus to cities. Cities so far have relied on big agribusiness, because of efficiency and scale. The downsides are notorious: depleted topsoil; pesticides and herbicides to protect vulnerable monoculture crops, nitrogen fertilizer runoff that destroys aquaculture; pandemic spark risks of large-scale meat, egg, and dairy productions; antibiotic and hormone use in the same industries, which contributes to obesity and adaptation of treatment-resistant pathogens; transportation and mechanization based on fossil fuels; and aquifer depletion. Could city dwellers grow their own food? Window and container gardens sound like a great idea, but the yield isn’t much. Agrihoods are a needed investment in food security, and an intensive restructuring of rooftop use could make city blocks productive. Gardening has seen resurgence in city residential areas. Still, reportedly it takes at least 1 acre of land to feed a person, and the typical square city block is about 2.5 acres. You do the math. Forward-thinking cities have instituted composting programs, which is important for diverting waste from landfills. Container recycling is better than not recycling glass and aluminum, but there are downsides. The traditional family farm, canning with re-usable bottles and using a root cellar, has time-intensive storage but can be close to zero waste. Cities can’t get anywhere close to the resource sustainability of small farms.

Some have said humans would take up too much animal habitat if we all spread out onto small farms; however, the way we are doing it now, we are instead polluting animal habitat. Currently 4.62 billion acres worldwide are being farmed. Even with the understanding of birthrates predicting eventual population collapse, we are facing a challenge of short term increase. Per Worldometer, the world population was over 7.8 billion as of May 2020. To keep it simple and non-rosy, the United Nations projects the world population to reach 9.8 billion in 2050. Yet another consideration is that the average caloric recommendation for U.S. males simply is more than what much of the world’s population lives on. Still, if we consider an upcoming time when there will be approximately two people relying on every acre of current farmland and ranchland, clearly, we can expect to be challenged. Small farms make good use of “marginal” land, while big agribusiness requires the prime flatland. As we gain in population, without reverting to small farms, with orchard and pasture on hilly land that may not be as suited for crops, the world may experience increasing food shortage, especially if the trend continues of pushing small farms out of business.

Division of labor inherent in industrialization and collaboration are more efficient, but it makes us all dependent on economic and transport systems that it's become increasingly clear are not sustainable long term, regardless of whether they’re run by a democracy, plutocracy, or dictatorship. Some pretend there will be a time our cars and buildings will be all solar-powered. Maybe, but we’re running out of time to get those in place, and which nations will we continue to exploit for the labor and minerals to make those batteries? We’ve all become more efficient with constant communication and GPS that help us get where we’re going quickly and reliably. Yet the financial benefit of that productivity has siphoned upward. Real wages have remained stagnant. Efficiency doesn’t seem to benefit the masses so much as it benefits the elite. When GDP increases, that doesn't mean it's distributed evenly. Efficiency can also mean we’re ever more quickly destroying the ecosystems we depend on. Years ago, earlier than the 2019 paraphrase of it, there was some mention of GDP as a measure of how fast we can turn natural resources into trash. The efficiency argument doesn’t hold as a measure of lasting progress. Small farming communities have enough division of labor to make them efficient, but residents usually have enough general skill to make them resilient in filling multiple roles. Efficiency isn’t what we need most. In fact, we don’t want efficiency when it means faster destruction. Industrial agriculture is turning our farmland into dead soil at an alarming rate. The United Nations estimates that with current industrial farming practices, we have fewer than 60 years of farmable soil left on Earth. The Need To GROW is a film about solutions for our food system. Watch the film for free at grow.foodrevolution.org.

I also recommend listening to Joe Brewer on the Future Thinkers podcast. It's available for free via their website. He discusses both the benefit and downsides of cities, as well as why they are unlikely to exist in the future (36:14).