Carlotta Collette I Streets of Plenty In front of our house there's a big plum tree. With little attention from any of us it annually drops thousands of plums. Each year we put up a sign—FREE PLUMS—and our neighbors come and gather their fill. There are always more than enough to go around, and besides, there are two more trees like this one in the back. Nearly everyone in Portland knows a tree like ours, or a berry patch and a clump of peppermint. Their abundance is fairly predictable and they endure. They grow here, in our city. Their produce does not need to be trucked in (and harvested before it's ripened) from California or Mexico. In small ways they help to sustain us. The coming land revolution we've barely begun to consider is the agriculture of densely settled areas. Tree crops, mini-orchards, and year round vegetable plots tended with intimate human care can transform our city and suburban streets and lawns into wonders we can barely imagine today. —Dave Deppen. How do we accomplish this? We could just plant more fruit trees and peppermint, making a simple gesture to produce a token crop. But with a more studied approach, the trees and shrubs and perennials could serve purposes other than just food production. There is the weather to consider, and the feel of things. Plantings can move the wind around and away from buildings, direct water into the ground, rather than over and off it, temper the sounds of the streets and filter the dust that rises. There's more to all of this than just plunking a few trees down on the boulevard. There's got to be a design to it. The plants need to be looked at for all they can do, each one fit like a jazz musician into the band, each one giving a virtuoso performance of its own while "jamming" with the other elements. This approach is a science that carries many labels, among them, sustainable agriculture, edible landscaping, and the newest title, permaculture. The idea is to get the right plants (often natives to the climate) working together in the right spot, to produce the most food, while restoring some of the balance visible in forests and at their edges. Healthy rich absorptive soil, harbored beneficial insects and birds, quiet, and a sense of permanence are all evident in such places. These stable systems are filled with diversity and every species is to some degree interacting with every other. Here in the Pacific Northwest, Tilth, the regional association of organic growers, has compiled a book. The Future Is Abundant (see Resources), to guide us through designing such harmonious environments. They describe our region and those plants which hold the most promise for it. They teach us how to use trees, shrubs, and conventional crops integrated in ways that assure the continuity of the garden and the people who rely on it. —Carlotta Collette declining farmland, which is now reaching crisis proportions analogous to the energy situation 10 years ago. A 1981 report entitled the National Lands Study, undertaken by the USDA and the President's Council on Environmental Quality, found that the United States has been converting agricultural land to non-agricultural purposes at a rate of about three million acres per year, a third of which is prime agricultural land. Rapid population growth, economic instability and energy cost inflation have precipitated public concern that the United States might not be able to provide food, fiber and fuel for all its citizens. The key issue is more efficient use of the land for both productivity and permanence. Many of the trends identified nationally have their counterparts here in Oregon: fewer farms, larger-sized farms, fewer jobs, and declining water supplies. At the same time our as-yet- plentiful natural resources, the relative youth of our cities, and the environmental awareness demonstrated by Oregonians and the state legislature makes our situation a bit more hopeful. In 1975, 55 percent of the fresh produce sold in Oregon came from California—yet reduced water supplies, high erosion rates and urban sprawl make California's future food production capacity shaky at best. In the Bay area alone, a region which produces fully half as much as our entire state, 25 percent of the farmland has been lost to urban sprawl in the past 30 years. While Oregon cannot grow many crops year round, it has been suggested that we could grow much more and a greater variety than we do at present. "I think the Northwest is capable of producing 80 percent of the food we need here in the Northwest," states Margaret McCrea, a Portland area food distributor and owner of Garden Variety Produce. "In fact, I think by the year 2000 we could be exporting some of our food to California." Margaret has begun to share her vision of a regional food system with interested Portland area farmers, but it is these same family farm operations that are feeling the pinch the tightest. The Portland Tri-County area, containing 50 percent of the state's population, accounts for a majority of Oregon's small- to moderate-sized farms—especially those in the 70- to 90-acre range. In Multnomah County 50
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