University of Nebraska-Lincoln student Seth Miller removes weeds Tuesday at Newman Community Garden near 22nd and R streets. The city just signed a new farm management contract with a company that manages about 1,700 acres of city land now being farmed. It contributes about $25,000 a year to the Community Crops program.
JUSTIN WAN, Journal Star
University of Nebraska-Lincoln student Rebecca Wulf works Tuesday at Newman Community Garden near North 22nd and R streets. The city just signed a new farm management contract with a company that manages about 1,700 acres of city land now being farmed. It contributes about $25,000 a year to the Community Crops program.
Thanks to Tim Rinne and other advocates of local food sustainability, I’m considering reconstituting an area in our backyard that, a long time ago, grew vegetables and even, one year, tiny strawberries.
Rinne, chairman of the Lincoln-Lancaster County Food Policy Council, was part of a briefing to the City Council on the city's efforts to build a resilient local food system. Â
It was encouraging and daunting.
The encouraging part: Rinne commended the support and focus on the issue by the current city administration and council, including a section on food sustainability in the Climate Action Plan, and in the draft of the 2050 Comprehensive Plan.
The city just signed a new farm management contract that includes sustainable and regenerative practices with a company that manages about 1,700 acres of city land now being farmed.
It contributes about $25,000 a year to Community Crops through community development block grants.
Community Crops has about 18 acres of land in production, including 12 community gardens, one urban agriculture plot and a production greenhouse. The city recently announced a pilot urban agriculture project on vacant land near the People’s City Mission — another couple of acres.
That’s a bit more than 20 acres, and Community Crops Executive Director Megan McGuffey said it’s more than that if you consider the gardens at churches and local nonprofits and farmers growing local food near Lincoln. And converting existing farmland to growing local food could make a big difference, McGuffey said.Â
The daunting part: Supplying all of Lancaster County’s 300,000 residents with the fruit and vegetables they need would take 17,000 acres. And the 20-some acres in production isn't close.
And it's Rinne’s statistics on food security (or the growing lack thereof) that made me want to find that gardening hoe somewhere in the bowels of our garage.
Here’s a few of them:
* The average “bite of food†travels more than 2,000 miles to get to our plates, much of it from outside the country.
* More than a third of the country’s vegetables and two-thirds of its fruits and nuts are grown in California, where its central valley is suffering “exceptional drought†conditions and are being consumed by wildfires. And it’s not just California. Officials are rationing water to four states out of the Colorado River.
"This is our green grocer," Rinne said. "This is where America goes to get its fresh foods, and it’s not going to be able to go there anymore.â€
* Nebraska grows hardly any of its own food. Of the $4.4 billion spent annually on food, 90% leaves the state. Why? According to Rinne — and the Nebraska Corn Board — Nebraska farmers grow mostly feed, not food. Most of Nebraska’s corn feeds livestock or is turned into ethanol.
Rinne quoted a British agriculture expert who watched Hurricane Katrina unfold and concluded our food distribution system — based on stores having three days' worth of inventory — could very quickly fall apart.
Consider how people empty the shelves when weather folks predict a bad storm. Consider if the trucks can’t get to the stores to refill that inventory. Consider the supply problems caused by the pandemic that it’s hard not to notice when you go to the store these days.
I’d like to say that I was the gardener all those years ago, but really, it was my father-in-law who saw the potential in our backyard and, with his straw hat, hoe and green thumb, planted.
We helped weed and water, and I learned there are not enough recipes in the world to make use of a bumper crop of zucchini.
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Maybe if I don his old straw hat — and with a little heavenly intervention — I could turn my brown thumb some shade of green. And make a little dent in the need for local food production.
A businesswoman and a park
Sue Krueger was a businesswoman.
Her business acumen — she was a mom and a housewife who sold fabric out of her husband’s carpet store before starting to dabble in (then develop in earnest) real estate — allowed her to do other things she loved.
And she loved travel and philanthropy, according to her oldest son Rick, now one of the owners of Krueger Development.
She traveled to the Dominican Republic, Mozambique and Kenya and Zimbabwe. To the city of Cuzco (the capital of the Inca Empire in the Peruvian Andes) and India and Cuba.
She helped build schools and churches in all those places.
At home, she was the lead donor to the Krueger Center at Union College.
The mom of four, grandma to nine and great grandmother to 13 children died in 2018. But work on her behalf is continuing, which is why Rick Krueger recently found himself talking to the City Council.
His company, which is developing the Woodlands of Yankee Hill subdivision in southeast Lincoln, offered the city a plot of land just south of St. Michael’s Church, 9101 S. 78th St., for a neighborhood park.
The city bought the land, and, because he wanted to name it in honor of his mom, Krueger donated more than half the money and work needed to build it. Â
The donations fall in line with Parks and Recreation Department naming guidelines and the City Council recently approved the name.Â
So now, kids attending the Sue Krueger Elementary Education Center in India will have something in common with the kids halfway around the world, playing in Sue Krueger Park in southeast Lincoln.
That would be a win in Sue Krueger’s mind, her son told the City Council, and the reason the family wanted to ensure kids in the neighborhood would be able to play in the park yet this year.
“In her opinion that would be a two-fer,†he said. “You’re getting the naming rights, and you’re getting the job done.â€
Lancaster County Engineer Pam Dingman is trying a new way to reduce the dust kicked up by vehicles driving down dry, gravel roads in the county, an effort officials hope will make driving safer, reduce the impact on crops that border county roads and improve air quality.
They’ve got a truck equipped to spray particularly dusty roads with a high-purity grade of magnesium chloride (MgCl2), which attracts moisture from the air and resists evaporation.
Also from the county engineer (in case you aren’t a science geek): Calcium chloride is one of the most environmentally friendly dust-control agents, free of toxic metals and substances, and is also used as a crop fertilizer.
University of Nebraska-Lincoln student Seth Miller removes weeds Tuesday at Newman Community Garden near 22nd and R streets. The city just signed a new farm management contract with a company that manages about 1,700 acres of city land now being farmed. It contributes about $25,000 a year to the Community Crops program.
University of Nebraska-Lincoln student Rebecca Wulf works Tuesday at Newman Community Garden near North 22nd and R streets. The city just signed a new farm management contract with a company that manages about 1,700 acres of city land now being farmed. It contributes about $25,000 a year to the Community Crops program.