Working on a FARM:shop

Today was the public opening (and one week anniversary the friends and family christening) of the worlds first FARM:Shop  in London.  FARM:shop,  a groundbreaking urban agriculture centre based at 20 Dalston Lane, is a project attempting to see how much food can be grown in a converted abandoned shop in a year.  It is the brainchild of Something & Son, an eco-social design practice in London founded by Andrew Merritt, Paul Smyth and Sam Henderson. 

FARM:shop is one of several projects funded in part by Hackney Council’s Art in Empty Spaces initiative, a project to help regenerate parts of Dalston by transform empty properties into something useful and meaningful for Hackney’s residents and visitors.

Councilor Guy Nicholson, Cabinet Member for Regeneration and the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, has called Farm:Shop: “a great joint initiative which will give residents in the borough and beyond a great opportunity to see first-hand how urban farming works.”

Since July, when the project managers (Sam, Paul and Andy) first received the keys, there have been over 40 volunteers (the author included) working away. The run down building has been transformed, with a new mushroom farm in the basement, a poly-tunnel built in the back lot and new hydroponic units for growing food in it’s many rooms.  With the help of Aquaponics UK, the storefront has been revamped with aquaponic units  - tanks for growing tilapia fish and freshwater prawns whose waste serves as a food source for plants growing in the same closed loop system. A chicken coop was constructed on the rooftop, with hens already happily laying away, oblivious to the street noise.  The backyard also includes a run and pens which will soon be home to a pair of piglets which will be reared in the garden.

The project offers city dwellers the chance to see a variety of sustainable farming techniques, including mini fish farms, rooftop chicken coops, indoor allotments as well as a basement mushroom farm.  It is part inspiration and part educational unit,  offering visitors guided tours of the facility which houses a number of forms of indoor farming: hydroponics, aeroponics and aquaponics opportunity to try their hand at urban farming. FARM: Shop aims to inspire and educate Londoners, particularly Dalston residents, about how food is grown and to encourage healthy eating. It will also provide an affordable workspace and meeting room hire for start up businesses and help bring creative businesses into the borough which focus on sustainability and the food industry.

Paul Smyth, co-founder of Something & Son, said: “We’re really excited by this project and hope that we can bring a bit of the countryside into the heart of Dalston….FARM:Shop will provide a place for local businesses, community groups and families to come together and learn more about sustainable farming.”

Over the next year the project will grow as much food possible on every inch of the building. The produce will be used in the shop café and sold to local restaurants.  The café will open in mid-December in partnership with a local charity (opening in November).  The meals served will rely mainly on the in -house produce and rely on Church Farm - an eco-agriculture enterprise 30 miles way – for meat and non-perishable vegatables. The project helps to demonstrate the viability of sustainable urban food systems. It will also provide regular volunteer opportunities in growing food as well as a series of fortnightly workshops and events about sustainable food and farming.

Visitors can stop by to explore any weekend from Fri - Sun and volunteers will be running 30 minute tours of FARM:shop at 1pm.

Farmshop is located at:

20 Dalston Lane, Hackney,  London. 

(Just short walk from Dalston Junction Overground Station and Dalston Kingsland. ( MAP)

Contact:

Email: 
someone@somethingandson.com



Call or text to learn more or volunteer:


Paul : +44(0)7736 002006


Andy: +44(0)7855 027876


Sam:  +44(0)7951 123385


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FEEDER: From Highway Feeder Ramp to Feeding Chicago

Amidst growing concerns for diminishing levels of arable land in Chicago, Studio Gang, an innovative team of architects have come up with a model they hope will change residents access to nutritious local foods.  While trendy locavore lifestyles take root and concerns about increasing access to locally grown produce increase, there remains the fact that most large cities still rely heavily on their hinterlands for nutritional support – meaning that feeding dense cities often requires transporting food from farms many miles away.  Studio Gangs project, debuted in 2005 at the Visionary Architecture Chicago Exhibit, would transform the downtown Ohio highway feeder ramp into a farm to feed local populations.  Called FEEDER, the project is designed to cover the currently underutilized and empty highway space with large urban gardens and greenhouses.  The spaces would be open for public use allowing residents to grow their own produce, or enjoy the open green space.

The architects at studio gang highlight the fact that the project “offers a useful and productive gateway architecture that reinvigorates Chicago as an urban habitat” and “magnifies and exposes the important aspect of food production as a necessity for urban living." 

In Chicago, and many other large cities, a lack of arable land within the city’s urban boundary, combined with the growth of the urban and surrounding suburban areas, means that food must be transported over further over longer distances in order to reach residents.  Using traditional farming methods it takes an average of 12.5 acres of land to meet the nutritional needs of one person for a year.  In contrast, producing in greenhouses and hothouses can sustain and feed 36 times the amount of people on the same amount of land.  If fully optimized, Feeder’s pyramid like greenhouses could potentially produce enough food to increase local food security and supply local markets and restaurants in the area.  Because of its central location the distance from food to fork would be minimized, along with the carbon footprint of the foods; buyers would travel a much shorter distance, perhaps by foot, to harvest their fruits and vegetables.

The farm would further serve, not only to filter pollution from the highway air, but also as an educational tool for the general public and students, fostering a renewed understanding of the food system and a stronger connection to the production of food.

This project was originally published/ exhibited at Visionary Chicago Architecture, 2005. Read more about the project here.

To listen to Studio Gangs founder, Jeanne Gang, talk about her work, click here.

Master's Dissertation: Growing Cohesive Communities

This research looked in to the potential for urban farms to aid in strengthening communities.  As many urban gardens and farms currently contribute only minimally to local food security, this research hoped to highlight another way in which institutes of urban agriculture contribute to the sustainability of local areas.  Currently, many urban green spaces in large cities face increasing pressure from various development interests.  This research hopes to illustrate one of many reasons that these spaces should be not only preserved by, but also receive increasing support from local governments.  While this research was carried out in London, many of the characteristics of the study, population, and city make it applicable to other large cities, especially New York.

In recent years the UK government policy has become increasingly concerned with discovering innovative ways to build local community cohesion, with a focus on promoting civic interaction that builds trust, understanding and a sense of place.  This paper brings together the concepts of ‘micro-publics’ (Amin, 2002) and ‘open public arenas’ (Healey, 1996) to suggest types of institutions that can serve this purpose and proposes that urban farms are one such institution.  To date, while other social benefits are acknowledged, the majority of research on urban agriculture (UA) has focused on food production and environmental concerns.  Furthermore, there remains a dearth of research looking specifically at urban farms, to which this paper hopes to contribute. This research uses the case study of Hackney City Farm in Hackney, one of the most diverse boroughs in London, to show how urban farming has the potential to bring diverse groups together and allow cohesion to be formed. Furthermore it shows that, despite concern that building stronger communities can cause exclusion, the cohesion built on urban farms has the potential to be inclusive of the broader community. It closes with recommendations for the increased support of urban farms by local authorities, but allows that further research is needed to increase the robustness of data in this field.

Urban Farms: Fertile Ground for the Growth of  Community Cohesion?