An Urban Farm Teaches Millennials How to Disobey

Millennials, who are generally considered to be a group of participatory, positive, technologically-savvy 18- to 30-year-olds

By Alissa Walker
Fast Company
Dec 8, 2009

Excerpt:

Waxman sought to have a group of students physically reclaim a strip of public land bordering the school’s street, which California College of the Arts (CCA) shares with homeless residents as well as day laborers. Waxman believed they could intervene agriculturally on the block–which was littered with hypodermic needles–by growing enough food for the neighbors. “We were three transient populations brought together by a piece of toxic land that held the potential for building community and for addressing a food issue,” she remembers. Dubbing the project FARM (Future Action Reclamation Mob) she encouraged students through posters and other campaign methods to rally behind the cause, using language she believed would appeal to the Millennials.

At first, Waxman planned to take over the land forcefully, but was encouraged by other students to ask permission. Amazingly, the city was so excited about the project they approved the site to be turned over to the group within a week. On the first workday, in March of 2008, more than 50 people showed up to convert the land into a farm.

Creative Collaboration
Art students worked side by side with day laborers to convert the space into a permaculture environment that referenced natural, local ecologies, yet also helped to detoxify the soil, layering the ground with cardboard, compost, granite dust and mulch. Through a series of workdays or signing the FARM’s “Manifestation” over 150 registered farmers have now contributed to the project, but the most surprising contributions started to appear without any direction from Waxman whatsoever. Donations of tools, materials and plants poured in. Architecture students designed a bench. Signage was produced for the farm, as well as directions for the verimiculture compost bin. A collaboration between industrial design and architecture students has constructed a rain-catchment system on the roof of CCA, to be completed in January, using leftover corrugated metal siding from the building’s roof.

The farm, which grows crops from strawberries to lettuce to oyster mushrooms, donates about half of its yield to Free Farm Stand, who gives them seedlings in return. Food is also given to the residents of Hooper Street. There are no rules for the garden as to who can or cannot eat from it, and Waxman says she often has to offer the harvest to homeless and food insecure people on the street.

The complete article here.

The Farm website here.