Howard Adam Levy, Principal of Red Rooster Group, reports on this seminar: Urban Agriculture: The Opportunity and Obstacles, held September 21, 2010 at NYU Stern, produced by the NYU Social Enterprise Association.

Will urban gardens save America? This lofty topic was taken on tonight by a panel of experts representing different aspects of the urban agriculture movement that provided an interesting overview of the issue.

Teaching kids to eat dandelion greens, ensuring capital for commercially-scalable urban agricultural projects, and the impracticality of rooftop gardens were themes that punctuated the diverse conversation in an exploration of how we grow our food.

The session, called Urban Agriculture: The Opportunity and Obstacles, was sponsored by the NYU Stern Social Enterprise Association.

MODERATOR

• Daniel Bowman Simon, People’s Garden NYC

PANELISTS

• Christina Mitchell Grace, Manager, Urban Food Systems Program, NYS Department of Agriculture and Markets
• Ian Marvy, Executive Director, Added Value and Herban Solutions
• Nevin Cohen, Assistant Professor, New School, Principal at Topology
• Janine Yorio, Managing Director and Founder, NewSeed Advisors
• Bilen Berhanu, Outreach Coordinator, Green Thumb, City of New York Parks & Recreation

Introductions

The panelists each spoke for a few minutes about their area of expertise.

Daniel Bowman Simon is advocating for a garden in front of City Hall and is encouraging the use of food stamps for edible plants.

Chris Grace is responsible for connecting upstate farmers with buyers in New York City.

She addressed Jesse Jackson’s remark that urban farms in Detroit are “cute, but will not be a real part of the solution,” by saying look at what industry has done for Detroit. “People are learning how to grow, process and develop the sales process for grown food. We are preparing youth to get jobs in urban agriculture or to become food entrepreneurs or chefs. You need to step back and see the potential of urban agriculture as a catalyst for change, a beacon of hope for farmers markets and in building a healthy society.”

“New York City is not in a vacuum – it is part of the state that is losing 50,000 acres per year. Urban agriculture is a bigger issue than farming in the city. It will create buyers of local food and create local food professionals, and that is what will save our system.’’

Ian Marvy, Executive Director, Added Value and Herban Solutions is a youth worker that provides urban youth with an alternative to drug dealing by training them to sell dandelion root tinctures. He is opening a 1.5 acre farm in the neighborhood. His organization runs a 70-person CSA, and sells direct to 6 restaurants.

Bilen Berhanu, Outreach Coordinator, Green Thumb, City of New York Parks & Recreation provides materials and technical assistance to the estimated 600 – 800 urban farms in the five boroughs. Her department was created 32 years ago in response to people creating community gardens and needing help from the Parks Department.

Janine Yorio, Managing Director and Founder, NewSeed Advisors. explained her vision for use of vacant real estate around New York City through the lens of a financier with experience in commercial real estate. She started an investment bank in specializing in funding commercially-scalable urban agriculture projects.

She compared the price per ace of $5, ooo to $8,000 per acre in Iowa to the $5 million to $20 million it would cost in New York City to demonstrate why we still truck food across the country.

Nevin Cohen teaches urban studies at New School and is a Principal at Topology, a real estate development and consulting firm that develops residential, mixed-use and civic projects in urban neighborhoods.

“Urban agriculture is being institutionalized in urban planning and zoning. Every city is different but each is struggling to determine the role of urban agriculture. Some examples:

In Vancouver, innovation is happening at the block level. In Seattle, there is city-wide integration, for example, between sanitation department and other departments. In Portland, which  has a growth boundary around city, communities around are being upzoned and the issue is accommodating urban agriculture growth to outer areas. In San Francisco urban agriculture efforts are underway within the city. In Chicago, the poor Englewood neighborhood, people are working with city planning for restaurant training at the local community college. This time is different because these programs are being institutionalized.

Question & Answer Session

Some interesting issues came up, such as soil. Farm land is valuable because of the soil, so some in urban agriculture focus on creating good soil. There are explorations into creating new soils that can work in the urban environment, but there are still problems with how water is handled in the soil.

Another issue was the massive amount of food waste that is generated daily by the residents of cities, and the problem of what to do with it. One law calls for a food waste study to look at what  residential, industrial and housing department collection process potential exists to turn waste into compost (we currently pay taxes to get rid of our waste) and the role urban agriculture can play in that process (in terms of composting). This is being positioned as an economic development issue relating to the cost factor.

Transportation of food is an issue. The average food travels 1,500 miles to reach us. New York City’s trash goes into a mineshaft in Virginia and some of it is exported. There is some composting being done in DE, and waste companies in NYC are investing in those companies.

