In recent years urban agriculture has become
more popular across the western world, [1] with
increasing numbers of city farms, allotments and urban gardens being used as
planning tools in large cities.
There has been controversy surrounding the
benefit of urban farms; suggestions that these spaces only serve an urban elite,
complaints about the snobbery of foodies, and claims that these spaces are
little more than gentrification and land-grabbing tools. Alongside these complaints it has been
suggested that these spaces will never be able to feed the cities where they
are being established – so why bother?
At the same time there has been a parallel
focus on programs that 'green the ghetto' - trying to make environmental fixes in
deprived areas. While these projects should be applauded for trying to
beautify public space and for their desire to create more inhabitable
neighborhoods, they often come up short as a comprehensive response to poverty.
Many new food-growing projects are trying to
take on multiple goals, with more nuanced plans to attack the various problems
presented by the 'ghetto'. We now see urban agriculture projects that try
to address the economic disparities that lead to the environmental problems, as
well as a multiplicity of social problems - Bad health, joblessness, poor
education, and a basic lack of opportunities. In this way these projects stop being hobbies, and become
tools for creating urban resilience.
For the last 4 years I have been working on
urban food issues and food justice projects across the Tri-state area. The largest of these projects is an urban
farm and food justice project in the South Ward of Newark. I would like to use my experience with
this project to introduce some information about the potential benefits that
urban farms can provide, and why we should value these spaces.
SWAG Project (www.facebook.com/SWAGProject)
started in 2010 when Planting Seeds of Hope, a NJ based NPO partnered with my planning
consultancy Amplify to build an urban farm and educational space on the
property of a local Hebrew Israelite Tabernacle. SWAG Project serves it’s
surrounding neighborhood by supplying fresh organic produce, offering hands-on
education in agriculture and nutrition, piloting entrepreneurial activities,
and building stronger community ties among neighbors.
First, some quick background on the area surrounding
the farm. Newark is the 2nd
poorest city in New Jersey, with 30% of its residents living below the poverty
line[2]. Since the 1960’s, it has experienced
urban decline similar to other northern industrial cities; a shrinking job
market, followed by a shrinking population and white flight, deterioration of
housing stock, and crime and joblessness rates well above the state and
national average. Food poverty is also rampant, with high numbers of the
population receiving SNAP/WIC assistance (food stamps), and a high incidence of
residents dipping in and out of food insecurity. Much of Newark can also be considered a food desert or
swamp.[3]
Our specific neighborhood, Weequhaic has a
high poverty rate, underfunded and understaffed local schools and lack of
quality jobs and activities for young adults. It’s residents also face unhealthy food choices and
inadequate nutrition knowledge. There are few restaurants, corner stores, or groceries
and most sell high calorie and/or fast foods. Furthermore, few of them are within walking distance (less
than a mile). Our neighborhood also lacks a local community center or emergency
food center within a 2-mile radius.
Enter SWAG Project. In our 4 years in the community, with a shoe-string budget,
but an excellent volunteer base, we have: built a ¼ acre farm growing a
combined 3,400 lbs of food (1,500 last year alone) begun renovations on our
building to act as a community center, hosted over 150 group education visits,
engaged over 200 non-Newark visitors and volunteers, brought our community
together for farm dinners and harvest celebrations, beautified our local
neighborhood, and completed planning for a commercial greenhouse that will make
us more financially self-sustaining by 2016. In this way able to address some of the problems facing our
community. The goal of the following sections is to give you a brief overview
of how my farm, and really, any urban farm, can be valuable to the community. I will talk about the benefits across 4
areas: healthy food production and
provision, Educational opportunities, community building, and community
beautification.
Healthy Food Production and Provision
For a small farm, we are very productive. Last year was our 3rd year, and we
managed to grow 1,500lbs of fruits and vegetables (that's 680 kilos) on about
800 sq ft of space. This year our
space has tripled and we are hoping to grow over 4,000 lbs of food. That's almost 3,750 servings of fruit
and vegetables.[4] While
this is not enough to feed our entire neighborhood, we are able to supplement
the local food supply. We run an
onsite market for the neighborhood and donate the remainder to local emergency food
providers. Last year we had over
200 visitors to our market and were also able to provide all the fresh food for
our 80-person farm dinner. We do
this at a fair price, charging less than most corner stores do for the produce,
and well below what boutique groceries in more affluent neighborhoods charge.
An additional benefit to our being a food
producer for our local residents is that the food doesn’t need to travel far to
reach the table. This gives people
with low levels of access to food a direct source in their neighborhood, saving
residents travel time (often upwards of 45 minutes), and providing them access
to fresh, organic foods that most of the local corner stores do not carry. We
are a source of chemical free and GMO free, organically grown fruits and
vegetables. There is no organic market or store in our neighborhood, nor, as
previously explained, a real full-scale grocery store. Furthermore, since our fruits and
vegetables haven’t traveled for weeks to reach their destination, they maintain
their full nutritional value.
