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Image Credit: Josh Viertel for the Atlantic

Last week, I came across an article on Civil Eats by Curt Ellis (on the left in the photo above) about the mobile farm he and Ian Cheney (on the right) spent last summer cultivating in the back of Cheney's 1986 Dodge Ram pickup truck. All three of these characters (Ellis, Cheney and the old gray Dodge) will be familiar to anyone who saw their 2007 documentary feature King Corn. In that film, the men grew a single acre of corn in a small Iowa town that had coincidentally been home to former generations of Cheneys and Ellises. This time around, they are operating what is probably the world's smallest CSA on the streets of Red Hook, Brooklyn. More on trucks, farms and films after the jump.

While this little farm may not be able to grow much food (though you'd be surprised how much produce can come out of a small plot of dirt), it has garned lots of attention. Besides the attention it draws while driving through traffic, the Truck Farm has been covered by Josh Viertel at the Atlantic, Jessica Ilyse Smith from Living on Earth, Barbara Fenig at Huffington Post and (as I mentioned above) by Ellis himself at Civil Eats and Culinate, and that attention may be the Truck Farm's most important crop. Cheney puts it this way in their interview with Jessica Ilyse Smith: "not that Truck Farm is going to feed the world, but it sure is an example of how we need to start thinking outside of the box about how we can feed the world in a different way." At the end of his own article, Ellis says that "the patchwork farms and gardens sprouting up like weeds in the sidewalk cracks around New York these days may be a ways off from feeding us all, but I think they’re bringing our food system something it sorely needs: a dose of fun."

The Truck Farm documentary is nothing if not a bit of fun. Ellis and Cheney are currently working on the documentary project through their Wicked Delicate production company. As of February 2010, they have one trailer and two teaser episodes posted online. Here is the second episode:

While episode one splits its time between well-worn shots of urban decay and a tongue-in-cheek montage of the Truck Farm's construction featuring songs about a "sci-fi something" (soil) to "fill the void" (of the truck bed), this episode focuses on the rationale behind the Truck Farm: America's need to devise inventive ways to grow food and overcome the current failings of our AgriBusiness food system. Ellis tells Living on Earth that such ingenuity can play an important role in eliminating food deserts and make fresh, healthy food available to everyone, "I think that's where urban agriculture comes in. We've got all these rooftops around New York City and we've got all these empty parking spaces in New York City. We should be growing food there however we can."

This sentiment is shared by Annie Novak, one of the organizers of Rooftop Farms, a 6000-square-foot roof garden (also in Brooklyn). Novak plants one-square-foot demonstration beds at Rooftop Farms to encourage anyone and everyone to get in on growing. Paula Crossfield at Civil Eats reports, "Novak wants even beginners, or New Yorkers without much growing room to get in on the act. One row on her farm even showcases what can be done in a small plot. 'The square foot bed is an example of the amount of space a renter might have,' she said. 'We’re using that space to show that you don’t have to be confined to one tomato plant.'" Below is a picture of Rooftop Farms.

Image Credit: CivilEats.com

Cheney and Ellis (and the Old Gray Dodge) succeed in making the point that we can find new and creative ways to build a food system aimed at nourishing people. Their film King Corn, while noticeably less austere than Food Inc., follows the rather depressing circulaiton of corn and money through our current "food" system and ends on a note of disgust. The type of corn they grow is not suitable for human consumption and is only used in ethanol, artificial sweeteners, cow-killing livestock feed and other industrial corn-based products. After growing their one acre of corn, the pair of part-time farmers wonder whether they should even harvest the grain. They do eventually run the combine through their field and drive the corn-- in the back of the 1986 Dodge Ram--to the grain elevator. Cheney looks like he's going to be sick as they move the inedible corn from the bed of his grandfather's truck into the mountain of surplus grain stacked beside the already-full silo.

Image Credit: screen capture from King Corn

I get the distinct impression that Cheney's Truck Farm idea was at least partly an attempt to earn some creative redemption for all three of them. King Corn (like Food Inc.  and a growing number of projects with and without Michael Pollan) makes a compelling argument that government-subsidized corn is the root cause of several systemic problems in our nation's unsustainable food industry (as well as a major contributor to chronic health problems). The Dodge's reincarnation as a mobile vegetable garden provides an additional, productive argument and a glimmer of hope. The truck's new life implies that the tools and resources currently used by our broken agriculture industry could be repurposed to really feed Americans (instead of feeding the subsidized industry of chemically manipulating and repurposing corn sugars). Call it "beating plowshares into plowshares." On a strictly personal note, I think the truck looks happier in its new life.

Image Credit: KCRW.com