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In the 1950s there was a concern about the loss of good agricultural land to housing. People were still very aware of food shortages, having just experienced World War 2. Two researchers at Wye College looked into the matter and produced a 'Garden Controversy'by Best & Ward
They determined that even when only 7% of housing land is used to grow food crops, their gardens matched the production in food crops of good arable land.
This clearly speaks to a debate going on now as to the contribution that our gardens could make to improving food security. Is there anybody, anywhere who could be publicly funded to carry out a 60 year up date? RELU?
The 'Garden Controversy' by Best & Ward is hard to get hold of. So here are four of the key pages. They show the sorts of things that have to be taken in account when making an assessment like this of food production. (Click these photos and then you can zoom in)
This comes from the Wye College Library copy. And on the loans page is stamped - by Imperial College, who took over Wye College 'Withdrawn'. Imperial not only withdrew this tome, but they shut Wye College down in the early 2000s.
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