By Jeff
“All the worlds problems can be solved in a garden," said Geoff Lawton, director of the International Permaculture Research Institute, in his famous Greening the Desert video. While inspiring and invoking a sense of possibility and a more just and equitable future, I felt it was a bit too simplistic. How could the food, environmental and economic crises we face today on a global scale be addressed through such a simple thing as a garden?
The Urban Farm Tour side event of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development 17, took us to some inspiring places in Brooklyn where people are coming together to address the injustices and inequities in their communities through gardening. Our the fist stop on the tour, at the Brooklyn Rescue Mission (BRM), showed me how the simple act of gardening could help bring together a community, empower youth, create livelihood and improve nutrition and food security. Located in a low-income area of inner Brooklyn, the BRM is a small but growing oasis. And while the BRM community garden does not yet produce a lot of food, it none-the-less provides a valuable service to its community by providing fresh vegetables that would be otherwise unavailable.
The last community garden we visited, East New York Farms! does produce a considerable amount of fresh vegetables to be sold at their farmers market, even raising bees for honey and pollination. Yet despite their larger size and output they still cannot meet the demand for fresh food in their community. Both BRM and East New York Farms! support a farmers market in their area, a vital component to improving food security in their communities. The farmers markets are an important link in the rural to urban connection, not only increasing the amount of produce available to the host community but also strengthen the economic viability of rural farmers by enabling them to sell their produce in these otherwise inaccessible neighborhoods.
These farmers are not just food producers, they are cultivators of community. In New York, the once common vegetable garden has been replaced by parking lots and lawns, and while food production was an integral part of a community's social and physical makeup only a generation ago, the skills and practice of gardening and food preparation are disappearing. Community gardens play a vital role in improving food security and nutrition by reincorporating these fundamental skills into the populace. But perhaps more importantly, community gardens provide a space where capacities can be developed, youth can be empowered, and communities can be cultivated.
In preparation for the CSD, the delegates from the BIC deepened on the subjects of agriculture and rural development in the Baha’i Writings, resulting in some truly inspiring thoughts and realizations. Abdul'l-Baha, the son of the Founder of the Bahai Faith, Baha'u'llah, states in Foundations of World Unity that "agriculture is the fundamental basis of community," yet it is also understood that the role of agriculture and the farmer in community is far greater than the mere production of food, which is in itself of great importance for our health and livelihood. Baha'u'llah says that "the farmer is the first active agent in human society" and is "the primary factor in the body politic." This redefines the farmer as the primary builder of the local economy, encompassing a wide range of tasks including environmental management, economic development, research, technology development and community building. To carry out these tasks effectively, farmers need to possess diverse capabilities, consisting of knowledge and skills coupled with values and attitudes, that enable them to become active agents in the cultivation and development of their communities. Thus the importance of agriculture and farmers should be clearly manifested in our social structures.
Shoghi Effendi, the Guardian of the Bahai Faith and great-grandson of Baha'u'llah, wrote that, “We cannot segregate the human heart from the environment outside us and say that once one of these is reformed everything will be improved. Man is organic with the world. His inner life moulds the environment and is itself also deeply affected by it. The one acts upon the other and every abiding change in the life of man is the result of these mutual reactions.”
This process of development is therefore both internal and external, individual and societal. Baha'u'llah wrote: "In the rose garden of thy heart, plant naught but the rose of love." So perhaps solving the world's problems does start in a garden, the garden of the human heart.
Jeff
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“The Earth is but one country and mankind its citizens.” --Baha’u’llah
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