Farming without a farm: City dwellers falling for everything from backyard chicken coups to dairy cow leases
Edmonton Journal
For most city dwellers, the term "urban farmer" is likely to conjure up images of Paris Hilton slogging through manure while wearing Manolo Blahniks on The Simple Life. But to contemporary hipsters, urban farming is the latest way to marry the rural idyll with big city living.
Chic Britons are raising suburban hens in designer backyard coops. Swiss urbanites are enjoying double-cream Brie from privately leased cows. Metropolitan Americans are renting everything from beehives to maple trees, and Canadians are growing organic goodies on highrise rooftops.
It's farming, without the farm. And a new global trend report shows it's top-of-mind with savvy marketers.
"There's definitely a need to reconnect with pure products, pure processes," says Reinier Evers, marketing strategist and founder of Springwise.com. "This is not to say we all want to 'go back to nature.' It's more like adding a touch of the real world to our increasingly technological, manufactured lives."
Urban farming tops a colourful list of business concepts in Springwise's May marketing report, with sightings of the trend spanning the globe.
Internet company Kuhleasing.ch, for example, lets consumers rent a Swiss cow for a year, during which time they receive between 60 and 120 kilograms of cheese made from the animal's milk. Customers are expected to work at least one day in the company's alpine meadows before collecting their bounty in the fall, all at a cost of about $400 Cdn.
Similarly, the Massachusetts-based business Rent Mother Nature allows urbanites to rent everything from beehives to fruit trees, lobster traps to sheep, complete with lease certificate and regular progress reports. When the harvest is complete, the bounty of the customer's leased animal, tree or trap is delivered right to their door.
"Everything that's special, different (or) authentic these days begets you status," says Evers. "And what could be more interesting than to casually mention to friends and guests that the eggs, wine, beef or cheese you're serving are homemade?"
Because livestock-rearing is prohibited in most of Canada's major cities, however, Canucks are limited in how far they can take urban farming.
"It's amazing what kind of culture we have where you see dog treat stores, dog bakeries, dog day cares and dog beaches, but then we outlaw productive animals, like having a few chickens to lay your eggs," says Michael Levenston, executive director of Vancouver-based City Farmer, which styles itself "Canada's office of urban agriculture."
But according to Debi Andrus, associate professor of marketing at the University of Calgary, growth in Canada's urban agriculture scene has been "phenomenal," despite the red tape.
"In terms of marketing opportunities, this just keeps spreading. Yes, we want convenience. But we also want quality of life," Andrus says.
The most popular manifestation of the trend is the home- or apartment-based garden. An Ipsos-Reid poll indicates between 40 and 44 per cent of Vancouver and Toronto residents produce at least some of their own vegetables, fruit, berries, nuts or herbs.
Andrus credits the pastime's popularity to Canadians' desire to be healthy, enjoy a sense of accomplishment and contribute to the urban esthetic. It's having a real reason to be outside, she says, beyond "just sitting on your deck suntanning."
Levenston says the practice's appeal is growing fast.
"A lot of this stuff comes down to fashion and what you can get people excited about," says Levenston, pointing to Omlet's suburban "eglu" as one successful example. The 21st century henhouse, sold throughout the U.K., has gained widespread interest for its iMac-like contours and unlikely urban charm.
"What's really going to sell people on (urban farming) is the pleasure of it rather than the need to do it."