ARTS & FARCES internet

What would happen if greenhouses were constructed next to, or on top of, grocery stores? Produce would almost certainly be fresher and the transportation problem of sustainable agriculture would be one step closer to being solved. That’s the idea behind BrightFarms’ on-site greenhouses; the company contracts with grocery stores to operate hydroponic greenhouses on their roofs.

Imagine being able to eat tomatoes virtually year-round—even up here on the far edge—that were grown for flavor instead of transport. Imagine being able to buy lettuce that was picked that morning instead of six days ago (half its shelf-life) in California.

According to BrightFarms, “The average item of food in the United States travels at least 1500 miles. Gasoline can account for up to half the value of a head lettuce or pound of tomatoes.”

BrightFarms reports that it has contracted with 10 grocery store chains and is close to signing with three more. McCaffrey’s Markets will host a greenhouse in either New Jersey or Pennsylvania. Brooklyn-based Gotham Greens—with consulting help from BrightFarms—began delivering produce to New York supermarkets in June 2011. And a demonstration-scale greenhouse will be constructed at the Whole Foods Market in Millburn, New Jersey.

Just as the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) was doing its flat-level best to kill the free, open internet by turning it over to the corporate telecommunications and cable interests, my friend and former colleague Jay Walljasper publishes All That We Share, a book re-examining the commons. The commons is simply that which we share. Walljasper cites clean air and water, wildlife preserves, the US judicial system, Wikipedia, and the internet all as examples of shared assets that make up the commons.

“Anyone can use the commons, so long as there is enough left for everyone else,” Walljasper notes in an excerpt for Yes! magazine. “This is why finite commons, such as natural resources, must be sustainably and equitably managed.” Using the example of sampling in music, Walljasper points to the greatest strength of the commons: A borrowing and repurposing of what came before to move collectively forward.

Walljasper recognizes that this millennia-old system of mutually beneficial sharing is being threatened. “As the market economy becomes the yardstick for measuring the worth of everything, more people are grabbing portions of the commons as their private property,” Walljasper writes. He provides the examples of pharmaceutical companies that use government grants to develop drugs which are then patented and sold at prices that only the rich can use. And Bikram Choudhury’s copyrighting of centuries-old hatha yoga practices.

But Walljasper, undaunted, goes on to point out how people are beginning to work together to take back the commons from greedy individual and corporate interests. Everything from neighbors fighting to keep libraries open, improve neighborhood parks, and fund public schools to providing internet access to the poor and challenging corporate grabs to limit access to information gives Walljasper good cheer and reason for hope. More importantly, Walljasper sees in the commons a “toolkit for fixing problems” and goes on to cite the work of individuals (including his wife) to restore and strengthen the commons.

Front Seat’s Walk Score has become something of a de-facto walkability index. My own neighborhood scores 75/100 (very walkable). And it is.

But public transportation is another story—and another useful metric in how livable a neighborhood is. Public transportation in the Twin Cities is roughly 15-20 years behind the rest of the US metropolitan areas, mostly because our electoral politics have gone from the Minnesota Miracle to the Minnesota Tragedy.

Walk Score has just added a new Public Transportation score and a Commute report to its offerings, both of which are quite useful. The free service is pretty close to becoming a de-facto livability index, at least for urbanites.

On my block, the only public transportation is one bus going North-South every 30 minutes, one bus going East-West every 30 minutes, and one bus going to Minneapolis every 30 minutes. Walk Score recognizes this as poor, and rates it a 48 (some transit). It accurately reports nine routes within a half-mile of my home.

When I click the Commute tab and input the address for my University of Minnesota office, it accurately reports that it takes about 1.25 hours to walk the 3.83 miles; a half-hour to bike the 4.21 miles; 11 minutes to drive; and suggests the appropriate bus route. I was especially impressed with the level of detail of hills between here and there (mostly flat; ~100 feet elevation difference)—a critical issue for bikers. But it fails to say how long the bus takes (~30 minutes depending on season).

