Should Sacramento allow you to sell the surplus fruits and vegetable produce from your backyard? Oakland just gave people the legal right to sell produce grown in their Oakland backyards--within the city. See the October 9, 2011 Sacramento Bee article, "Should Oakland's backyard farmers raise and kill animals for food," and the October 6, Sacramento Bee article, "Oakland OKs sale of backyard produce."
Sacramento could pass a law to allow people to do the same. The only problem is that people in Sacramento would start to raise animals such as poultry and rabbits in their backyard for meat, then slaughter it, and a lot of people don't like the idea of killing animals on your property because of the moral issues, the threat of disease, and the abuse of animals that are going to be eaten.
The law in Sacramento doesn't permit you to raise animals such as rabbits, slaughter them, and sell their meat from your backyard. Meat processing is strictly controlled in Sacramento and Oakland.
Yesterday, the City Council in Oakland voted Tuesday to change the definition of home-based businesses to include produce cultivated outdoors. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the city previously required such businesses to be indoors.
How do you feel about Sacramento voting on a bill the change the definition of home-based business to include selling your produce--just fruits and vegetables--within the city, for example, at farmers' markets or just from your backyard to anyone who comes to your house to buy produce?
You see sometimes in Sacramento a sign on some peoples' lawns saying "lemons--25 cents each." But go a block away to a supermarket and you see lemons costing up to a dollar each, if organic, for example. But actually you're not allowed within the city to sell your produce. When you go into rural areas, often there will be signs along farms selling strawberries.
What such a change would do in Sacramento is to let you turn your big backyard into a min-farm. In Oakland, it's now legal to sell produce from your backyard, within the city limits. For those who are on tight food budgets, it lets you sell the excess vegetables and fruits.
On the other hand, if a law in Sacramento forbids selling it, you might be doing more of a good deed giving the excess produce away to the food banks that distribute free food to very needy families who can use some extra fresh fruit and vegetables they could not afford otherwise besides the usual donated food of bread, cold cereals and canned or dried beans they get from food banks.
The change comes as welcome news to those who have turned their yards into mini-farms. So-called urban farmers prefer to grow the food they consume. If you look at it one way, with a backyard to cultivate, the surplus could put some money in your pocket. Mini-farms in urban areas such as Oakland or should such a law ever come to Sacramento in the future, would not not cover farmers whose operations are so big they need a tractor.
Cooperatives that sell produce boxes, people who grow on vacant lots and animal farming is also not covered. There's only one problem if such a bill would ever be passed in Sacramento as it has been in Oakland: It's easy to use the new Sacramento law that you can raise up to three backyard chickens and extend it to selling either eggs or meat, which is not allowed in Sacramento. Also see, UC Davis to study poverty's causes, effects with grant.
One way to help fight poverty is to allow people with big backyards in Sacramento to sell the vegetables and fruit they can grow in their backyard. On the other hand, there isn't any way to inspect the produce to see whether it's contaminated with bacteria or not or whether the ground under the person's house is full of toxic waste such as rocket fuel from decades ago, or any other issues.
Then again, it's a back to the land movement, where produce normally given away free to neighbors or donated to shelters and food banks or church pantries would be sold for money, and there are a lot of poor people who need better food who won't be getting the excess produce donations if people are allowed to sell what they grow to the public instead of donating it to charitable services. But what do you do when you need the money? That's the question.
Should Sacramento allow people to sell what they grow in their backyard to the public? Or should they only be allowed to donate it to church pantries and food banks or similar charitable organizations?
Can Sacramento be compared to Oakland? The City Council last week rewrote its 46-year-old zoning code to officially allow residents of Oakland to sell the fruits and vegetables they grow at home. Currently city officials are in the process of drafting new rules on just how big urban farms can get, when and where they can sell their produce and – most controversially – whether residents can raise and kill animals for food.
Sacramento as well as Oakland have urban agriculture movements. You might check out the book, Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer, by Novella Carpenter - Penguin Group USA, Inc (2010.05.25) - paperback - 276 pages. The movement is called "urban agriculture." Can Oakland be a "test case" for what also would work in Sacramento? In fact, you can read doctoral theses on urban agriculture in the UC Berkeley Library.
When it comes to Sacramento as well as Oakland, you, the consumer need to address the problem of animal slaughter in your neighbor's back yard--the smell, disease, and bacteria. You don't want people neglecting or abusing chickens or rabbits such as forgetting to feed them. Lots of people forget to water their plants, since the cost of water is rising in Sacramento.
Two months ago the Sacramento City Council passed a law letting Sacramentans care for up to three egg-laying hens, but those may not be slaughtered. San Francisco in April made it legal to grow and sell produce at home, but the city didn't touch the question of animals. So how do you feel?
Should meat be slaughtered in Sacramento backyards for personal use and never for sale? But that wouldn't stop neighbors from sharing the meat. It's a problem. And it's being opposed by many animal-welfare activists. The issue is ripe for debate.
Do you want people in Sacramento or in Oakland to raise meat for personal use? The county, state and federal rules govern meat processing. Yet the prospect of "backyard slaughter," as animal-welfare activists call it, has stirred up debate.
Will selling rather than sharing backyard produce shrink your carbon footprint in Sacramento or Oakland? Would it bring healthier food to poor neighborhoods? Or is it more likely to bring back the illegal "cockfights" with poultry or even rabbit fighting?
You could check with the Oakland Food Policy Council. Local food sources are welcome if they contribute to sustainability. Would small dogs be bred only to be eaten by those used to this custom? How about backyard guinea pigs bred only to be killed in the yard and eaten? Guinea pigs are a common food source in Latin America, and are cooked in the same way rabbits are cooked in other areas of the world.
You might check out the group, Neighbors Opposed to Backyard Slaughter, which is mentioned in the Sacramento Bee article, "Should Oakland's backyard farmers raise and kill animals for food." This issues with urban farmers would include ignorance and inexperience leads to animal suffering. Are you in Sacramento opposed to backyard slaughter of animals such as chickens, rabbits, guinea pigs, or iguanas, for example?
Animals such as guinea pigs and iguanas frequently are served in restaurants in other countries such as Latin America. How do you feel about people who keep fish in their backyard ponds and then eat some species of backyard-pond-kept fish such as carp?
Should Sacramento be a do-it-yourself city where people grow and sell produce at home? Or will it eventually turn into animal breeding for food at home? This issue is what Oakland faces. Will similar issues move to Sacramento soon? You also could check out the book, What can we do?: a food, land, hunger action guide [Book].
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