Hey there! Thanks for
clicking by. I appreciate it. Fill your coffee mug and grab a virtual treat or
two, why don’t’cha? Try an apple fritter. Speaking of apples...
There is a group of
fruit lovers in San Francisco that practice something known as “guerrilla
grafting” – they graft fruit bearing branches onto fruitless,
ornamental trees across the Bay Area city. Having access to free fruit
sounds like a wonderful idea, considering the number of homeless people who can
rarely afford a decent meal, but guerrilla grafting is actually illegal.
In many metropolitan
areas, urban foresters make sure that flowering fruit trees don’t bear any
fruit, in order to keep fallen fruit from making a mess on sidewalks
and attracting vermin. Most public trees are fruitless, a fact that the
Guerilla Grafters obviously don’t like. While authorities see urban
fruit-bearing trees as a nuisance, these agricultural rebels see them as an
opportunity to provide fresh, healthy produce for free to anyone who walks by.
According to their Facebook page,
“Guerrilla Grafters is a grassroots group that sees a missed opportunity for
cities to provide a peach or a pear to anyone strolling by. Their objective is
to restore sterile city trees into fruit-bearers by grafting branches from
fertile trees. The project may not resolve food scarcity, but it helps foster a
habitat that sustains us.” Their mission, they say is to make delicious,
nutritious fruit available to urban residents through these grafts.
As noble as
their intentions may seem to most of us, guerrilla grafting is illegal and
classified as vandalism by San Francisco’s Department of Public Works. It
doesn’t matter who plants the tree, who grafts branches, or who maintains it,
if it’s on a sidewalk, it’s publicly owned and messing with it is a crime. But
as of 2012, the department did not plan to actively pursue grafters. “Unless
someone is caught in the act, there’s not much we could do,” said spokesperson
Gloria Chan, adding that it is hard to catch because the average person doesn’t
know what an illegal graft looks like so it’s not likely to get reported.
However, some
people seem to think guerrilla grafting is a very serious problem. “It gets very
dangerous very quickly,” said Carla Short, an urban forester for the San
Francisco Department of Public Works. “I mean the minute that fruit gets
crushed on the sidewalk, it is slippery. We certainly don’t want people to get
injured.”
But the law
isn’t a deterrent for these urban gardeners, who seem quite focused on their
mission. “People think of fruit trees as a kind of a nuisance,” said Tara Hui,
member of the group since its inception five years ago. “The intention of doing
guerrilla grafting is not so much for the sake of challenging authority, but to
set an example – a working example – to counter the arguments. If we have a
prototype, we can have a legitimate rational discussion on the issue.” Plus,
every grafted tree has a steward, someone who promises to check up on it
regularly, making sure it doesn’t cause any problems.
She added that
many fruit lovers did try to follow “legal channels” at first – she wanted to
plant a fruit tree in front of her house and was fully prepared to care for it
herself. But her efforts were repeatedly thwarted by the department and by San
Francisco nonprofit Friends of the Urban Forest. So she began connecting with
other frustrated residents who wanted fruit trees and they started using social
media to delve into underground channels.
The grafters
like to think of their activities as ‘hybrid farming’ or ‘street theater’
and believe that their efforts don’t pose threats like slip hazards from fallen
fruit or damage to the host trees. “With grafts, you only have a few branches
that are fruit bearing, and it’s really very manageable,” said guerrilla
grafter Miriam Goldberg. And they take full responsibility to make sure that
ripe fruits are safely harvested. They’re also prepared to help with
maintenance tasks like pruning, propping, and watering.
“The hope is
that through this one small act (of grafting) we can reconnect with a shared
space and reconnect with each other,” Hui said. “Ultimately, I think codes and
regulations should respond to the reality of people’s lives. Just taking an
evening stroll, and then you see a fruit and you reach over and now you’re
nourished.”
Y’know, in
Thailand, and granted the temperature is always conducive to producing fruit,
which may be why over 100 varieties grow there, but there is no lack of
coconuts, mangoes and many other fruits freely accessible to passers-by so,
despite municipal concerns about possible slipperiness on sidewalks, I think it
is a great idea...maybe in controlled areas but it is definitely something
every city should think about doing. Agree? Disagree? Let me know what you
think.
See ya, eh!
Bob
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