As a person working broadly in food production and more specifically in food sovereignty as well as just a person living in the throes of the times, I am always trying to think of ways to make my life a little more ecological. Especially so outside the confines of the food and broader systems of exploitation and abuse that are the main contributors to so many problems we are facing. Living with an intentional consciousness of the layers to what ecology can mean, is difficult and takes a lot of patience that I am trying to build into my life more and more. I want to share a few of the ways I’ve cooked up to live a little more ecologically in a quasi-urban environment. (A side note/caveat to each of these, is that I'm functioning under the assumption that you will do good faith research and due diligence before implementing and practicing these things!)
Convert mis/unused landscape to native ecosystems with seed bombs and transplants. This one is pretty straightforward. You can buy native seed mixes and seed bombs pretty easily. Check your local plant nurseries for native mixes and learn native plants and ecosystems. Take your time with this but also don’t be too afraid to make mistakes.Making your own seed bombs is also pretty easy, there’s even youtube videos of the legend Masanobu Fukuoka making some. Native plants also very often need assistance in germination and resources so I find it’s better to grow seedlings for certain species. I also essentially use the principles of guerrilla gardening to get this done. Whenever I see an empty lot or unused yard space, I make mental notes and keep tabs on it. You can also use native seed mixes to remediate urban spaces over time, even for agricultural use! Native food forests are more than possible, but it’s also 1000% not about what land can do for humans. Here’s a really cool seed bomb company tyring to help the auspicious Monarch butterfly: https://www.globalwarriorproject.com/product-page/50-pollinator-seed-bombs
Find a Community Supported Agriculture program to support. CSA programs are sincerely one of the best ways I have seen to get people ethically and locally grown food. There’s a variety of applications and cooption by bad faith actors so you definitely have to do your research but a good CSA will change your relationship with food. For example, the one I use grows the majority of its food and animal products as well as offering local craft food goods, creating a localized network of natural food. Whatever fruit and vegetable needs my CSA can’t provide on its own land, it partners with local farms to get. No food travels over 100 miles. Some CSAs even offer community gardening space. CSAs are also usually surprisingly affordable. I get 50 pounds of amazing groceries for under $40! Search for a local one here: https://www.localharvest.org/csa/
Be conscious of water use. Reusing, capturing, limiting. There are many ways to design conscious water use into your life. At home for example, I reuse pasta water, the water from steamed vegetables, water from friends' fish tanks, and some of the water my family uses in the sink, in my garden and compost setups. It would also be ideal to have a greywater system and even fancier could be black and brown water reclamation systems. Look up ways you can integrate these! In your yard, rain collection is the name of the mfing game. Setting up barrel systems is really easy and you can find really cheap setups for sale or free online. More advanced techniques would be integrating water features like ponds, swales, chinampas, or hydroponics/aquaponics. The easiest way I’ve found to get barrels and other irrigation materials specifically are online marketplaces (more below in number 12).
Raise microlivestock for grazing and product. Poultry, rodent, iguana. Mirror local ecology as much as possible. This is my favorite change in urban ecology that I have thought of, and it serves many purposes. It is assuredly the most involved and requires more than a few changes in how we engage with urban spaces. It is also the one that could be the most rewarding. Raising animals for product is very multi-layered and what you choose really all leans on what you want to get out of your relationship with the animals. Using microlivestock in rotational grazing systems will be very dynamic in integrating urban landscapes into robust and productive ecologies. There are many ways to implement this and even monetize it. Raising and grazing microlivestock in urban space offers the same benefits rotational grazing does in larger scale farm operations. To list a few, land management, weed management, free fertilization, attracting good microbes, carbon sequestration, free feed and forage, and improved soil health. There is much complexity here but these benefits confront many problems that are destroying the ecologies of urban dwellings. For example, if you want to raise microlivestock in an apartment setting and you think rabbits are your best option you could set up cages or a colony, shepherd them into grazing converted lawn space with fencing, and cull in cycles for meat. Another example could be, you choose to raise a few sheep in your suburban backyard, you get your neighbors to stop using chemical fertilizers and graze them through your block, and then on top of all that you get meat, wool, milk, etc. Some laws and HOA guidelines must be broken. Best practices for raising livestock take a lot of consideration and care, but we must think of multi-faceted solutions like this to overcome the many crises we are facing.
