This past Sunday, after a rather long break, Urban Hijau opened up its Farmer’s Market in the morning. Our team were a bit rusty in setting things up, and by the 9am start time, the market table was still somewhat a mess. We still had yet to finish our first round of harvesting and bundling of the usual set of staple greens. We slowly began to get a trickle of visitors. Normally, we would feel a sense of panic at our lack of preparation. Yet we instantly felt at ease seeing our first guests, who were all familiar faces, and they even assisted us in weighing the veggies and calculating their own orders as we sought to catch up with the pace of incoming customers. As we reflected back on the reopened market day, we realized with a sense of satisfaction that pretty much everyone who attended was a regular, and not just that, but someone from the close community.
We have always cherished the presence of community members from TTDI who visit our site, either to purchase their weekly produce, bring their children to experience Nature or volunteer their time to get their hands dirty. It is the sum value of their interactions on their farm, the social capital of their collective presence, that underscores how important an engaged nearby community is for an urban farm.
Community as an Invisible Structure
One of the more fascinating lessons is permaculture is the famous Chapter 14 in Bill Mollison’s permaculture guide book called Invisible Structures. This refers to the socioeconomic structures that must be in place for the ecological sites we are working on to actually thrive. They include tools such as local currencies, legal rulings of states and local councils and other intangible items that complement the physical structures on the site and facilitate the process of a sustained human presence on the land. Human systems must take their cue from natural systems to become resilient.
A key element is to be connected to the wider community in which your site is situated. Rather than take an isolationist view that you can build your farm and segregate yourself from you own neighbors, the permaculturist looks to integrate their system within the larger human matrix they are naturally a part of. This requires a sustained engagement with neighbors, fraternal relations with key community stakeholders and partnerships with local authorities. Community becomes an invaluable resource when we take this view.
Understanding Community Supported Agriculture
One of the more forward-thinking approaches to grassroots farming is called Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). Such a model looks to bring producers like urban farms and their nearby consumers into a more closer relationship. CSAs have run successfully in localities in North America, but historically before the industrial age, such models were considered the norm in much of what is called the developing world.
CSA involve some manner of cropsharing between producers and consumers, with consumers often subscribing to a weekly or monthly harvest. Consumers, in the spirit of wishing to support their local farmers’ efforts, agree to take on a certain risk that is part of the expected seeding and harvest cycle. Shares of the crop yield are often distributed among interested community members.
As policymakers look for different methods to boost urban farming production in Malaysia, one approach can be to explore methods similar to CSAs. Rather than be a dormant agent, communities in Malaysia such as TTDI can be the enabling mediums for urban farms to crop up and succeed. We have learned to value our TTDI community for their participation, and hope other urban farms can benefit in similar ways.