The ECONOMIC BENEFITS

What if city designs included space for urban farming to provide a percentage of the calories required by their inhabitants? What if the community saw urban farming as an opportunity for economic growth and employment? What if the local government spent the same amount of money on the education, distribution, and land leasing to create food related jobs as it did on to attracting big businesses?

Let’s consider how much money could be kept in the local economy by creating our own urban food plan, giving local farmers the opportunity to supply the food sold at local grocery stores and restaurants.

If you keep up with the average, your household will spend $7,203 on food this year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. About $3,965 of that amount is the actual cost of the food, before markup, or the portion that could be paid to farmers if they were supplying the food.

Here in Tulsa, we’re considering how to densify the square mile where I live just north of downtown for a residential population of 20,000. By supplying the restaurants and grocery stores where these residents buy their food, farmers could earn up to $33 million a year. This could support as many as 330 farmers earning $100,000 a year by supplying food vendors.

Expanding past our square mile to the city of Tulsa as a whole, there is half a billion dollars in food supplied each year. This amounts to a lot of leakage every year. Not only are we sending a majority of that half billion out of state every year, but we’re sending an ever-increasing percentage of it outside of our country.

According to data from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Americans imported from other countries as much as 25 percent of their food consumed in 2013. That was a 6 percent increase from 2012, which saw a 6 percent increase from 2011. Why are we alright with sending that amount of capital out of our city’s economy year after year?

Imagine if Tulsa could provide a large percentage of the half a billion dollars each year to farmers, who are part of our local economy and could keep that money in our economy.

PERMANENT AGRICULTURE

In my opinion, food-bearing trees and perennials (plants that come back from their roots each year) are a big solution. If you take the L.L. Tisdale Parkway north from downtown Tulsa and look to your right, you’ll see about 500 trees and shrubs cascading down a hill separating the highway from my neighborhood.