Educational Opportunities and Training
In the last 4 years our farm has partnered
with the two local schools and hosted over 150 hands-on education classes (engaging
with over 1,500 children from the local area alone) and run ongoing youth
farmer workshop for 3 consecutive years.
Our classes focus on getting the kids to understand the importance of
farms, where their food comes from, and also encourages them to work and get
dirty. (Most schools in our local
area no longer have gym classes or a recess.) Over the winter we focus on cooking and nutrition workshops
to get the kids excited about eating and to teach them what’s healthy and how
to prepare it.
Nutrition and farm education extends to
adults as well. We realized that
many of our residents had lost touch with cooking their own food, or, weren’t
sure what it really meant to eat healthy, or how to translate family recipes
and cultural favorites into more nutritious meals. We spent the last few years working with one of the local
chefs to set up cooking and nutrition classes for adults. We have also run a healthy living
campaign extending our activities on site to include yoga and hip-hop dance
classes to get the community involved and active, and partnering with the local
YMCA to talk about obesity and other local health issues.
The final part of our education piece is
farmer training. Many local adults
have come by to learn how to grow their own food. We have managed to create two paid (part-time) jobs on the
farm - a farm manager and an education assistant. In the following years we will be building a hydroponic
greenhouse and offering local adults and teens the opportunity to learn
business and farming skills that will allow them to move into the green
economy.
Creating Cohesion and Building Community
One of the biggest challenges we have faced
is breaking down barriers in a distrustful community faced with crime and
disenchanted with the idea of the friendly neighbor. When we started the farm, the residents in the
surrounding neighborhood did not interact much with one another and there was a
large fence that surrounded the entire property to keep residents out. It took us a year to convince the
property owners to take it down.
This effort proved to be more than symbolic, although it took us another
3 years to get the majority of the community involved.
In the beginning, people were wary of the
religious group we work with, now they trust us and have become familiar with the
Hebrew Israelites who host the farm. Now residents bring their kids in to see our vegetables grow
and attend our community dinners and classes. In spring, students from a local mosque came and planted
trees with our team, and the Baptist church nearby raised funds to help build
our second farm. Sharing stories about food from their countries lead our
Guianese and Jamaican neighbors to bring seeds for our farmer to plant; it lead
the congregation to put together a cookbook with recipes from local residents. All
this in a community where people didn’t say hello to us or their neighbors 4
years ago. Although the police
still stop by to check on me as a woman (and a white one at that) in a ‘dangerous’
neighborhood, they now also stop by to get food from the market. Food did this; Farming did this. Working hard side-by-side to move dirt,
build berms, plant seeds and maintain the farm allowed our neighbors to get to
know each other on their terms.
Community Beautification
One of the nicest benefits to our direct
community has been the addition of a safe, open space for people to visit. At the farm we have been able to create
a space where the local school children can visit, and a place where neighbors
feel comfortable stopping by to chat with members of the project. We have also managed to get a number of
the young men who had previously been hanging around the block, smoking and
drinking, to come in an volunteer, as well as keeping an eye on the property while
our team members cannot be there. The
kids who we worked with the last few years at school now feel ownership in
their community. Two years ago we
painted a mural with the help of a local artist, and the farm now stands as a
place in the community that people are proud to talk about. Moreover, our work on the property has
encouraged the congregants to raise money to fix the deteriorating building,
and other homeowners have come to us for advice on planting their own gardens
and how to improve their yards. In
this way we have had an effect on the larger community, encouraging others to
begin caring more for the neighborhood as well.
Our end goal is to build a community
development corporation and launch a combination of green economy and
food-based commercial initiatives to ensure a financially sustainable future of
community development activities. By creating a local food and health oriented
CDC, we will ultimately be able to continue to support the projects broader objectives;
improving health, economic activity, education, and strengthening community
ties.
I am not giving our organization as an
example of what every community should do, nor am I purporting that our project
has solved all the problems within our community. Rather, I would suggest that community run urban farming
projects can be, and grow into, institutions that take on the myriad of
problems facing many impoverished inner cities. I suggest that these spaces have value to cities in their
ability to improve health, provide educational and economic opportunities, and
also to beautify and bring together communities.
[1] People in the global south have
long grown their own food in urban areas and continue to do so, the new media
and social phenomena of the urban garden or farm is only novel or ‘new’ the
western and northern hemispheres
[3] Food Deserts are areas with
little to no access to food (aka restaurants, grocery stores, etc. Food Swamps were are areas where people
have high levels of access to unhealthy, calorie dense foods.
[4] The USDA recommends that youths
eat 2 cups of fresh fruits and vegetables a day, and adults between 2-3 cups.
