Urban farms not an easy row to hoe – Philadelphia Business Journal:.
When we started tilling up the backyard for planting a two years ago, my wife and I really weren’t thinking about bank accounts or any cost savings that growing our own food may create. To be honest, we were pretty sure that the planted rows were pretty un-economical. We were in it for the freshness of the food, the landscaping possibilities and the bonding time it gave us on the weekends. We laughed at those folks who filled up their Lowe’s credit cards and made multiple trips to the local gardening center in order to “pinch a few pennies in these tough economic times.”
But within two years our 12×12 plot has grown so much food that we’ve not only seen our produce bills drop, but we’ve been giving away tons of okra, collards and tomatoes and even selling some to our food co-op. This year, our backyard garden cost us maybe $5 in non-water/time expenditures.
Pat on the back.
Now let’s say we bulldoze our house and plant the entire lot – maybe a quarter of an acre – and see if we can make business out of the mini-farm. Think we can turn a profit as easy as we turn the soil. Probably not. But that’s an important question raised by urban farming: Does it make sense to use small urban acreage – in most cases, around a half acre – for agricultural purposes? If we put urban ag up next to large scale rural farming the numbers will never look good. And I think we don’t need to look at those numbers so strictly; by doing so, we can stop food production from being such a black and white issue.
What’s the value of introducing larger scale agricultural production into U.S. urban areas. For starters, there are a few generations of city folks who’ve never seen a tomato plant or much greenery besides well-placed trees and un-weeded vacant lots. There’s the health and environmental benefits of produce whose shipments are measured in short minutes instead of long miles. And there’s the possibility of employment and profits, especially needed in many suffering urban environments.
A recent article in the Philly Business Journal highlighted a few of the areas successes in urban agriculture. One such success is Somerton Tanks Demonstration Farms, a four-year-long half acre urban farm project that ended in 2007. Somerton Tanks earned roughly $68,000 using Small Plot Intensive farming methods (SPIN) in 2007.
Another Philly ag success is Greensgrow Farms, a ten-year-old project recently spotlighted by CBS Sunday Morning.
And now, thanks to a donation from the the Kroc Foundation (yes, that Kroc Foundation), the Philly neighborhood of Niceville will house a state-of-the-art community center, focusing on aquatics-based fitness, with one acre devoted to growing food with local hands and feeding local bellies at nearby restaurants. The Philly center is part of a $1.5 billion dollar grant that Joan Kroc left The Salvation Army in order to build community centers around the country similar to the San Diego flagship.
I’d expect to see more projects like this – well, maybe not to the extent of the McDonald’s funded Niceville project – sprouting up in blighted urban areas all over the country, not just in Portland and Asheville.
Personally, I’d like to see these urban farms with a more, ahem, grassroots feel. I have this sinking feeling that with the growing organic/local food movement reaching a head nationwide, we might witness corporate sponsored urban farms.Okra Corners brought to you by O’Charley’s.
On the plus side, this frees fledgling farms from the federal grant feed trough. But it would further blur the relationship between corporate suckerpuncher and impoverished suckerpunchee.
All in all, as folks refamiliarize themselves with the green world, and perhaps as local governments ease up on rules restricting creative use of vacant property, a band of neighborhood greenthumbs won’t feel threatened turning that overgrown quarter-acre lot into a sweet watermelon patch.
