Victory Gardens
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New American Dreams
The American Agrarian Pastoral Dream of Jeffersonian times imagined self-sufficient farmers as the ideal American. The modern American dream we are familiar with today can be described as an American Suburban Dream of owning a home fully stocked with appliances, car, driveway, and a nuclear family. The suburban home has remnants of the previous Agrarian Pastoral Dream in that there are lands to be maintained, but now in the form of lawns. There is an opportunity h ere to convert these lawns into pixel farms. This will be the New American Dream, Version 2024.
Plants grown without the use of pesticides and fertilizers are still very productive. In the example of Masanobu Fukuoka, he understood plants as a system and was able to apply this knowledge to have the second most productive farm per square meter in Japan while only working one and a half hours per day. There is extra labor, and knowledge required for managing plants without the use of pesticides and fertilizers in the case of a lawn, but robots can be programed with this knowledge and reasonably manage the additional labor.
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The American Agrarian Pastoral Dream of Jeffersonian times imagined self-sufficient farmers as the ideal American. The modern American dream we are familiar with today can be described as an American Suburban Dream of owning a home fully stocked with appliances, car, driveway, and a nuclear family. The suburban home has remnants of the previous Agrarian Pastoral Dream in that there are lands to be maintained, but now in the form of lawns. There is an opportunity h ere to convert these lawns into pixel farms. This will be the New American Dream, Version 2024.
Plants grown without the use of pesticides and fertilizers are still very productive. In the example of Masanobu Fukuoka, he understood plants as a system and was able to apply this knowledge to have the second most productive farm per square meter in Japan while only working one and a half hours per day. There is extra labor, and knowledge required for managing plants without the use of pesticides and fertilizers in the case of a lawn, but robots can be programed with this knowledge and reasonably manage the additional labor.
Why Pixel Farms?
Turning lawns into pixel farms has implications for supply chains, fertilizer runoffs, and pesticide use. Turning lawns into pixel farms also has the advantage of providing a form of subsistence and income, contributing to biodiverse environments, and contributing to fresh produce in food desert communities.
The current spatial configuration of cities consists of cities at the core surrounded by suburbs with agriculture at the periphery. A drawback of this is the suburban sprawl pushes the agricultural periphery further from the distribution points in the city centers. A suburb can be sixfold denser and this pushes the agricultural supply chains out sixfold when traversing these regions. By bringing some of that agriculture closer to the city centers and into the suburbs, the supply chains reduce, and increased distribution points provide opportunities for fresh produce to be distributed to food deserts.
The current deployment of Pixel Farm robots is very prescribed in their use of pesticides and fertilizers. These chemicals and substances runoff farms and impact the oceans. Through prescribed use, the quantities of these runoffs can be reduced.
There is also a theoretical potential use that these robots can behave and manage as part of an open system. Plants are productive regardless of and even despite pesticide use and fertilizers. Many of the suburban lawn weeds are essentially remnants of the first American Agrarian Pastoral dreams. They consist of ground cover, cattle feed, or crops themselves.
Turning lawns into pixel farms has implications for supply chains, fertilizer runoffs, and pesticide use. Turning lawns into pixel farms also has the advantage of providing a form of subsistence and income, contributing to biodiverse environments, and contributing to fresh produce in food desert communities.
The current spatial configuration of cities consists of cities at the core surrounded by suburbs with agriculture at the periphery. A drawback of this is the suburban sprawl pushes the agricultural periphery further from the distribution points in the city centers. A suburb can be sixfold denser and this pushes the agricultural supply chains out sixfold when traversing these regions. By bringing some of that agriculture closer to the city centers and into the suburbs, the supply chains reduce, and increased distribution points provide opportunities for fresh produce to be distributed to food deserts.
The current deployment of Pixel Farm robots is very prescribed in their use of pesticides and fertilizers. These chemicals and substances runoff farms and impact the oceans. Through prescribed use, the quantities of these runoffs can be reduced.
There is also a theoretical potential use that these robots can behave and manage as part of an open system. Plants are productive regardless of and even despite pesticide use and fertilizers. Many of the suburban lawn weeds are essentially remnants of the first American Agrarian Pastoral dreams. They consist of ground cover, cattle feed, or crops themselves.
With pixel farms, a homeowner can order salad on Friday and the harvesting robot will collect the produce and deliver it to the outdoor refrigerator right from the backyard. The homeowner can order a lot of salad if he is expecting a party. The excess produce is shipped off into a pooled distribution that sells the produce or distributes it to a food desert community. Even this latter option can have fiscal implications as they can potentially be used as tax write-offs.
What Does it Mean?
When surrounded by crops and robots, it would be advisable to have a metal house. Fire would spread more readily, but a metal house with a regulating system would provide a measure to preserve the residence. A case study would be the recent fire in Hawaii and the sole metal roof “miracle” house that survived in Lahaina.
There would be chicken coops on site or delivered via robots to have closed loop land management so that fertilizer use can be avoided. Outdoor refrigerators to store robot deliveries will also be an implication of such a new environment.