How’s Newsom’s S.F. farm idea supposed to work?

There’s really only one thing wrong with Mayor Newsom’s new idea to have the city of San Francisco grow its own crops in window boxes, street medians and vacant lots.

It doesn’t go far enough.

Where are the plans to raise chickens, a terrific, healthy and low-calorie food source? A March report to the Board of Supervisors by the Peak Oil Preparedness Task Force recommended changing city law to allow "small-scale animal husbandry" including "allowing resident to keep a small number of goats and hogs." So far, that proposal hasn’t moved forward.

To be honest, I hadn’t considered goats and hogs, but chickens should be no problem. A wire fence and a little birdseed and you could have a poultry park right in Civic Center. Around City Hall, a few more random clucks should go unnoticed.

Cattle, however, are going to be a tougher call. My first thought was a small herd on Marina Green, but you’re bound to get some pushback from the joggers. I think the best bet for the city-bred dogies would be Golden Gate Park. Of course, we can’t have a stampede through a picnic, so it is all going to depend on hiring good wranglers.

Speaking of which, who will be tending all these produce plots in the city? Mayor Cucumber wants the city to transform into San Farm-cisco, but once you roto-till that vacant lot in the Tenderloin, who is going weed the endive? Or make sure that the carrots aren’t swiped during the night? Or, for that matter, ensuring that none of that "natural" fertilizer often found on Tenderloin sidewalks doesn’t find its way into our food chain.

But that’s not the end of it. Newsom is also sending an ordinance to the Board of Supervisors in the next couple of months mandating that food served at city jails, hospitals, homeless shelters, and community centers be healthy.

To be honest, I was expecting some resistance to that idea, but San Francisco Sheriff Mike Hennessey left me a voice mail to say he was already on board.

"In the future," Hennessey said, "the porridge and gruel at the jail will be organic."

I have a feeling the sheriff might be pulling my leg. His not-entirely-serious response might have something to do with the fact that many city officials think that mayor’s idea popped up out of nowhere, just as the city budget was settled, and without a lot of specifics. Although they might not pipe up and say it in public like Hennessey, who is known for his irreverent sense of humor, many in city government are wondering - and I think this is the exact wording - how the hell this is supposed to work?

For example, how much is it going cost? As a regular at a farmers’ market, I can say one thing definitively - that stuff is expensive. How many $3 tomatoes can the jails, shelters, and community centers afford?

"We have to work on that," said Sheriff’s Department spokeswoman Eileen Hirst, diplomatically. "We also have to figure out how it applies to a (food) contract already in place."

Newsom’s lack of details for this proposal leads to the cynical view that this is just another potential bullet point in his gubernatorial stump speech. I’d say that sounds about right.

He’s already claiming he ended homelessness and created universal health care in the city, and now he can add that he introduced food crops to Union Square. Who cares if rows of corn never get planted along the Embarcadero? It is the concept that counts.

"It is no secret that Mayor Newsom is running for governor," said Alex Clemens of Barbary Coast Consulting. "And any smart politician running for one of the United States’ most visible jobs has to position himself as an innovative thinker. But I have to say, in an era of fiscal restraint, this blue sky idea faces a ton of hurdles."

One of those hurdles might be that this could play into one of the great criticisms of the Newsom tenure - lots of splashy announcements, but not much follow-through.

"Just because it is overtly political doesn’t mean that it is a bad idea," said David Latterman of Fall Line Analytics. "In fact, I think it could be a good idea. The question is, after the press release, after the ribbon cutting, is anything going to happen?"

Probably not.