At the Sedona City Council Priority Retreat on January 18, city officials presented interim proposals to increase food security in Sedona.

“We want to work on developing a food security strategy for our community,” said recently retired city sustainability coordinator Alicia Peck. “This can be as robust as having a plan in case you have to evacuate. How are you going to feed everyone? You can start in stages [producers] Sell ​​at farmers markets or ensure a steady supply of fresh produce in your food pantry. These are things you want to explore with your partner.

“Potential partners for this are the Sedona Greenhouse Project, Healthy World Sedona. [and the] Verde Valley Food Policy Forum.

Peck’s remarks echo those of 2022 City Council candidate Jennifer Strait, who called the Sedona Greenhouse Project “Change the Dell or [a] Similar properties for both food forests and greenhouses.What if residents ate nutritious fresh food that wasn’t trucked in? [from thousands of] Are you miles away and lose your vigor?

Sedona was a farming community in the first century of its existence.Both the city government and private organizations have recently emphasized the need to diversify the city’s tourism-based economy. can be re-incorporated?

Sedona Greenhouse Project

Timothy William “Shams” Teh, founder of the Sedona Greenhouse Project, believes he and his collaborators can help answer that question.

“In our community, local food was not reaching people’s tables, so we had to create a new system,” says Teh.

SGP organizes volunteers to grow food in backyards and private gardens “to give our communities direct access to local produce.” They now manage five of his gardens in Sedona and Cornville and partner only with “landowners who want to grow food without the use of harmful chemicals.” Mr Teh said he hopes to cultivate a total of 30 acres in the next few years.

“We want to partner up and take advantage of land in the city that normally sits dormant,” Teh commented, noting that SGP will bring a team of educated and dedicated people to work feeding Sedona. pointed out that it can lead to

Over the past two years, the SGP has harvested approximately 1,400 pounds of food. More than £10,000 is expected for volunteer participation this year.

SGP agricultural technology focuses above all on soil preparation.

“Creating organic matter is a major part of our farming techniques, especially when dealing with native virgin soil that has never been farmed before,” says Teh. “By creating soil, we are actually building the future so that the next generation can produce food for their families.”

“Our farming style is consistent with advanced desert farming techniques that are biodynamic and multicultural,” continued Teh. “We also incorporate water harvesting and mulch basins to reduce water usage and utilize all runoff to feed crops and fruit trees…we have perennial crops, native Plant seeds, fruit trees and establish deep roots that help soil store more carbon…keep it local [also] Reduces consumption of resources used in trucks and transportation. ”

SGP also utilizes passage and companion plantings.

The city of Sedona now includes the term “sustainability” in official documents as a matter of course, but Tae says that all sustainability is about food sovereignty, meaning that individuals control their own food production and argued that it begins with the concept that food should be produced and consumed locally. Food production should be tailored to people and the environment, not to economic needs.

“We can live without electricity. It may not be comfortable, but we cannot live without food and water,” says Teh. “Is this town sustainable even with food shortages?”

The City of Sedona website makes no mention of “food sovereignty” in any searchable city document, including the Climate Action Plan.

food forest

Teh is forest garden He described this as the process of building a “food forest.”

Creating a food forest starts with digging trenches that match the topography. These trenches were filled with organic matter such as hay and wood chips, inoculated with mycorrhizal and mycelial fungal cultures, and finished with a compost-earth mixture to create berms two feet above the ground. You can Drip irrigation, flood irrigation and overhead watering can be used.

After arranging and irrigating the balms, plant the fruit trees and upper legumes first. These are followed by cover crops such as alfalfa, clover, fescue, cowpea and astragalus.

“As soon as the cover crops grow two feet tall and begin to flower, lay down the underlayers of the crops you want, such as figs, pomegranates, berries, and grapes,” Teh advised. It’s a good plant for the second story in the forest.”

This stage will require continued pruning and mulching, and reseeding as needed. can be included.

Sedona roots

Meredith Hartwell of the Southwest Center for Biological Sciences writes, “Agriculture was plentiful, fruitful, and certainly widespread, especially around Flagstaff, Sedona, and Williams.” Coconino County Agricultural History Research“With current knowledge of sustainable agriculture and key factors such as irrigation and soil preparation practices, many of the problems facing farmers at the time would now be mitigated.”

