As seen in this week’s issue, slow money has already started to make its way into Orlando’s entrepreneurial minds. East End Market, still in its first year of operation, is already having obvious effects on our community and showing the benefits of investing in grass-roots, sustainable food systems. IDEAS for Us and their hive of change-making volunteers have started a bike-based carrot mob (see Fleet Farming) that will farm your front yard for you and sell the produce to local markets. But what other game-changing ideas are out there, just waiting to take Orlando by storm?
We asked our calendar editor, Brendan O’Connor, a lover of the slow money movement, to give us some slow money ideas that he’d like to see happen in Orlando.
Forget citrus:Florida’s environment has forsaken the citrus plant. Greening is slowly killing off our state’s favorite fruit tree, leaving a substantial orange/lemon-shaped gap in our agricultural sector. Blueberries, pomegranates and some varieties of peach are perfectly suited for our climate and have earlier yields than fruits like oranges and lemons, and they all happen to be worth more on the market than our iconic citrus.Rice farming:Orlando has an abundance of marshland and lakes, which is perfect for rice farming. A lot of local growers are focusing on the more traditional crops like tomatoes, green beans and leafy greens, but not many people are growing this food staple.Organic cotton:Florida grows cotton really well. It’s one of those things kids grow in a paper cup at school, because it’s easy; it literally wants to grow here. Organic cotton also happens to be a real cash crop; everyone wants their uber-hip marathon shirt printed on it. No blends for us, thank you. But why stop at just growing it? How about a factory that spins it, too?Urban fish farming:An operation in France has created a fish farm off a river so the water is refreshed on a constant basis and the fish have ideal natural conditions to grow in. Orlando has an abundance of lakes that could easily be converted to host fish farming activities.Organic grain mill:Back in the day Floridians used to make flour from the native shrub coonties (Zamia integrifolia, if you’re nasty). Not only is that a cool trivia fact, but we also just said “coontie” in a sentence. We know the West is on a gluten-free kick right meow, but we happen to think a local grain mill would be super cool! Couple that thought with sustainable energy like a wind turbine or solar power and you’ve got yourself some pretty posh flour, guys. We all love local bakeries and fresh bread, but the bread would get even better if it used local, sustainable flour (coontie).Food forests:Community gardens are great, but what’s the next step? An ever-growing, permaculture-based forest of edibles, of course. Permaculture practices mimic the natural processes of Mother Nature. You plant things according to their habits – veggies down low, shrubs like blueberries above, small fruit trees like peaches or dwarf citrus and taller trees above them. By growing things together in smaller, more bio-intensive arrangements, you can increase yields and save on water use.Foraged food restaurant/market:Florida is packed with edible food that often goes rotten on the vine/branch/bush. Tasty exotic and native species are just sitting there waiting for us to stuff them in our faceholes. Kumquats, pomegranates, mangoes, elderberries, wild onions; there is a cornucopia of ignored free food. Someone could make a pretty penny by gleaning food from people’s backyards, jamming it and then selling it around town.Curbside composting service:A curbside collection service that would pick up your green waste curbside, take it to their compound, amend it with sugar and spice and everything nice, then sell it back to you for your garden. Locally sourced and produced compost for everybody! You get compost, you get compost and you get compost! Everyone gets compost!Biofuel factories:Orlando has an abundance of restaurants. We know this because we tell you about how awesome (or awful) they are every day. A side effect of a lot of those restaurants is waste oil that could be bought and converted into biofuel, then resold to power cars, trucks and robot short-order cooks.Mobile abattoirs:If you raise livestock or animals meant to grace a dinner plate, they must be slaughtered and processed by a USDA-approved abattoir. According to the UF IFAS Extension website, there are only 19 approved abattoirs in the state of Florida. That means you have to transport your animals vast distances at great expense. Florida should have a fleet of mobile abattoirs that go directly to the farms to process them on-site.Aquaculture:This is super cool. It’s basically taking a tank of water, filling it with fish, and then using the fish-poopy water to grow plants in. People have been getting huge yields from operations up in New York in retrofitted warehouses and factories. So not only are you getting great veggies, but you’re also getting a source of locally produced protein. Catfish and tilapia are aquaculture favorites because they don’t stress out in small spaces.Urban bee farms:There are 8,000-year-old cave paintings in Spain that depict people keeping bees. We think it’s safe to say that bees came before chickens and eggs, but we’re in a bit of a pickle as we face a possible future without bees. They’re overworked and underpaid, and colonies have been collapsing around the world for years now. If we run out of bees, we’ll run out of food. True story. Bees pollinate flowers and give us more fruit. Honey is an anti-bacterial, helps to fight allergies and tastes good in our tea. More apiaries like Winter Park Honey means more awesome. Also, we need a local mead – make it happen, somebody.Urban chickens:Chickens are found in cities all over the world and have been synonymous with human settlement for generations. They are well-adapted to urban environments but for some reason many municipalities have outlawed the cluckers from being kept within city limits – because we’re civilized now and farm animals mean poverty? They are crazily beneficial pets: They break up leafy material and ground cover, they eat lizards and cockroaches and anything that moves in your lawn, and their poop is totally full of nitrogen. We think Orlando should have a chicken-grazing service that comes through your yard, eats your pests and greens your grass, then sells the eggs at local farmers markets.Sunflower farms:OK, besides just loving the seeds, you can make oil from them and they look gorgeous. Can we just plant all of the shoulders along the highways? We could be the SunFLOWER State, get it?Shut your clamClams are filter feeders, they take in dirty water and leave it clean. With our State facing a future of water scarcity we’ll have to start looking at treating our grey water to make it potable, what if we used clams or other edible bivalves to treat our waste and fill our plates at the same time?