Native pollinator support. Bee hotels, water features, not honeybees. A very fun DIY project. “Save the Bees” as a movement is harmful and reductive! Centering honeybees as the pollinators to save is messed up on a ton of levels. We don’t need something to be human centric for it to be valuable. The honeybee industrial complex is destroying our ecological understanding as well as literal ecosystems (see: Almond farming is killing American bees & more). So to help out our native pollinators who have been holding it down since before we descended from the trees, people can easily integrate things like bee hotels and pollinator landscape features. A lot of native pollinators don’t have hives to go back to and are solitary. It is really easy to make bee hotels from reclaimed materials, and you can get as creative as you want! This subject is really a whole rabbit hole. Most recently, I have used cinder blocks, reclaimed industrial wood, and wood from tree cuttings to make some hotels for my rooftop container garden. Here is an article that gives some ideas for the shape as well as lists bee species native to California, here is another. You can also help out any pollinators by adding a water station to your home and local landscapes! Native pollinators are so fricking cute.
Culture native microbes. The most complex option that I will give the least detail on, because it will take the most independent research. Depending on where you live this may be pretty difficult, but it is easy once you understand the process. To culture indigenous microorganisms, good fungus, etc., you can use recipes from anywhere you want but Korean Natural Farming (this links to quick guides and a brief explainer on KNF) and JADAM (another organic farming method that has some juicy recipes) have the best ways of accomplishing this in my opinion. Get ready for an adventure in smelly smells that smell smelly. I collect my samples from as wild and thriving areas as I can manage. Ideally these areas mirror the ecology of the landscape you’re working with and are as local as possible. Contact me if you need help brainstorming.
Create organizational ecologies by working with local business and commerce. Manure, mulch, materials, manpower. Boots on the ground work. Where you have a need or something to offer, try to utilize your locality. For example, I wanted manure for my compost and partnered with a local rabbit rescue to take its waste. With the straw and manure I have been able to make compost, mulch, and mushroom substrate. Through working with local plant nurseries, I have been able to network and get tons of free gardening materials, knowledge, and keyed into local ecological issues. Insofar as developing robust social ecology, find local mutual aid groups, indigenous groups, unions to join, political groups, etc. Finding local mutual aid is usually as easy as searching your city’s name and mutual aid e.g. “College Station mutual aid”. Here’s a cool website to see some of the tribal land you may be occupying: https://native-land.ca/ Be creative in dissecting areas of need and be humble in pursuing them.
Start a compost system in your dwelling. Composting is such an easy way to upcycle your waste. Every housing area should have its own compost setup. Starting a compost setup can be as simple as just making a pile on your lawn or as complicated as talking to your apartment management company. Again you may come to friction with your HOA or whatever but, worth it. My setup at home is two 40 gallon moving boxes that I drilled holes in and then used to make compost lasagna forevermore. I use an old protein container for in-home convenience, and then dump that periodically into a food-safe 5-gallon bucket until it’s full. This is usually a month-long process where I am left with enough finished compost for all my needs (I still haven't found an easy way to sift lol). This is also a situation where your networking efforts can come in. You can get coffee grounds from local shops, hair from salons, grass clippings from your neighbors, there’s so many ways! Especially in a multi-unit dwelling like an apartment complex, composting is an opportunity for so much organizing and education. It is truly a proverbial gateway drug. I found a simple guide: https://www.mindbodygreen.com/articles/how-to-start-composting.
Figure out seasonal and local forage. Foraging is sincerely one of the most fun hobbies I have been able to engage in. It feeds so many parts of the human experience, not to mention literally feeding you. Learning what and how to forage really takes having a finger on the pulse of your locality. Especially in urban settings, foraging is not for the faint of heart. Once you start creating an understanding for foraging, everywhere starts to feel like a buffet! The best way to learn in my experience is to find a mentor local to you. My foraging journey started with joining the Arizona Mushroom Society and finding lobster mushrooms in Flagstaff. Then I downloaded a plant ID app, started to cross-reference on hikes, and then would carry in bags to collect whatever I could. Foraging in Los Angeles has a sadly austere scene but there are some wonderful people doing really cool work. Even beyond hiking there is so much urban forage. Peruvian pepper trees are everywhere, loquat season is bountiful, and salad greens abound. The Midwest surprisingly has a really cool foraging scene. Every area is its own garden of Eden with its own divine edicts. This chart by the natural farming legend Masanobu Fukuoka is a good illustration of how foraging can start to align a person with the natural world.
