Posts tagged agriculture
The Importance of Urban Agriculture
My first urban garden was a 5x3 foot weed pit behind my rented duplex. With my landlady’s permission, I dug out the weeds and threw the coffee grounds from my french press and some organic compost into the dirt. My mission was simple: salsa ingredients, hopefully enough for a few jars. This was my first attempt at gardening, let alone on the bath mat sized part of the “back yard” which was more driveway than anything. My expectations were low, but as usual I had high ambitions. I sprouted my own tomatoes in egg cartons on the porch, concocted my own bug repellent and pulled a few weeds every morning before I went to work. Before I knew it the garden turned into a snarling forest of food. I couldn’t pick the romas fast enough, jalapenos were turning red and romaine was popping up in places I had not planted any. I sent anyone who visited me home with a bag of food and by October I was tired of pasta sauce and none of my friends could eat any more salsa.
That summer I discovered the power a tiny piece of land held. I greatly underestimated how much food I could produce, as well as what happened behind my house – it became a place I wanted to sit and where animals and insects thrived.
Urban agriculture has taken off as a movement in the last decade. You don’t have to go far to find a rooftop garden or even a class about how to start container gardening. People have begun to see the benefits of gardening in general and the positive impact urban agriculture has on our environment, economy and social systems.
Urban agriculture expands the economic base of a city through production resulting in increased entrepreneurship, job opportunities and the innovation of a new industry. One way urban farms can bring in revenue is through providing Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) share. Typically, a CSA is a subscription in that the consumer pre-pays for a season’s worth of produce from a farm and receives a box of product weekly, eliminating grocery stores as the middle man. Fresh and healthy foods made available to urban areas that may lie within a food desert zone can impact childhood nutrition and form healthy adult food choice habits.
Urban agriculture also has numerous environmental benefits. From decreasing the distance food is transported from hundreds of miles to possibly blocks, oil use and carbon emissions can be cut down considerably. Vacant urban spaces can be retrofitted into gardens decreasing the amount of heat that is absorbed into pavement. In many cities, policy is being made that would promote the use of gardens on rooftops to combat urban heat island effects.
Besides these benefits are the ones that come from the added exercise of gardening, the community and social benefits of getting to know other people who share an interest in gardening and how much better you feel when you walk down the street and see thriving plants instead of a vacant lots full of dandelions growing in the cracks.
Obviously I think that the positive effects of urban agriculture and gardening outweigh the negative, but in some cases the negatives can be serious barriers to entry into this new market. Especially in dense urban areas space is at a premium, and it may difficult and expensive to obtain. Soil in urban areas may have high levels of arsenic, lead and other heavy metals from years of car exhaust, as well as other contaminants from garbage, factories and lead paint from homes and garages. Many cities and states do offer soil testing in order to determine whether it is safe to grow plants for eating and often the solution is as simple as a raised bed.
Support infrastructure such as access to water may not be available or too costly and even policy may stand in the way. Just recently, the city of Minneapolis reworked its zoning code in order to allow urban farms and gardeners to sell what they grow. Since urban agriculture often starts on a small scale, citizen participation will be extremely important in enlightening city policy makers on what amendments to zoning codes and ordinances are needed in order to make this new industry grow.
So where is urban agriculture happening? Everywhere, but one of the most interesting places is Detroit, Michigan. After huge population losses, including 25% in the last decade, Detroit’s housing and infrastructure has deteriorated significantly. But near the vacant lots and burned out houses non-profit urban agriculture is beginning to thrive. Greening of Detroit is a non-profit “established in 1989 to guide and inspire the reforestation of Detroit. In 2006, a new vision was established, expanding The Greening’s mission to guide and inspire others to create a ‘greener’ Detroit through planting and educational programs environmental leadership, advocacy, and by building community capacity.” A surplus of land is enabling urban agriculture to be applied on a larger scale. Even private enterprise has taken note, with companies moving in to buy land to begin farms.
What will urban agriculture look like in the future? Terreform, an organization devoted to sustainable architecture and urbanism visualizes New York as a self-sustaining city of vertical farms but most likely urban agriculture and gardens(small scale as well as large) will continue to grow and benefit people in their surrounding communities.
