Adina Merendender, a conservation biologist at UC Berkeley, believes that the areas at high-risk for development are not the most distressing. “What I worry about is the medium-risk category because I suspect that these areas are actually at high-risk of low-density development,” he says. “The impacts of low-density development are sometimes under-appreciated.” He cites habitat fragmentation, facilitating exotic species invasion, and increasing environmental costs associated with roads and fire protection.

Low-density residential development outside urban boundary services, also known as “exurbia,” is the nation’s fastest growing type of development. Exurbia is usually a result of land division, when undeveloped land is subdivided into smaller pieces and individual owners construct houses. Sonoma County is now the most “parcelized.” Though it appears to have a lesser impact on the environment than high-density sprawl, the overall footprint of exurbia is surprisingly extensive. And as more families become attracted to the tranquil promise of countryside living, exurbia’s impacts on plants and wildlife worsens.

Real estate agent Crystal Broch admits that she is often conflicted by development. “Owning a home seems to be an integral part of the American dream, and the home itself isn’t enough; we want decent-sized yards, open floor plans, walk-in closets,” she says. She believes that the housing industry is not doing much to create a more sustainable solution: “Building up as opposed to building out in sprawl is more expensive and requires a more complex design plan. Plus, buyers aren’t keen on climbing stairs.” Until the housing industry has more of an incentive to build sustainable designs, Broch is not optimistic about major changes.

Putting restrictions on development without creating other housing has unintended effects. Popular areas for tourism such as Napa and Healdsburg risk losing their local workforces as housing becomes increasingly pricey. “Workers in lower wage brackets, necessary to business and local economy, can’t afford to live locally due to the inflated housing market,” says Broch.

Solano County has more at-risk land than other Bay Area counties. Greenbelt Alliance speculates that Solano’s difficulty is that it lies along I-80 and lacked growth policies that protected land in neighboring counties. The county’s Orderly Growth initiative, which prohibits residential development on county land, must be renewed in 2010 to protect half a million acres of land from sprawl. The second largest area of at-risk land is in Sonoma County, where securing a greenbelt depends on voters.

With a million new people expected to arrive in the Bay Area by 2020, it’s more important than ever to focus on issues of land conservation and planning. Designating land at risk is a good start, but the real test is whether Bay Area counties will take the leap to imagine a future with open space, biodiversity—and housing not at odds with the natural world.

The mounting interest in community and backyard gardens indicates that sustainability is becoming a priority. As housing developments continue to unfold over peripheral Bay Area farmland and peak oil begins to take its toll on large-scale farming, city residents are beginning to take seriously the quest for alternatives to heading off to Safeway.

Christopher Shein, who teaches horticulture at Merritt Community College and manages Ploughshares Nursery, says urban agriculture can contribute significantly. His own garden is a virtual Eden, overflowing with an abundance of fresh produce. He harvests enough eggs to feed his family from a few hens, whose manure enriches the garden. “Roosters are banned from backyard farms here in Oakland, and any other farm animals should be at least 25 feet from the house next door,” says Shein. “But if you have a good relationship with your neighbors, there are usually no problems.” He and his neighbors have removed the fences on either side of Shein’s house to create a large shared garden. Through a lot of effort, the group transformed the shared area from a wasteland to a valuable resource.

Shein says that organization, communication, and participation are keys to success. Organization is the most challenging, topping technical and cultural hurdles. Many people believe themselves too busy to cook dinner, let alone grow it themselves. Few neighborhoods encourage community involvement, and a big project requires door-to-door promotion to educate and gain participants. As farming isn’t a skill that many city dwellers learn in childhood, even people willing to put in the time may worry that they lack the skills necessary to bring in successful yields or that they will break city zoning restrictions.

But some cities and nonprofits offer workshops for community organizers to overcome many of these challenges. And school districts are increasingly incorporating food education into secondary school curricula. Students experience hands-on training in campus gardens while studying science, ecology, and nutrition. Students learn about healthy eating—and the skills set may lead to a more fruitful future for urban agriculture.

Though these schoolyard projects can be deterred by vandalism, zoning regulations, and financial limitations, community support is available. Alice Waters initiated the Edible Schoolyard Project at Berkeley’s Martin Luther King Jr. High School campus more than a decade ago, and now thousands of educators come to visit the former playground every year to learn about starting their own projects. For information, including resources for funding, visit the edible schoolyard Web site (see below).