Janine Yorio: An important disucssion to have is about land. Buffalo is first city in the state (I think) to allow a private farmer to grow on public land. Land in NYC is scare and is viewed differently, but we will see private farming on public land in cities like New Orleans and other cities.

Chris Grace: Indoor aquaculture is an issue. In Hudson, NY, there is a huge indoor facility for branzino and flounder.

Bilen Berhanu: Farming Concrete is a volunteer, citizen science project to measure how much food is grown in New York City’s community gardens. The maximum size of a garden is a city block. We are creating community markets and folding them in social justice issues.

Ian Marvy: Some of the issue is having business minds help in figuring out the distribution of locally grown food.

A participant mentioned that there is 52,000 acres of privately owned backyard space in New York City. 10% of that modestly farmed can produce vegetables for 700,000 people. The question is, what is the economics of this?

As an example of a city encouraging urban agriculture, in San Francisco, the city allows buildings to hold expired permits if they farm the vacant lot while they renew their permit.

In NYC, Just Food’s City Farms Program trains, connects, and empowers New York City community gardeners to spread knowledge about growing, selling, and giving more food in their neighborhoods.

Another issue is the availability of locally-grown food to more people, specifically, poorer people who typically do not have access to it. There is a push to provide food stamp access through EBT terminals.

Janine Yorio mentioned spin farming – farming on a small scale – in backyards, which is getting a premium price from restaurants. Garden State Farms in Newark is doing that. It’s about optimizing what you put in and marketing the products. It requires time to use these models successfully.

Nevin Cohen brought up an interesting point about the inter-relatedness of different systems, mentioning that lack of local farming threatens our water supply since those acres would be developed. He says that PlaNYC discusses smart growth in the five boroughs but needs to address growth outside of the city limits.

Speaking about creating large scale change, Ian said, we need to change the major systems, for example, food stamps and school systems (1 million people per day are served out of the school system).

Resources

BK Farmyards

• bk farmyards is a Brooklyn based decentralized farming network providing local food to reduce the city’s reliance on fossil fuels and offering local jobs to boost the economy.

East New York Farm Blog

• East New York Farms! is a collaborative project whose mission is to organize youth and adult residents to address food issues in our community by promoting local and regional sustainable agriculture and community-based economic development.

Farming Concrete

• Farming Concrete is a volunteer, citizen science project to measure how much food is grown in New York City’s community gardens.

Hazon

• Jewish environmental organization promoting sustainable food practices. Hazon runs 32 Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA) programs throughout the United States, Canada and Israel, produces the Hazon Food Conference  to explore the intersections of Jewish tradition and contemporary food issues, and runs the Jewish Food Education Network with resources including Min Ha’Aretz, an 18-lesson interdisciplinary curriculum about food and Jewish tradition for students.

Jewish Farm School

• The Jewish Farm School is an environmental education organization whose mission is to practice and promote sustainable agriculture and to support food systems rooted in justice and Jewish traditions. Aspirations of the Jewish Farm School are driven by the traditions of using food as a tool for social justice and spiritual mindfulness.

Just Food

• Just Food has been the leader in connecting local farms to NYC neighborhoods and communities since 1995.  Our mission is to unite local farms and city residents of all economic backgrounds with fresh, seasonal, sustainably grown food.

Newark Vertical Farm

• Article on the farm.

Slow Food

• Slow Food is a nonprofit, eco-gastronomic member-supported organization that was founded in 1989 to counteract fast food and fast life, the disappearance of local food traditions and people’s dwindling interest in the food they eat, where it comes from, how it tastes and how our food choices affect the rest of the world.

Spin Farming

• There’s a new way to farm. It’s called SPIN, and it is causing people to re-think not only how to farm, but what it means to be a farmer today.

Urban Sustainable Living

• The urban farm magazine

Please post other resources in the comments section.

Events

Living Concrete – Carrot City Exhibition

• Opening reception is on September 30, 2010
• 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm
• Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Gallery, 2 West 13th Street
• Free; no tickets or reservations required; seating is first-come first-served
• A collaboration of Ryerson University and the New School, which looks at the relationships among design, food systems and communities through curriculum and research to explore the potential for the university’s participation in its urban context.

Red Hook Community Farm Harvest Festival

• Saturday, October 16, 2010
• 12:00 pm – 5:30 pm
• Join us for a celebration of urban agriculture, youth empowerment, and sustainable living! Come down to Red Hook Community Farm, meet up with your neighbors, celebrate the bounty of the season, eat delicious food, watch incredible performances, and learn how to build a stronger, healthier, more vibrant, just and sustainable city.

Howard Adam Levy is Principal of Red Rooster Group, a marketing design firm that promotes sustainable businesses and nonprofit organizations. If you need help with your visibility, marketing, fundraising, website or design, give us a call.

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