Successful urban gardens seem to all have one thing in common: a strong and devoted social organization who believes in what they do and inspires others to participate. In many ways this may be more difficult to hold onto long term than changing policy, so lead by example and show neighbors and community members what you can do. Bring them a jar of your salsa!Urban Farming In Progress:
Stones Throw Urban Farm (pictured above), Minneapolis
596 Acres, New York
Growing Lots, Minneapolis
Will fish swim in an aquarium of sky blue waters? | Minnesota Public Radio
St. Paul, Minn. — The historic Hamm’s brewery in St. Paul made beer for more than a century before it shut down 14 years ago. But it may soon find new life — as a fish farm. A St. Paul landscaper said his idea for an organic fish and produce operation is so crazy it might just work.
Driving down Minnehaha Avenue on St. Paul’s East Side, most people might pass the shuttered Hamm’s brewery and see blight. Rusty padlocks swing between the plant’s gates. Holes gape in the brew house walls where workers ripped out beer making equipment.
But David Haider?
He sees fish.
“We’re going to start with tilapia and once things are up and running, probably branch out to trout and we’ll branch out maybe into a couple other species,” Haider said.
Those fish will be farmed in 4-foot wide, 60-foot long tanks in a brewery outbuilding, just behind the hulking five-story brewhouse. The fish will swim in water from the brewery well. Racks of aquaponic produce will grow above them.
“The fish water would get pumped to the top tier, and all the vegetable roots will hang down, suspended in the nutrient rich water,” Haider said. “As the water passes through, it will feed the plants, and then the roots of the plants will also filter out the water. It’ll drop down to the next tier and so on, and by the time it gets filtered back down to the fish tanks, it will be fresh, filtered water.
Haider hopes to sell the fish and vegetables, offer some hands-on science education to neighborhood school kids and take advantage of the local food movement.
Odd as that may sound for a brewery, it’s already working in an abandoned crane factory in Milwaukee. Sweet Water Organics raises about 35,000 perch and 20,000 tilapia, along with lettuce, watercress, basil and wheatgrass.
Back in St. Paul, Haider’s efforts are a little more down to earth for now. Literally. He and his wife run Urban Nature, a small landscaping company. They and business partner Chris Ames are starting the fish farm.
They have an initial approval for $300,000 from a city-run development fund and Haider said they’re rounding up another quarter million in private funding.
St. Paul City Council President Kathy Lantry said the fish farm will be a perfect fit.
“I mean, they’re going to raise fish, so what do you need? A water source — voila, the well’s on site,” Lantry said. “They need buildings that are overbuilt, because they’re going to have giant tubs of water in a building. What sort of building is overbuilt to have liquids in them? A brewery.
It has taken a long time to see that potential. Stroh’s brewing stopped making beer there in 1997. The site has been mostly notable since for catching fire.
In it’s heyday, Hamm’s was the fifth-biggest brewer in the U.S. Its St. Paul roots date back to the Civil War.
Along with 3M and the neighboring Whirlpool factory, Hamm’s was the beating blue collar heart of the East Side. At one time, Hamm’s employed as many as 2,000 people in St. Paul.
“Back in the day, (that) was an awful lot of folks,” said Kirk Schnitker, president of the Hamm’s Club, which he founded to keep alive the memory of the historic beer and its maker.
At the mid-century height of its business, he says there were shifts running around the clock at the brewery. The Hamm family sold it in 1965.
“You know it had a long run of making Hamm’s there and Old Style and Pheiffer’s and Buckhorn and a number of other brands. And finally, Stroh’s,” Schnitker said. “The run was long, and eventually it was ended by the larger beer interests.”
Since the brewery closed, planners have pitched homes, offices and warehouse space on the site. Plans for an Asian Pacific cultural center were vetoed by then-Gov. Tim Pawlenty.
“We’ve been looking at reuse of these buildings. It’s difficult, because it was built as a brewery, and these are massive buildings,” said David Gontarek a planner for the city of St. Paul, which owns the southern half of the Hamm’s site.
If all goes as planned, there will be fish swimming around in some of them by March.
