How urban agriculture is changing our relationship with food – for good

Novella Carpenter turned her backyard in Oakland, California into a small farm to feed herself. Now she’s selling produce and trying to make a small profit. Photo by Mark Richards

Taking root in the city

Casey Miner
Ode Magazine
July/August 2010 issue

Excerpt:

If the ’60s was the decade when back-to-the-landers fled cities for farms, the ’10s is the decade when they—or, more likely, their offspring—are coming back. There is no official count of how many urban farms exist in America, but agricultural entities like the Bells’ have counterparts across the country. Urban farmers work in Houston, Dayton, Chicago, Milwaukee, New York, Oakland, San Francisco, Detroit, Portland, Kansas City, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles and Seattle, to name just a few. Location matters, and the farms’ business models are different, but they have two things in common: They are committed to feeding their communities with fresh, sustainable food, and they insist on establishing themselves as normal features of city life.

And the urban population wants them. Over the past years, interest in farming and food production by city-dwellers newly fascinated by the origins of their meals has exploded. Books like Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma and documentaries like Food, Inc. have revealed the environmental and health costs of a centralized, corporate-controlled food system; writing about one’s adventures in local eating is a cottage industry; backyard vegetable gardens and chicken coops are all the rage; and farmers’ markets have never been more popular (the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates the number nationwide to be more than 5,000 and counting).

But there is a big difference between planting a few carrots and trying to feed a community. And as the world’s population becomes increasingly concentrated in urban centers, the question of how to feed all those people becomes more pressing. Urban farmers don’t necessarily come from agricultural backgrounds; many of them, like the Bells, fell into their work almost by accident. But after a few years finding their feet, they are positioned to dig in, as it were, for the long haul.

Read the complete article here.