Erik Curren: Local prosperity, one garden at a time

In a booming economy, every city wants to recruit promising businesses to make sure its citizens get their share of good jobs and local government gets its share of tax revenues.

In a tough economy, when good jobs are scarce and tax receipts are down, it’s even more important for cities to intentionally promote local prosperity.

During the Roaring Nineties, cities seemed to think that the royal road to riches led to the flashy businesses of the global boom: software, biotech, telecom. Later, it was all about the so-called FIRE industries: finance, insurance and real estate.

Now that those booms have busted, cities are again looking at the economic potential of that old American standby: food.

It’s not jut about jobs for waitstaff and dishwashers along with a bit of meals tax for City Hall. Cities are now realizing that food can help citizens start their own entrepreneurial businesses.

And that’s just catching up with what ordinary moms and dads have known for a long time, that growing your own food will cut your grocery bill while making the family healthier and happier.

But when you share your garden with your neighbors, then it becomes about citizen-powered economic development.

As I wrote in an op-ed piece published in the Staunton News Leader last week:

Any garden is a welcome excuse to enjoy fresh air, exercise and relaxation. But when you take a garden out of the backyard and make it available to the community, it offers even more benefit, from improving the look of the neighborhood and raising property values to cutting down on crime.

All of which suggests that food, if we look at it in a bigger way, can do more for a city like ours than just feed our citizens. Maybe food can help start new businesses and create jobs, attract tourists and even help make our families more resilient in the face of disruptive natural disasters like last year’s derecho.

Gardens, even community ones, are just the start of how food can pump up a city’s economy. Add in the ability for citizens to turn what they grow into products like preserves and pies that they can sell at the local farmers market, shops or even over the Internet, then food is an incubator for new businesses.

And that’s just one way food can create local jobs.

Erik Curren is a member of Staunton City Council.