“Sedona’s early settlers, like Flagstaff, had an emphasis on subsistence farming,” Hartwell explained. “Agricultural products were often grown among young fruit trees before the trees reached maturity. With regular rainfall and sufficient ‘living’ water in the house, water was supplied in reservoirs. He also had a garden where you can sow tracks.Many residents and farmers [or a few dozen] Chickens and turkeys provided eggs, meat and manure for their gardens. Market His gardeners set up sales outlets in downtown Flagstaff and stores in Sedona, with farmers in both locations supplying a variety of vegetables for residents to purchase. When little rain fell and farmers’ dry crops failed, they sometimes found financial success in their “backyard” efforts. ”

By the 1920s, thousands of fruit trees had been planted in Sedona. In the Jordan family alone he had an orchard with 1,500 trees, of which his 600 were peach trees. Frank Pendry grew his more than 800 apple trees along the Oak Creek. Common Sedona vegetables during this time included beets, carrots, lettuce, cabbage, beans, sweet corn, tomatoes, cucumbers, and squash.

From the 1930s to the 1950s, Hartwell says, “fruit and vegetable farming in Sedona was prolific and successful.” In 1953, the Coconino County Agricultural Extension Department recorded his cultivating 150 acres around Sedona and Oak Creek.

The 1930 Extension Service reported that the Oak Creek Canyon area could produce 50,000 boxes of fruit in one growing season, equivalent to about 2 million pounds of fruit, depending on the type of fruit (peaches). It is estimated that it can provide 300-400 million calories. Less nutritious than apples.

By 1960, Sedona’s agricultural history had been eradicated. The expansion of national highways and the discovery of new aquifers beneath grasshopper flats that could supply water for development made orchard sales and subdivisions more profitable than farming.

The city’s population increased from 350 in 1950 to 2,022 in 1970, 5,368 in 1980, and 7,720 in 1990.

In 2017, the City of Sedona reported just 18 jobs in agribusiness.

in cultivation

How much land do you need to feed Sedona?

Masanobu Fukuoka, a Japanese agronomist, spent 30 years developing the concept of ‘do nothing’ or ‘no tillage’ agriculture.

“I was aiming for a comfortable and natural way of farming that would make the job easier, not harder,” Fukuoka wrote. “One straw revolution” “In the end, we came to the conclusion that we didn’t need tilling, fertilizing, fertilizing, composting, or pesticides.”

Fukuoka also refused to weed or prune, repurposed straw from crops into the fields, and allowed chickens to roam among the plantings. He found that these methods increased both soil fertility and topsoil formation rate.

Using passaged and complementary plantings including rice, barley and clover, Fukuoka achieved a yield of 22 bushels from a quarter acre of land. In his citrus orchard, he used a layered approach of fixing nitrogen with acacia trees, covering the ground with weeds and clover, and vegetables underneath to provide additional aeration and nutrients.

“If the farmers who live in this village only eat what they can grow and collect here, then you can’t go wrong,” Fukuoka summed up. “If 22 bushels [1,300 pounds] If 22 bushels of rice and 22 bushels of winter grain were harvested from such a quarter acre field, the field would feed 5 to 10 people, each working an average of less than an hour per day. to invest But when fields are converted to grazing or grain is fed to cattle, it can only feed one person per quarter of an acre. ”

The non-profit Ecology Action estimates that “one person’s perfectly balanced diet can be grown on about 4,000 square feet,” but the organization does not use dense plants, compost, external fertilizers, and tillage. We promote “bio-intensive” cultivation methods on which we rely heavily. resource and workforce needs.

Applying Ecology Action’s estimate of 4,000 square feet of farmland per person, Sedona’s population of 9,684 would need about 900 acres of crops to ensure food sovereignty. Using Fukuoka’s estimate of 5 people per quarter acre suggests that about 500 acres of land would be required.

Sedona is approximately 19 square miles (12,160 acres). 49% of the area is national forest, which reduces the total amount of land available for private or municipal use to about 6,000 acres. Therefore, the amount of land required to support Sedona’s current population is between 8% and 15% of the total non-federal area of ​​the city.

With food security, food sovereignty, and sustainability dependent on access to land, and with little agricultural land in Sedona, achieving these goals requires either returning residential and commercial space to agricultural use, or Declining population of cities.

For more information on the Sedona Greenhouse Project, please visit: sedonagreenhouse.orgFor more information on food sovereignty, please visit: viacampesina.org/en.