Vegetable Gardens Take Root in San Francisco

Spurred by the Locavore movement, neighborhood groups and the private sector recreate victory gardens from the Second World War.

On a sunny November day in 2007, Trevor Paque observed San Francisco from a hilltop when he had a revelation. “The energy spent to transport food to urban centers is greater than the energetic value of the consumed products,” he said. “Why not make food that’s closer to its consumers?”

Without any other experience except a childhood passion for gardening and his volunteer work in gardens around the Berkeley area, the former mortgage broker launched his business of decentralizes farms last May, “MyFarm.”

With the help of 10 employees, he has installed over 70 private vegetable gardens around San Francisco at a rate of one to two thousand dollars depending on the property. Each one grows at least three cartons of fresh products, one of which is reserved for the owner. The others are divided among baskets sold to participating clients in the immediate neighborhood. For between 25 to 35 dollars, a basket can feed two adults for a week. Trevor Paque claims to have received thousands of requests throughout the country and from abroad, including Glasgow, London, Cologne and Le Cap.

Resuscitating an Art

At around thirty years old, Trevor Paque belongs to a new generation of young California entrepreneurs dedicated to reviving the “victory gardens,” cultivated during the Second World War under the implosion of the government. The San Francisco area has a rich culinary tradition anchored in farmer’s markets, a land privileged to bring back the tastes of the day.

“The vegetable garden has become a lost art over the last few decades,” Jeremy Oldfield, the co-founder of Freelance Farmers, emphasized. “But we actually feel a palpable desire from a public that wants to have a more intimate relationship with their food.”

The California phenomenon of urban vegetable gardens launched from its roots in the history of Alice Waters, who launched a famous organic restaurant in Berkeley, Chez Panisse, in 1971. Recently, the Association of Locavores created a challenge in 2005 to see if its members could subsist exclusively on products grown in less than 100 Kilometers of San Francisco, while the work “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” from “New York Times” journalist Michael Pollan, a Berkeley resident, gave his seal of approval to local products in 2006.

Simultaneously, the scope of public debate on climate change and the recent rise in food prices have contributed to a realization of consumer and public powers. Last summer, the mayor of San Francisco proudly displayed a symbolic victory garden on the occasion of the gustative festival Slow Food Nation.

“We’ve been trying to increase regular participation in our studios for a few months,” asserts Blair Randall, director of Garden for the Environment. Located on a 2,000 meters square in the heart of San Francisco, the association has followed its educational mission on organic culture since 1990, including the creation of compost and raising chickens in an urban milieu. “Our students come from everywhere and from all age groups. We teach others to become ambassadors of organic culture in their towns,” Blair Randall adds.

Garden for the Environment benefited last year from a subsidy of 60,000 dollars to convert some chosen gardens into vegetable ones. Out of 300 files for application, 15 have been reserved and realized.

“Urban agriculture interests us more as a deed because it responds to several priorities; political, environmental, the fight against malnutrition and disadvantaged populations, a strategy to survive in case of natural catastrophe and urban planning,” explains David Pascal, head of the town’s green economy.

But new subsidies are slow to materialize, given the budgetary crisis.

From Our Correspondent in San Francisco