Community farming and permaculture

This post is the result of a rather timely coincidence of 2 events - (i) basil procurement to cook a Thai dish, minced pork with basil, and (ii) an article on community gardening in the August issue of Appetite magazine (published by Edipresse Singapore).

Basil procurement

A recent attempt was made to cook basil with pork (a Thai dish) a few weeks ago. This typically entailed the usual trip to the supermarket to buy pork and basil, and the subsequent rumblings about how expensive basil is in Singapore - S$3.00 gets you 30g of basil, and unfortuantely also a plastic packaging. There is also the occasional risk of having no choice but to buy limp, not-fresh basil if the stock has been sitting there for a few days. Buying a basil pot from the supermarket (S$3.50-4.00)was always an option, however having witnessed several failed supermarket-basil-pot growings, I have never been too keen on this.

This time round, I decided to hit the nursery (plant nursery). Lucked out, and picked up Bobby the basil plant. For S$8.00, you get a pot that is several times the size of those sold in the supermarkets, and a healthy, robust plant with a big head of basil.

Of course, basil plants don't grow that well indoors, so a few days ago I embarked on Project Replant Bobby - to transplant him in the grounds of my apartment block. I was rather afraid that the gardener might mistake him for a weed if I put him straight in the ground, and thankfully a quick tour of the garden found me a huge abandoned pot under a tree, which is where Bobby now resides.



Appetite magazine article on community farming

Get the full article in the August issue of Appetite magazine. The piece was on community farming in Australia, and a couple of excerpts talk about the environmental impact of modern farming methods: "The nation's food production is increasingly falling into the hands of large corporations which advocate broad-acre farming. This means mechanisation and high dosages of pesticides and fertilisers which are also high consumers of energy... Clive Blazey founder of Australia's largest gardening club (Digger's Club), suggests that produce sold in supermarkets is mostly grown with chemicals... picked unripe and then transported thousands of kilometres... contribute to 30 per cent of the nation's carbon dioxide emissions."

Interesting. Definitely agreed that small scale farming will probably use less pesticides since you can control what goes into the ground, and households could even turn scrap food into compost if they were so inclined. Agreed too that transportation costs would be lower to some extent, even though the initial outlay to setup many many small community gardens (e.g. transportation of soil etc) would presumably be less efficient than large scale farming, though this would be a once off thing only. Not sure how accurate this 30% emissions figure is, it sounds rather high to me. And of course, home grown veges don't need to be wrapped in nasty plastic!

The resident environmental oracle asked - why doesn't Singapore have community gardens at the top of all HDB blocks? Not having ever worked for the HDB, I will hazard a few guesses:
1. The HDB probably isn't interested in the environment.
2. Security issues, since presumably some common equipment e.g. water tanks, heaters, etc are located at the top of the building.
3. Ownership - how would this happen? Communal? Rent to top bidder? If the former, then there will likely be disputes e.g. how to split the space, how to allocate the veges, etc. If the latter, then the issue of who will manage the bidding process, collection of rent, etc.