Sundari Kraft is the founder of Sustainable Food Denver, founding co-chair of the Denver Sustainable Food Policy Council, and founder of one of Denver’s first multi-plot urban farms.
FT: One of your legislative successes is a policy to allow Denver residents to raise chickens, ducks, and dwarf goats within the city limits. How practical is this in an urban setting and how do you hope this will benefit individual health?
SK: Anytime someone is considering raising an animal—whether it’s a chicken or a dog—they need to make sure that they have the appropriate space, tools, and time to adequately care for that animal. That being said, city-appropriate food-producing animals can absolutely be raised successfully in an urban backyard. These animals are no more difficult to care for than the pets that we’re used to seeing in cities (like dogs and cats)—it’s just that most of us haven’t grown up with them and we’ve lost the knowledge of how to care for them. Luckily, there are a number of books focused on urban homesteading, as well as classes in some cities focused on backyard chickens or goats.
Food producing animals offer families an accessible source of healthy protein, and the typical surplus of milk that you can get from a dwarf goat allows people to experiment with things like homemade yogurt and cheese. Anything you make from scratch in your home will be less processed than 90 percent of the comparable products you can find in the store, and generally will be healthier for you. It is important for families raising goats to research pasteurization and make informed decisions about how to use their goat’s milk safely.
This is an autogenerated summary from a published source: Interview with Sundari Kraft: “People eat more veggies when they take part in gardening”
