A few Cambridge residents are talking about how Cambridge, MA (pop 100,000) could become more self-sufficient in food, following the example of Todmorden (pop 15,000) (http://www.incredible-edible-todmorden.co.uk/ and an article in the Daily Mail: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/...)
This group has met once and is meeting again. Their initial discussion produced 3 general tasks:
Adding to an existing survey of fruit trees/bushes
Planting something to start off, possibly at City Hall on a spot where raspberries once grew
Mapping and connecting the existing local agriculture and food network to begin thinking, together, about producing 100% of our food (and fuel?) in Cambridge
I've been working on mapping the existing local food network and found Northeast Local Harvest (http://www.farmfresh.org/) to be a great help. My preliminary results follow.
Cambridge has
7 Farmers' markets, one on every day of the week during the season and, this year, a Saturday winter market.
13 Community gardens
12 School gardens - one in every middle school
13 Feeding programs - at least one free meal every day of the week
10 Community Supported Agriculture programs
3 Retail outlets for locally produced food
17 Restaurants which buy locally produced food
This is not an exhaustive search and I suspect there are many more resources to be mapped.
More on this theme:
Integrated Urban Agricultural Systems
Occupy Green
Urban Fruit Harvesting
Raspberry Gobble
City Sunday Garden Story
Recycled Solar Garden Cloche
How to Heal the World