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Health & Fitness

Down on the Farm

Reflections on the farm.

During Albany’s “” I made a visit to the occupied farm. Having a definite interest in “three squares a day,” I am a staunch fan of farming and community gardens. But, in chatting with the folks at the Gill Tract, I did find a couple of problems and have a suggestion or two as to how these aspiring farmers could do it better next time.

First of all, the label “occupiers” has a negative connotation for many people, who tend think in personal terms about what it would mean to be forcibly “occupied” in there own homes. It’s worth noting that (at the time of our “founding”) when the British billeted their soldiers in colonists’ homes without permission, the colonists got so angry they chucked the Brits out and sent 'em packing back to England.  And today, if a husband comes home from work early, finds a hippy in his wife’s closet, and asks what that person is doing there, a response such as “Like man, everybody has to be somewhere”, just isn’t going to cut it. On a positive note, Consider Transition Albany. This group is always looking for someone’s yard to grow food, but even these avid and deeply committed farmers don’t come around when you’re gone and roto-till your yard without permission.

I'd suggest that people who want to farm in the urban setting should put away their fence cutters and cloak themselves in that grand old American tradition of tenant farming and sharecropping. A Craigslist ad stating: “Enthusiastic would-be tenant farmers seeking East Bay land to pitch tents and do some high intensity urban sharecropping” has a civil ring to it and hints that the landowner might benefit too. They should try something like that. 

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Along these lines, I believe the occupiers missed a couple of good bargaining chips in their negotiations with the University.  When I asked one of them what plans they had for the food they produced, the answer was a bit vague and the best I could get was that they intended to “give it away”. I suggested that they should present themselves to the University as bona fide urban tenant farmer sharecroppers and offer the University half the produce in exchange for the use of the land and the water. The University, in turn, might then soften its position, turn the water back on, and agree to use its share of the food to feed hungry students. (As any parent will tell you, when it comes to food, your typical student represents little more than a human incarnation of the “bottomless pit”.)  But sadly, while these ideas were based on the traditional sharecropping relationship and seemed to hold promise for resolving differences, they gained little if any traction.

I then proposed that (as a friendly gesture of good will) the occupier farmers could at least offer to provide a weekly basket of vegetables for the Chancellor’s personal table. And, contingent upon the farm flourishing, the farmers could agree to a future expansion of the program to include the Regents as well. But when this proposal also fell on deaf ears, I reluctantly concluded that my skills as an ombudsman were clearly no match for the task at hand, and so, thoroughly dejected, I left the farm, comforted only by the knowledge that I have given the situation my best shot.

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With the urban farmers committed to a “long fight”, and , I hope these reflections will be of some help to them as they map out their future strategies.

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