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Steak or Dandelions?

© Bob Ewing

This article is the last (for the time being) in our look at food self-sufficency in the urban environment. Next week, we'll begin exploring individual food items and how they travel through the food production process. First up, is my all-time favourite comfort food, peanut butter.

The article's title "Steak or Dandelions" may seem silly but its intent is to draw our attention to our personal eating pattern with a particular focus on our ability to achieve food self-sufficency. If you want a steak for supper and don't have one in the refirgerator or freezer, you will have to travel to the supermarket or butcher and buy one. If you want a dandelion salad and some red clover tea, all you may have to do is step into your backyard and pick what you need. A herb and vegetable garden located near your kitchen door keeps fresh food right at hand all through the growing season. Or, if you are an organic gardener, and are interested in edible lawns, you could pick the dandelions right from your lawn. If you still use pesticides on your lawn and garden you may want to visit the Pesticide Action Network to consider some of the possible consequences. As all the plant is used, this will rid your lawn of what some people consider a weed, and keep your neighbours happy.

Dandelions are an excellent source of Vitamins A and C as well as being a good source of calcium and iron. In addition, they contain no fat and few calories.

Cattle, the source of beef cannot be raised in your urban backyard, but locally produced beef could be made available through a community shared agriculture venture. This way fresh beef would be delivered to your door or to a convenient pick up station.

Now, I'm not suggesting that people give up meat and start eating dandelions, just that they start to think about where the food they do eat comes from, and what is done to it before it reaches their mouths. Also I believe that urban agriculture is able to improve our food security as well as the quality and freshness of food that we eat while acting as a positive economic force.

We live at a time when our local supermarket contains foods from around the world and while this adds an interesting variety to our culinary life, we may want to look more often to our own backyard to produce the stables of our diet, so that we work to ensure a steady food supply that can be counted on, no matter what happens.

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