Over the last two months, I have conducted a research project focused upon urban farms and city planning, for the course City Planning 252 (“Land Use Controls”), taught by Professor Fred Etzel at UC Berkeley. Below is a brief introduction to this work in progress, and you can download a full PDF file of the current report by clicking here, or on the link that follows the introduction. Your attention and feedback is appreciated!
Vitalizing the Vacant: The Logistics and Benefits of Middle- to Large-Scale Agricultural Production in Urban Land
For decades, community and backyard gardens have been a source of fresh produce for America’s city dwellers. During World War II, the government encouraged the country to plant Victory Gardens, and 20 million Americans produced nearly 40% of the produce consumed nationally. Since the mid-1990s, the increasingly detrimental effects of industrial agriculture upon environmental and human health have come to the attention of US consumers. Urban populations across the country have begun to demand access to affordable, nutritious, chemical-free foods, grown by trustworthy farmers, within one to two hundred miles from their homes. Urban planners have learned to design spaces for farmers markets and other venues where fresh, regionally grown produce can be sold, and to incorporate these designs into their city plans. More than a few city dwellers, however, have increased their access to clean, healthy foods in a way that is yet more resourceful, hands-on, and close to home.
Urban farms are gaining ground in cities across the country.
An urban farm is considered to be one or more sites within the boundaries of a city, where the soil is cultivated for edible plants, and where the food produced is shared (whether for-profit or not, by sales or donation) with individuals other than the farmers themselves. The existing sites currently known as urban farms usually occupy a total of at least 1/4 acre (or 10,890 ft2) and have established a formal food distribution system, often selling through Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), at farmers markets, and to local restaurants. Urban farms are organized, productive, stable operations, and often serve their surrounding communities through educational workshops, job training programs, and other activities.
This study was compiled to provide planners with six existing models of urban farms, and to aid in the development of city plans that prioritize local food production. Vitalizing the Vacant considers the logistics and benefits of putting urban land into agricultural use, and highlights six farms all located within the urban boundaries of major cities across the United States.
FULL REPORT: Vitalizing the Vacant, by Annie Myers
Annie Myers
Well done, Annie! Great overview on the current state of urban ag and its potential to nourish our communities in every sense of the word. What a pleasure to read about all these dedicated visionaries breathing new life into formerly fallow (and even poisoned) soil. Thank you so much for tackling this project with such clarity and passion–you and your Real Food colleagues are proving to be a phenomenal source of alternative energy!
[...] farming, including work on how farmers and city planners can work together (later I got a link to her report on the subject, because I guess I’m turning into a planning geek). George Reyes shared his vision for an [...]
Annie,
Excellent work. You have clearly and effectively demonstrated the value of urban farming.
Particularly interesting to my own project is your acknowledgment that “urban populations have the potential to feed only a small percentage of most urban populations,” and that their real value in terms of the health of urban communities is in “offering health education and exposure to nutritious dietary options.”
The next part of the model that we need to work on, therefore, is coming up with ways to get enough produce from local-regional rural areas into those urban communities to make up the shortfall in urban farming supply.
However, even if we find ways to create a distribution infrastructure that can accomplish this, we also need to acknowledge that the purchase of this food by people with limited means will need to be subsidized with pubic money, especially purchases of local-regional meat, poultry, and fish which are currently exempted from food subsidy programs. There is no sense working on the infrastructure if the people it is intended to serve cannot afford the food that the infrastructure makes it possible to bring in.
The policy angles for grounding such a position are numerous, the most compelling, from a budgetary standpoint, being public health. A subsidy enabling the purchase of a few hundred pounds per year of fresh, nutritious produce, including meat, poultry, and fish is a hell of a lot cheaper than paying for the health costs associated with widespread obesity. One can wish that the culture of our political community would develop to the point where it was unnecessary to ground policy in ways that make of human beings such objectified abstractions, but I am not holding my breath.
Keep up the good work. It seems to me that you are boring right into the core of the thing.
Kristin, Thank you! The link works for me…do you think it might just be your computer? Anyway, of course I’ll email it to you in a second. I’d love to see your report when you finish! Cheers-Annie