The Food Not Lawns movement is the topic of this week’s Foodie Underground feature article. It’s something I have thinking a lot about lately – our use, and misuse, of space. There is so much space out there that could go to growing food and building communities. Making your own urban garden might seem like a small thing, but it’s a gesture with a big impact. Imagine if every yard had a raised bed instead of just green space.

“As it turns out, we don’t need to all turn into full-scale farmers, but even just using a little bit of our space for growing food would provide great returns. In the United States, for the 85 million households with a private lawn, the average lawn size is about one-fifth of an acre. That amount of space can actually provide a fair amount of food, and imagine if you got only a handful of lawns production more food. If we grow food not lawns, the results can be bountiful. In Milwaukee, a 3-acre farm manages to feed 10,000 people a year. Some people say you can grow most of what you need on as little as one-tenth of an acre.

So why do we choose lawns instead of food? Because gardening takes time. Because Western culture has instructed us that a perfectly manicured green lawn is the sign of success. But in an era where we are more and more threatened by things like drought, rethinking our outdoor spaces and how we put them to use is of the utmost importance.”

Read the full article here.