David raised a pretty good point on our article Farm-Urb: Brooklyn Man the First to Raise Chickens, the whole thing sounded a bit elitist, and part of the issue may have been the somewhat hyperbolic title of the post to which he responded directly. The “first” to raise chickens or really anything sounds silly unless one is going to the moon.
First? People have been doing it for decades, from start to finish. Only in these elite circles would someone assert that someone is the “first” and that getting chickens ordered in the mail constitutes raising them! Like Europeans first grew food here too I bet. pretty sad and revealing.
I wanted to repost my answer in the comments because the discussion brings up some important aspects of what I thought made the story interesting. I replied to David,
Never mind decades, centuries, since the city came into existence one might guess. You may be right, there is something elitist about this one story, or one might say “middle class” for chickens in the city has been a lower class phenomena as far as I know. But the claim to being first was a bit specific (and it was obscured some by my sensational title): He is…
“the first known private resident in Brooklyn to raise hens for slaughter, according to Just Food, a nonprofit group that works to develop a sustainable food system in the New York metro area.”
The keys are, “according to ‘Just Food’”, and “to raise hens for slaughter”. He is not just raising hens and eating them, he is raising them to be slaughtered and sold for meat. And though certainly folks must have been doing this for decades, in immigrant communities and very locally, this does seem like something of a first, the way its organized. Perhaps he was the first private Brooklyn resident to receive a permit, I don’t know.
As for “Just Food” I’ll admit I don’t know this organization, but in browsing through their website and forum, it didn’t look too elitist or even upper middle class, but I’m sure its open armed to everyone, regardless of their money. One could say that there is something to the organic or slow food movement that is a bit of a privileged consciousness, but it also goes across the board, and all of us, even us a privilege had to make ethical decisions on how to live our lives. That’s what life is all about.
So, I guess I’d say, I get your point but there is more to the story.
For me, what is interesting is that the internet’s powers of organization and information have led to people, people who are in some way deeply dissatisfied with urban living and its values, finding radical new ways of dealing with what is important. And what is fascinating is that these ultra new means of organization and community – in this case around the very substantial issue of what we eat and where it comes from – also take up some very old ways of doing things. It is super modern to buy chickens raised by huge industry factory-like, animal cruel systems hundreds if not thousands of miles away – those of famously of Perdue Chicken for instance – but it is also super modern to be able to find ways to raise chickens in your own backyard, as a small business, within the city limits, and to do so by harvesting the collective wisdom of “how to” from a community of urban others dispersed across the country. The means and information of the internet is being brought to serious urban quality of life difficulties. That is what I found interesting.
The entire question of elitism is really not the thing at stake here, in fact the claim in the Daily News article was not “I am the first” but more “one person of our group was the first to do this sort of thing”. The point we are trying to drive home is that all of us, no matter how much money we have, are trying to live rich, fulfilling lives, and under the kinds of pressures of time and space that are particular to the city we have had to respond inventively. This is the case for those who wish to live inside the city limits as well as outside of them. Cheers to Declan Walsh and Just Food I say. They are going right at the heart of what matters, our relationship to what we eat and where it comes from – and this is not new….its very, very old.
I thank Dave for the comment, it got me thinking. I have to say, I never thought in my wildest dreams to mail order chickens and raise them, and I am one of those who decided that it was best to live near trees and land about an hour from the city. When I was an urbanite it certainly would never have occured. But reading the two articles it actually made me think, why not?
fresh air and green grass 