Scale degrowth where you can. From the personal to whatever scale is manageable. To me, degrowth is the only sensible ecological ethic. We cannot focus on modalities of economic growth any longer. Green growth is harmful. I am not pushing any Malthusian myths here, I think it is completely possible and necessary to guarantee the human rights of every person on the planet. The global north/western world needs to scale down its extraction of world resources full stop. Advocating for degrowth as Americans is one of the most powerful things we can do. It took Rome 1000 years to fall, maybe we can speed up that timeline in America ;). In a similar vein, greenwashing is becoming all too common and nefariously centered in most environmental conversations, even among activists. Movements like save the bees or save the trees package ecological issues in nice little boxes that are reductive and actively harmful. Alternative energies, alternative products, alternative lifestyles under exploitative systems have consequences we are not realistically confronting. And despite the name, degrowth doesn't have to mean a worse life. I think of it as an exercise like bonsai. There are many luxuries upholding our everyday life that we would genuinely be better off without! Analyzing those and learning from people who are more than happy with much less are the only ways we can transition into a substantial material life that is also truly meaningful.
Engage in robust social ecology. These last few items in my listicle are more ideological and harder to nail down but no less important to practice in creating an intentional life. Social ecology is a transformative way of viewing environmental issues as social issues. It asserts that humans are not the solution or the problem, but many things all at once. There is much theory and many wonderful thinkers that create the mosaic that is social ecology, further there are lived communities putting the principles into practice. Places like the Kurdish autonomous network in Northern Syria, Rojava. This project seeks to center liberation in a region filled with many intersections of strife. Through directly-democratic institutions Rojava has been able to achieve many wonderful things. I urge you to look into Rojava extensively to see how you can engage with social ecology in your life. Another community that gives much in the way of seeing how one can practice and implement principles of social ecology is the Zapatista community in Southern Mexico. In the context of American life, implementing social ecology is no less complicated because our hierarchies are so defined and dominating at a macro level. My own answer has amounted to community building with good faith and good will organizations and people. It has also been important for me to start with a ground-up approach focusing on actions that are as direct as possible. It is very easy to get lost in the bureaucratic sauce. Nonprofits and their ilk are set up to be thunder rods for revolutionary energy. We can look to the past in programs like the Black Panther Free Breakfast to be inspired in how to be constructively subversive today. As well as how the government fights threats to its power. Recently, mutual aid groups, as mentioned above, have been the most dynamic and frontline in events like the PNW Heatwave of 2021, the Texas Freeze, and so on. Integrating robust social ecology into our lives is multifaceted and multi-dimensional. I really added this item to emphasize number 7 in a different light. You can use petit bourgeois organizations to your advantage in making a more diverse material ecology but that should ultimately be worked into your understanding of the web of your own social ecology. Cultivate a community spirit! Bake for your neighbors, go to local events and talk to people, find local mentors and teach others what you can. Do not let anyone convince you voting is the ultimate political action.
Engage in local gift economies like Buy Nothing. This last one will be short but I just want to put on projects like Buy Nothing. Find your local and never let go! The first I ever heard of a gift economy was in researching Burning Man as a young teenager, then it felt like a detached and radical concept. I never imagined gift economies being integrated into everyday American communities. What Buy Nothing has been able to achieve is truly amazing. I have gotten so many wonderful things from my Buy Nothing local and met many wonderful people. Another way I find free material goods is through OfferUp and Facebook Marketplace, where the right search settings can find many things. I think now, I see how gift economics are the undercurrent of every good human relationship because they only exist through a willingness to share and that is always an act of love.
holy shit it’s finally happening! I’m so excited for the words to come here
also sincerely thank you - this helped suck me out of the doom of another article from this morning :’)
Yeah hopefully I post with some regularity, I really like the free form nature of substack