Urban farming taps our sense of creativity and flexibility

I love seeing articles like this Bloomberg piece on local food and urban homesteading.  And what caught my attention was how urban farming seems to tap into our inherent sense of creativity. One company is growing lettuce in recycled shipping containers. Cities are buying land for community gardens. Parking lots are being replaced by orchards.

Designer lettuce will soon bud under the flight path of the world’s busiest airport in Atlanta. An orchard is taking the place of a parking lot in Davenport, Iowa. And homeowners near downtown Denver are turning lawns over to farmers like Sundari Kraft, who plant, weed, water and harvest crops from their yards in return for a share of the bounty.

“People are sick and tired of mowing and fertilizing,” said Kraft, author of “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Urban Homesteading,” in an interview at her Denver home. “We have a stack of applications, enough to double what we do now.”

So what do you think is driving this? I think there are a myriad reasons but the most compelling for me, out of many, is the desire to have control over what I eat. Being able to harvest my own tomatoes and berries is not only an accomplishment, it tastes better than what I can get from the grocery store. Certainly this isn't purely out of economics because I put in quite a bit of my time into growing my veggies.

So what are your reasons for going local?