A resource is said to be at “peak,” when it becomes so inaccessible that the extraction rate starts to decline. The Pacific Institute has published a paper, “Peak Water Limits to Freshwater Withdrawal and Use,” (.pdf; 32KB) finding that “peak water” was reached sometime around 1970 in the United States.

The paper’s authors, Peter Gleick and Meena Palaniappan, identify three classes of peak water:

• Peak renewable water: Where flow constraints limit total water availability over time. River basins and snow melt are the most common examples. No water from the Colorado River, for example, has reached the ocean since about 1960.
• Peak nonrenewable water: Where production rates substantially exceed natural recharge rates or where overpumping or contamination leads to a peak production followed by a decline (similar to peak oil curves). An example of nonrenewable water are aquifers. Aquifers in the US, China, and India are all being drained at a rate much faster than can be recharged. As these aquifers are depleted, use will drop to the recharge rate.
• Peak ecological water: The point beyond which the total costs of ecological disruptions and damages exceed the total value provided by human use of that water. Examples of ecological water are lakes and rivers.

While we’re not running out of water—use of which in the US paralleled gross domestic product (GDP) growth since the beginning of the 20th century until 1975 when it stabilized—we have reached the end of cheap and easy access to the resource.

The obvious, sustainable solution is to make more currently inaccessible water available by changing our dumping habits and cleaning up existing watersheds. But this is what’s called a “backstop” solution and, as Gleick and Palaniappan note, “the ultimate water backstop is still water.”

In his editorial in the March-April 2010 issue of Utne Reader, “When Growth Isn’t Good,” founding editor Eric Utne laments the growth and necessary relocation of his neighborhood food co-op. The Linden Hills Co-op, in southwest Minneapolis, is one of the co-op movement’s shining stars, doing more than US$9 million each year in business and boasting more than 5,000 member-owners.

Utne’s grief comes from the potential impact of the co-op’s relocation on other locally owned small businesses in the neighborhood. And from the move from a small 5,500 square foot intimate boutique-like retail space to a larger more impersonal, more commercial space. Utne’s also unhappy about the Co-op’s management not communicating effectively about its growth plans.

But as Barth Anderson, writing as El Dragon, points out in his “The Utne Reader: Small grocery stores too big” response, Utne is thinking only about the micro element of a much larger picture. Anderson quotes Greg Reynolds of Riverbend Organic Farm as saying, “It’ll be a good bump for the co-op and it’s going to be a good bump for everyone who sells to them.” Anderson reports the Linden Hills Co-op is Riverbend’s fifth biggest customer and bought 33% more produce last year than it did the year before. “As a customer of mine,” Reynolds told Anderson, “Linden Hills Co-op is growing fast, and after a big move like this, they’ll buy more. They’re a fast-growing co-op, and that’s good.”

What’s “enough” for Utne clearly isn’t for either Linden Hills Co-op or Riverbend Organic Farm. In order for the entire organic foodchain to be sustainable, co-ops like Linden Hills Co-op and organic farms like Riverbend have to grow larger than Utne would like. One of the primary principles of the co-op movement—as Elizabeth Archerd, member services manager for the Wedge Co-op (which has annual sales US$30 million and occupies 11,000 square feet), points out in the comments to Anderson’s article—is voluntary and open membership. Co-ops are forced to grow because they don’t turn member-owners away.

It’s entirely possible that the Linden Hills Co-op could have communicated more effectively with regard to its growth plans, but I’ve got to say that I live in Saint Paul, and I’ve been hearing about the Linden Hills Co-op wanting to relocate to larger space for several years.

Are big box co-ops coming? If they’re cooperatively owned and managed, it really shouldn’t matter. Bringing good, affordable, sustainably produced food to more people should be seen as a good thing.

Disclosure: From 2002-06 I was Utne Reader‘s online managing editor and webmaster. I know Eric Utne personally and consider him a friend. None of that makes him any less wrong about this issue.