Stacey Murphy’s BK Farmyards sounds like a good idea, but how does it compare to history’s better-known example of sharecropping? Here’s our first-ever chart comparing backyard farming and post-slavery agri-oppression.
Sharecropping
Historic farming movement
BK Farmyards
1870s-1890s
Heyday
2009-?
40 acres
Plot size
1/70th of an acre
Gave poor, recently freed slaves a way to work on land that they could not otherwise afford.
Advantage
Gives Yuppies a guilt-free way to make their backyards beautiful and skim off delicious produce at the same time.
Kept said freed slaves in poverty for generations.
Disadvantage
There go those Sunday barbecues!