This quote from a recent New York Times piece, Is A Food Revolution Now In Season, summarizes the dominant meme about healthy food and its proponents:
While the idea of sustainable food is creeping into the mainstream, the epicenter of the movement remains the liberal stronghold of Berkeley, Calif.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Local and organic food is often seen as middle-class, expensive and elitist. Yet a quiet revolution has been underway for many years and is bearing fruit in cities, big and small, across the country and across the globe. Read on to learn more about the urban agriculture movement.
The Spring issue of Yes Magazine is all about the real food revolution. When I read the lead story, Growing Power in an Urban Food Desert, I was inspired to learn more about urban farming. The article describes urban farmer Will Allen’s enterprise, Growing Power.
Since 1993, Allen has focused on developing Growing Power’s urban agriculture project, which grows vegetables and fruit in its greenhouses, raises goats, ducks, bees, turkeys, and—in an aquaponics system designed by Allen—tilapia and Great Lakes Perch—altogether, 159 varieties of food.
Mr. Allen grows food in 14 greenhouses on two acres of land on the northern outskirts of the city of Milwaukee. Fresh, healthy food raised locally in a low-income, urban neighborhood is a revolutionary concept. This is the kind of neighborhood that has trouble attracting a supermarket. Mr. Allen is able to offer this good food to his neighbors at affordable prices.
He also works on the Growing Food and Justice Initiative, a national network of about 500 people that fights what he calls "food racism," the structural denial of wholesome food to poor African-American and Latino neighborhoods. "One of our four strategic goals is to dismantle racism in the food system. Just as there is redlining in lending, there is redlining by grocery stores, denying access to people of color by staying out of minority communities."
Access to healthy food is a social justice issue. By redesigning the food system, small urban farmers are bringing local, organic food to their neighborhoods and modeling a new ethic (or maybe a very old one...): A successful business is one that is imbedded in its community and provides needed goods and services in a way that strengthens the community and its members.
To show that the techniques pioneered in Milwaukee can work anywhere, Growing Power is helping set up five projects in impoverished areas across the United States, including training centers in Forest City, Arkansas; Lancaster, Massachusetts; and Shelby and Mound Bayou, Mississippi.
There is also a Growing Power project in Chicago run by Will Allen’s daughter, Erika. It was started in the Cabrini-Green Housing Project. There is also a half-acre farm in Grant Park right in downtown Chicago that focuses on job training for young people. It is likely that Michelle and Barack Obama are aware of this inspiring project. The First Lady is clearly aware of the importance of
local, organic food and is using her very visible role to promote the power of the urban garden from The White House lawn!
Some cities, like Baltimore, are creating urban agriculture projects to provide fresh local food to soup kitchens.
An organization called Urban Farming is bringing farming to New York City, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Newark, Los Angeles, and Detroit. Their mission:
Urban Farming's mission is to create an abundance of food for people in need by planting gardens on unused land and space while increasing diversity, educating youth, adults and seniors and providing an environmentally sustainable system to uplift communities.
Their website provides a great video showing their work that includes a cameo by Mayor Cory Booker.
In urban Boston and rural Lincoln, MA, the The Food Project works to promote social change through sustainable agriculture. From their website:
Our mission is to grow a thoughtful and productive community of youth and adults from diverse backgrounds who work together to build a sustainable food system. We produce healthy food for residents of the city and suburbs and provide youth leadership opportunities. Most importantly, we strive to inspire and support others to create change in their own communities.
Even Time Magazine is focusing some attention on the urban farm phenomenon with a photo essay on their website.
These are some of the more high-profile programs and projects that are creating gardens and farms in urban locations, providing low-income families with access to healthy food and teaching young people to create their own gardens. Throughout the country more and more people are gardening in the city on a smaller scale.
I live right downtown in an economically low/mod-income, ethnically mixed neighborhood. I have been inspired by these stories to be more intentional with my own backyard garden and to try to connect with others in my community who are growing food. Together we can take back the cities and bring healthy, fresh food to our neighborhoods. This is far from the elitist picture painted of the sustainability movement by the mainstream media.
In August, 2008 Clive Thompson said this in a short piece in
Wired Magazine,
...I think it's time to kick it up a notch. Our world faces many food-resource problems, and a massive increase in edible gardening could help solve them. The next president should throw down the gauntlet and demand Americans sow victory gardens once again.
Thank you, Michelle and Barack Obama! Welcome aboard.