I live in a relatively small city with plenty of trees on the sidewalks. They all have something in common: they are for the most part not fruit trees. I lived in other places too. And noticed the same thing. Most of the common places have "ornamental" plants, meaning chosen for looks and not to be useful.
And don't get me even started on the yards and lawns. Is is there anything more useless than grass? (we are not cows, you know?)
If we are going to start thinking how we can improve our relationship with the planet and our own health, that's a great place to start. Making our surrounding into food production areas so we don't need to keep taking space from nature to feed ourselves. I'm not talking about rows of mud. Edible landscaping can be very beautiful.
I know, I know... too much people to feed? Not enough space? I never said it was all contained, though maybe it could. But it's a start. Trees are pretty awesome, you have those bearing fruit, yes, but also for oil production, and for beans, to make baskets... (not to mention that they are temperature equalizers) can you imagine how much we could develop local industries if we had all sidewalks, parks, roads and train rails with edible/useful plants around?
Can you imagine how we could increase the general health if we had nature's first-aid kit right at our fingertips?
The main question is: why not? Why don't we do it? Why haven't we done it?
The answers I have received for these questions are:
it would attract wildlife.
it will hurt business.
You know what? If we consider there are people hungry in the world, and even more people eating junk with reduced access to healthy food, these are not strong enough reasons in my book.
Can we put priorities in the right place?
I think it's all it takes.
Thanks for reading. All comments are more than welcome. :)
Image: Photo by Maria Orlova from Pexels