Introduction to Urban Agriculture
By Jack Kittredge
compiled by Jack Kittredge from writings by Tom Philpott in Grist, Dr. Caroline Goodson, Jane Jacobs, the Guardian, Brette Jackson, Tammy LaGorce and Winnie Hu in the New York Times, and others
A reconstruction of ninth-century gardens in the Forum of Caesar, Rome. On the right are rows of vegetables, on the left and center are grapevines, vegetables and fruit trees.
Urban agriculture, according to most definitions, is the practice of cultivating, processing, and distributing food in or around a village, town, or city. That locational aspect is crucial to distinguishing urban agriculture from generic agriculture, which most people associate with taking place in rural areas. Urban agriculture projects include: community gardens established on vacant land that’s cultivated and maintained within an urban neighborhood; school gardens cultivated and maintained on school grounds, and factor into the curriculum; entrepreneurial gardens that grow produce and flowers for profit; backyard gardens, windowsill gardens, and rooftop gardens that provide vegetables, herbs, and flowers to individuals and/or small families.
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Urban Farming and Cities
By Jack Kittredge
Editorial La Finquita Community Garden in Holyoke
The growth of community gardens, educational farms, school greenhouses, college plots, backyard growers, rooftop gardens and container operations in urban areas of the US indicates the current breadth of interest in producing food by city residents. Such a flowering has not been seen in many years. The history of agriculture in cities, however, goes back thousands of years and may surprise some readers. We have traced that history here.
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Commercial Farmland Access in Urban Settings
By Johanna Rosen
by Johanna Rosen, Equity Trust and Kathryn Ruhf, Land For Goodc with contributions from Bob Wagner, consultant, Land For Good
Dorchester Community Garden
photo by EcoPhotography
Urban agriculture is a broad topic with a range of issues. Here, the focus is on how farmers get and hold land for commercial farming in urban areas. An “urban area” is typically a densely built environment. Most urban areas are within city boundaries, but cities can include more suburban settings with significant open spaces. For example, Urban Edge Farm (UEF) is within the City of Cranston, Rhode Island. It occupies 20 acres, surrounded by scattered rural residences. While farms like UEF are subject to city ordinances, many of the other issues discussed here would not apply to UEF.
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Bed-Stuy’s Hattie Carthan Community Garden
By Jack Kittredge
photo by Jack Kittredge City sign hangs on the fence surrounding the garden
The Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of the borough of Brooklyn in New York City is composed of about 150,000 souls. Dutch farmers were the original European settlers, but the region slowly developed from farms to villages to towns to a city because of closeness to Manhattan. By the 1870s rowhouses began to be constructed here and the neighborhood adopted its current look.
After the completion of the Fulton Street IND transportation line in 1936, many people left an overcrowded Harlem for better housing options among Bed-Stuy’s historic brownstones. During World War Two a large influx of southern African Americans came to work at the Brooklyn Navy Yard and a resulting largely successful effort at ‘blockbusting’ by real estate agents and speculators to drive out whites left the neighborhood with a 85% black population by 1960. Over time it has become a center for Brooklyn’s African American culture.
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The Role of Marginalized Populations in American Farming
By Jack Kittredge
Scratch virtually any American and you will find, without going too far back, a farmer. Despite their hunting and fishing activities, most Northeastern Native Americans depended on agriculture for the majority of their calories. Certainly those of us who arrived, voluntarily or not, in the age of sail did as well. More recent immigrants came in waves, often driven from home by persecution or war, but it was access to land, a piece of our supposedly endless frontier, of which they dreamed and for which they saved once here.
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Community Based Bioremediation:
By Scott Kellogg
The past 150 years of industrial processes have left a legacy of toxicity in the soils of today’s urban environments. Exposure to soil based pollutants disproportionately affects low-income communities which are frequently located within formerly industrialized zones. Both gardeners, who come into direct contact with soil, as well as those who eat the products grown in the soil are at risk to exposure from industrial contaminants. Options for low-income communities for remediating contaminated soils are limited, with most remediation work being carried out by costly engineering firms. Even more problematic is the overall lack of awareness and available information regarding safety and best practices with soils.
In response to these challenges, a grassroots movement has emerged that seeks to empower urban residents with the tools and information necessary to address residual industrial toxicity in their ecosystems. Focusing on methods that are simple and affordable, this movement wishes to remove the barriers of cost and technical expertise that may be otherwise prohibitive. This paper will give an overview of case studies of organizations that have been successful in implementing these strategies. (more…)
Urban Agroecology:
By Miguel A Altieri, Clara I. Nicholls, Paul Rogé and Joshua Arnold
reprinted from Urban Agriculture Magazine, November, 2017
In light of climate change, failures in industrial agriculture, increased energy costs and demographic pressure, and as multinational corporations increase their control of the food system, a significant rise in food prices, if not food shortages can be expected. This situation is compounded by the fact that by 2030, 60% of the world’s population will live in cities, including 56% of the world’s poor and 20% of the undernourished. Today, for a city with 10 million people or more, over 6,000 tonnes of food has to be imported every day, traveling an average of 1,000 miles. Given these scenarios, urban agriculture (UA) is becoming a major sustainable alternative for food security on an urbanised planet. Urban production of fresh fruits, vegetables, and some animal products, near consumers, improves local food security, especially in underserved communities. By improving access to fresh, nutritious food, UA can help in combating childhood obesity, diabetes, and poor nutrition that are prevalent in many urban communities.
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Farming for Racial Justice
By Jack Kittredge
photo by Jack Kittredge
Kohei Ishihara with CSA member Gladys Gould from South Providence.
Watered by the adjacent Taunton River, the 17.4 square miles of flat bottomland making up the Massachusetts town of Berkley between Boston and Providence was considered excellent agricultural soil by the original Wampanoag, Narragansett and Massachusett inhabitants. Artifacts going back 8000 years have been unearthed at local sites, indicating how they lived in inland longhouses and planted in these fields for much of the year, venturing to exposed coastal areas in the summer to harvest seafood. Dighton Rock, a 40-ton boulder now displayed in a Berkley state park, was once submerged in the Taunton River but visible at low tide. It is covered with ‘petroglyph’ markings many believe were created by these ancient Native Americans over years of habitation.
Although the town’s population is now overwhelmingly suburban and white (96%) some agriculture still exists on undeveloped parcels. On one leased 16 acre site, fringed by million dollar homes set off by a high fence, 3 acres are in vegetables, chickens, ducks, emus, quail and goats. Those products are marketed on-site and at 6 CSA drop-off sites in Boston and Providence, 35 and 25 minutes away respectively. The farmer behind this endeavor is Kohei Ishihara, a Japanese-American committed to providing food for urban residents, particularly Asians and other non-white people who are themselves involved in racial or economic justice work.
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