If it's hard to get fresh, healthy food at affordable prices in your neighborhood, you live in a food desert.

One solution is to own a motor vehicle, but the average price of a new car last year went north of $50,000.

Not everybody can afford to drive. Not everybody wants to drive. But there is another possible

solution to the problem of food desert. From KERA in Dallas, this is think. I'm Chris Boyd.

What we call community gardens in modern times have

truly ancient roots, staked out in small corners of urban areas for as long as people have flocked

to those places. They provide nourishment and also community for the people who share in their

abundance. And while they are much, much smaller than actual farms, my guest has learned

that acre for acre, they have a long history of outproducing the commercial agricultural operations

in their region. Kate Brown is distinguished professor in the history of science at MIT and author of the

book Tiny Gardens Everywhere, the past, present and Future of the Self-Provisioning City.

Kate, welcome to think.

Before any kind of official community gardens were dedicated,

there was shared land use in many parts of the world.

How did the Commons work in England before Parliament

came in and started allowing private landowners to enclose their property? Yeah, commons are

these amazing part of our collective pass. People in England, peasants all lived in a village

together, and they had strips of land that they basically farmed collectively.

They'd all decide this place is going to have wheat, that place over there is going to have legumes.

And then they had shared pasture land, shared forests, and lots of hedges all over the place that were planted with edible fruits and

nuts and berries they were basically sort of horizontal pantries that ran through the community

and so there was this sense common law involved this right the rights to food fuel fuel, and shelter. So people could, you know, go out to the

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