Starting any garden, personal or community, means committing to a great deal of setup. New green businesses, such as Berkeley’s All Edibles, offer to install an edible garden on any piece of land for a small fee for man-hours and supplies. This is a convenient way to go for communities and families with limited time but some money. Afterwards, gardens based on the permaculture model—agriculturally productive landscapes designed to mimic natural processes—require very little upkeep. Shein says tending his own garden adds up to about an hour of watering per week. He says, “If you plan your garden carefully enough and put in the initial effort, it will pretty much take care of itself.”

One major challenge that all community gardeners face is the issue of land tenure. Ideally, all community gardens would be permanent after their installation, but many gardens become defunct after a year or so because the land belongs to a private party and the lease is uninsured. Shein says that he has seen many of his own community garden projects go to waste because the property had not been secured. He recommends that organizers try and obtain city property—such as public park space—or obtain land through nonprofit organizations such as local land trusts that have already purchased and insured the land.

Urban farmers must test the soil: sometimes traces of lead and other heavy metals can taint edibles. Shein suggests sending soil samples to be tested before planning a garden. If tests come back positive, the land can still be saved by first planting a cover crop of plants that pull heavy metals out of the soil, such as mustard greens, and then adding layers of mulch or planting on raised beds.

Any garden can be irrigated with a graywater gravity or pump system that recycles shower, bath, and laundry water. Though residents interested in utilizing graywater need to obtain a permit from the Administrative Authority, in March 1997 the Building Standards Commission approved the revised California Graywater Standards to allow graywater in commercial, industrial, multifamily projects, and single-family residences. There have been no reported cases of illness tied to graywater irrigation, so it is a sanitary and sustainable choice. But graywater systems can be complex to set up, so they are a good example of the planning that goes into creating a self-sustaining garden.

When asked if he thinks urban agriculture could sustain the Bay Area, if the utopian dream could become a reality, Shein, with his backyard a living example, is optimistic. But he is also realistic: “We would need many more city gardens and much more governmental and financial support for that kind of project.”

Doug Mosel, who acted as spokesperson for GMO-Free Mendocino, believes that there are unique factors in the Mendocino campaign that contributed to the win. Probably most important was timing. Not only did Mendocino take the opposition by surprise with its initiative, the county also had the advantage of being first off the block with a GMO-free campaign. The opposition, mostly made up of large chemical and fertilizer corporations, was unsure what to expect or how to react. Mendocino County’s agriculture is on a smaller scale than Sonoma’s, and it has the highest percentage of acres in organic produce. One of its largest commercial retailers, Fetzer Vineyards, supported the initiative because the company was already moving toward organic. And as a county, Mendocino has a distinctive cultural narrative of fostering anti-establishment renegades. Right-wing or left, the majority of the population is wary of corporate influence.

“To their credit, the opposition learned from their mistakes in our county,” says Mosel. “In the three ballot initiatives [Butte, San Luis Obispo, and Sonoma] that were really honest competition, the opposition won.” Mosel believes that Mendocino greatly benefited from the way the opposition framed its campaign. CropLife America, which represents the chemical industry, poured in over half a million dollars to a campaign that seemed constantly on the defensive. The GMO-free group focused on offensive framing strategies, which Mosel cites as key to gaining the support of voters. The group hardly reacted to the opposition’s shrill mailers, instead keeping up its educational mission. Mosel spoke about the surprisingly effective homespun radio ads put together by local supporters. “We focused on, `It’s good for the economy, it’s good for our health, it’s good for our environment,’ and only in the last two weeks of the campaign did we change our focus to the oppositional arguments.”

After the ballot initiative passed, the opposition took some hints from the Mendocino campaign. To portray a farmer-friendly image, the Sonoma County Farm Bureau and other commercial growers formed the Family Farmers Alliance to oppose Measure M. “The Farm Bureau campaigns now look almost exactly like ours but reversed,” says Mosel. Dave Henson, who directed the GE-Free Sonoma campaign, agrees with Mosel, saying, “They learned to get the Monsanto corporation logo out of the front line and not directly send any money to the Sonoma campaign.” Though it is still unclear whether the chemical industry donated money to the Family Farmers Alliance, Henson remains skeptical of their campaign tactics. “If you look at their spending reports, which are public documents, they borrowed $150,000 and have yet to say where they got it. This is a classic campaign trick, and after the campaign is over, the biotech corporations could give them $150,000. It’s not illegal, it’s a way to avoid having the public see who is behind a campaign.”

