GROW FOOD, NOT LAWNS!

Today, 58 million Americans spend approximately $30 billion every year to maintain over 23 million acres of lawn. That’s an average of over a third of an acre and $517 each. The same size plot of land could still have a small lawn for recreation, plus produce all of the vegetables needed to feed a family of six. The lawns in the United States consume around 270 billion gallons of water a week—enough to water 81 million acres of organic vegetables, all summer long.

Lawns use ten times as many chemicals per acre as industrial farmland. These pesticides, fertilizers, and herbicides run off into our groundwater and evaporate into our air, causing widespread pollution and global warming, and greatly increasing our risk of cancer, heart disease, and birth defects.

Cities, as they currently are, are completely unsustainable. We can seriously limit our dependance on outside resources by converting our lawns and public space in to fruitfull gardens. Anywhere you want to put a plant, make it something edible. Hanging herbs, rasberry-covered fences, a fruit tree on the boulevard, edible house plants. Build a compost pile for your garden and kitchen waste, then use the finished product to fertalise your garden.

St. Pete Food Not Lawns is a loosely affiliated collective of grassroots gardeners promoting urban sustainability by encouraging and assisting in growing food. We apply environmental and anarchist principles including sustainability, reuse, low consumption, horizontal administration, mutual-aid, community, consensus decision making, and autonomy.