It’s always a bit harrowing when Baltimore lauds Philadelphia because, God love ‘em, they’re a mess, and we know from messes. But we like Baltimore Sun columnist Dan Rodricks’s column today about re-localizing farming. Hanging his column around something called the Philadelphia Foodshed Study being conducted by Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission, Rodricks makes (or reiterates) the argument that exurbs are bad and waste energy, nearby farms are good and save energy, weirdly ties “food security” to “energy security,” and sadly fails to mention that the eggs we get from our CSA share are the tastiest things ever – and taste and comparable price points to the grocery store are really the best arguments for local agriculture and locavorism. That said, it’s nice that at least one of the many amorphous agencies that make up the region’s shadow government is thinking through some policies that might help make our eating and living a little more sustainable.

The phrase that keeps popping up in his article that got us thinking, or more aptly, fantasizing, was “urban edge agriculture.” Here’s what we envision: Villanova cattle cared for and personally slaughtered by Britt and Garrett Reid as part of their probably infinite probation (you know they’ll just keep getting into trouble); Elkins Park razed for corn fields; Drexel Hill with less whining and more asparagus; Havertown – nothing but peaches. Everybody we like will move into the city, and everybody else will move to Harrisburg, and commute here on the Keystone, because the Schuylkill Expressway is now one long beautiful ribbon of orchard.