Henson and Mosel believe that the chemical industry’s influence is peaking, together with peak oil. Genetic engineering technology in conjunction with massive industrial-scale monoculture requires a level of chemical and petroleum inputs and distribution systems that assumes endless, escalating volumes of cheap oil. “Biotech and corporate agriculture are not sustainable,” says Mosel. “Peak oil is going to pull the plug on them in a relatively short time. Do we need biotech? No, not in agriculture.” But many who challenge the necessity of GE in agriculture tend to agree that genetic manipulation is essential for medical research. More people support GE medical technology than agricultural GE, and the opposition capitalized on this when formulating its campaign against Measure M.

Henson says, “The Farm Bureau’s TV ads, radio ads, and mailers focused heavily on the claim that if M passed, people would not be able buy many cancer and HIV drugs, insulin, or vaccines. It was just a flat-out lie.” Henson believes the tactic was shameful but very effective. “Many people said that the fear of losing access to medical drugs was why they had voted ‘no’ in the end.” The moratorium proposed by Measure M prohibited only living, reproducing GE organisms, and currently there are no such drugs or vaccines. Henson agrees that Measure M might have prohibited the use of living, reproducing genetically engineered vaccines that might be developed in the future, but he argues that they are in fact dangerous pathogens, which should face the 10-year moratorium proposed by the initiative. Henson has done his own straw poll: after speaking with a number of researchers, he believes that the medical research community is upset with the way Monsanto in particular rushed GE crops onto millions of acres of farmland and thus into processed foods without the rigorous testing that would prove them safe. Agricultural GE research still does not require containment, meaning that genetically engineered pollen and seed from research facilities can easily and invisibly be carried by wind, animal, or insect and commingle with native plants in the vicinity and beyond.

Lab containment is one of four regulations that Henson and other GE-Free supporters are now trying to enact in California at the state level. The other three include the labeling of all seeds and food products containing GE ingredients, public notification of experimental fields or commercial GE crops, and accountability of the biotechnology companies for damages that may result from the release of GE crops and animals. But the GE issue is moving beyond the county level because states nationwide now are passing what is essentially a preemptive resolution for state control of seed production and sales. “Fourteen states have now preempted cities and counties from doing what we have in Mendocino,” says Mosel. “That bill is now pending in California.” If the bill is passed, the win in Mendocino will stand, but new initiatives could not be enacted after July 1, 2006.

Because the bill does not mention GE and focuses only on the control of seed, it can be confusing to voters. California State Senator Dean Florez, who sponsors the legislation, claims it will help to unify the state, but opponents argue that cutting off the will of counties by state decree is undemocratic and that, in the end, it will create more rifts than bridges. Despite the potential obstacle of this state legislation, Henson remains optimistic, saying, “It was a great victory for us in California not to have this law just pass through unnoticed. Because we have been running GE-Free initiatives, win or lose, most state legislators understand that this is a big issue.” Both Mosel and Henson have noticed how their communities have changed as a result of the debate over GE. “People felt the excitement and the energy of realizing that if they got serious about something they could be effective,” says Mosel. Both agree that bringing the issue to the forefront of debate at the local level is a victory in itself.

Monsanto has already sued more than 100 farmers in the US for breaching patents. Many of the farmers sued by Monsanto have had their fields contaminated from neighboring GE crops, but because of the way in which patent law has been applied, they are still considered liable. According to a report released by the Center for Food Safety, “Monsanto has an annual budget of ten million dollars and a staff of 75 devoted solely to investigating and prosecuting farmers.” Henson believes that fruitful debates regarding issues of GE can only occur when we can overcome the existing rift between the often more conservative farming community and the environmental community. Says Henson, “The old narrative is that environmentalists are trying to take farmers’ rights away, but in this particular case, the exact opposite is true.”