How to Grow and Forage Without Owning Land

This post was formerly revealed July 6, 2019, and has been up-to-date with new information.

Have you at any time desired to increase your very own foods but didn’t know in which to commence? Entry to new, balanced foodstuff is a human proper, and one particular of the finest methods to physical exercise that ideal is to improve your possess food items. You don’t have to be a farmer or have a track record in agriculture. You you should not even have to individual your possess land.

The industrialization of our chemical-dependent food items program has induced difficulties that are just about insurmountable, which include soil degradation, h2o pollution, reduction of biodiversity, a decrease in community health and local weather adjust. But food items manufacturing does not have to be globalized, industrialized or even monetized.

Which is the message environmental activist and humanitarian Rob Greenfield wants to convey in a new project in which he aims to increase and forage 100% of his very own foodstuff for one 12 months. The problem is showcased in a two-component movie created by Peter Kanaris of GreenDreamsFL titled, “Growing & Foraging 100% of His Food items With no LAND OF HIS Very own: 1-12 months Problem w/ Rob Greenfield.”

The movie, established in Orlando, Florida, exhibits Greenfield 138 days into his yearlong venture of escalating and foraging all of his own food, and some of his own medication, far too. The best portion? Greenfield won’t individual any land. He’s escalating foodstuff in six privately owned yards and a handful of other spots that full fewer than 4,000 square toes of space.

Greenfield did not go to faculty for horticulture, both. And, he would not have any practical experience in agriculture. He does have a certification in permaculture, but states it hardly ever taught him how to essentially plant everything. For occasion, he had to find out how substantially sun is necessary to mature carrots, how considerably h2o kale needs and what time of year is best to plant certain plants.

Expanding and Foraging 100% of His Own Food stuff

Even with his absence of practical experience, he discovered how to successfully increase a variety of food stuff and herbs like green onions, carrots, beets, celery, spinach, kale, cabbage, tomatoes, garlic, cilantro and dill. Remarkably, in a lot less than one particular calendar year (about 10 months), Greenfield was equipped to develop 100% of his individual food items.

But it will get superior. He is escalating so a lot food that his task doubles as a neighborhood backyard garden, the place locals can sample refreshing, regionally grown create, and depart feeling impressed to test and develop some of their possess.

“At the very least that is my hope,” states Greenfield in the film. “I took on the challenge to not just feed myself, but to encourage others to check out and do the same. That could signify planting your first tomato plant, setting up an herb yard on your apartment balcony or turning your front or yard into a total-on back garden. Developing your personal meals is one thing we all can do.”

In an hard work to preserve h2o, Greenfield employs a drip irrigation technique that delivers drinking water directly to the roots of crops. Drip irrigation is one of the most efficient watering systems, as it can lower water utilization by 30% to 70%. Greenfield claims he could improve the food devoid of a drip irrigation system, but with all of the unique gardens he’s increasing, it would insert up to 10 hrs much more per week of labor on top of the 40 to 60 several hours he presently spends tending to his gardens.

In addition to his gardens, Greenfield also assisted plant a lot more than 200 local community fruit trees in Orlando, like cherry, peach, mulberry, avocado and loquat trees. The trees are marked with a indicator that states: “I am a group fruit tree. Make sure you delight in my fruit.” The neighborhood trees act as a reminder that food can be obtainable outside of the grocery shop.

‘Food Is a Gateway to Finding Men and women to Rethink Everything’

The film displays Greenfield munching on clean mulberries from one particular of the neighborhood fruit trees he helped plant. “Food items is a gateway to getting people to rethink almost everything,” claims Greenfield, adding:

“The plan is to test and get meals developed freely all about us. A good deal of people today when they see meals which is escalating totally free, which is nutritious and tasty, for the initially time, and they understand that it isn’t going to have to come from the grocery shop, that can be a quite revolutionary second.

I’m tremendous passionate about developing meals. But the enthusiasm is equally as considerably about inspiring folks not just to mature their have foods, but to look at the world in a diverse way, to commence to see the globe as some thing to do the job with, somewhat than in opposition to, in all facets of existence: our foods, our h2o, our strength, our waste and our transportation.

Just just about every way we offer with the Earth. I consider food stuff is a person of the greatest gateways mainly because we eat food three occasions a working day, and some of us, more like 10 situations a day. It really is our connection to our neighborhood. It’s our exciting. It is our social lifetime. For a lot of us, we try to eat to dwell and we live to eat. So, if you can get persons definitely imagining about their food stuff, I believe you can get individuals thinking about their whole life.”

There is no doubt that Greenfield is an inspiration to us all. He is a power to be reckoned with when it will come to boosting awareness about some of the most pressing social and environmental difficulties of our time, including foodstuff squander, plastic pollution, local climate modify, corporatism and homelessness, just to name a couple of.¹

‘Live Very simple and You Will Live Free’

With more than fifty percent a million “likes” on Facebook and just about 100,000 YouTube subscribers (some of his movies have sights numbering in the millions), Greenfield has captured the awareness of audiences throughout the world.

His motto “Dwell easy and you will reside cost-free” summarizes his perception that happiness is not derived from money and belongings, but somewhat comes from the meaningful connections we make with other people, and having a profound appreciation and respect for our planet’s purely natural means and the daily life that exists within it.

Greenfield isn’t just passionate about increasing his have food items and exhibiting others they can do the exact. He’s also focused to making recognition about food items squander and foods insecurity.

Individuals discard an estimated 34 million tons of foodstuff every single calendar year — that’s like tossing a quarter of your groceries into the trash. The foodstuff waste problem is not minimal to America’s household kitchens, but also happens in dining places, grocery shops and on farms.

Via his campaign “The Foodstuff Squander Fiasco,”² Greenfield established awareness all over food stuff waste by diving into countless numbers of dumpsters to exhibit how almost 50 percent of all foodstuff in the U.S. is wasted.³

In 1 of his videos, “Dumpster Diving for Food with Rob Greenfield,” he confirmed how he was equipped to fill an empty pantry and fridge with far more than $1,000 really worth of flawlessly good food items soon after just five hrs of dumpster diving.⁴ “That’s gathering $200 an hour worth of food,” he claims.

Greenfield is also a huge advocate of showing that people today are great. In an work to illustrate this, he bravely traveled to Rio, Brazil, with zero bucks to his identify. He was capable to vacation 7,000 miles to Panama, relying on practically nothing except for the goodness of others, who kindly offered him food stuff, shelter and transportation.

He even employed other people’s mobile telephones to seize the footage, some of which was used in a six-episode collection named “No cost Ride” that aired on the Discovery Channel. To understand much more about Greenfield and his adventures, look at out his web page, RobGreenfield.Television.⁵