Creating a raised bed garden on asphalt at Jessica Levine’s Wonder City Farm in Cleveland, Ohio, located at the former site of the Hofbrau Haus Restaurant and parking lot. By Cleveland Memory Project.

The potential to turn Cleveland into a national model for how a city can remake itself as a better place to live, work – and eat

The Plain Dealer Editorial Board
Cleveland.com
October 16, 2010

Grit-to-green visionaries have finally established a farm hold on Clevelanders’ civic consciousness, and it stretches from City Hall to the Cleveland Foundation.

It’s innovative. It’s transformative. It’s an economic driver full of vitamins and fiber, and a wedge to plow under old notions of decaying cities by changing blight to bloom. That’s why City Council should act to let the gardens grow and the farmers’ markets multiply.

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Touring the farm. Photo by Mark Randall. Urban Farmer founder Jessica Padron talks with Chef Baron Skorish, owner of the Blue Moon Fish Company in Lauderdale by the Sea. The chef toured the property on Powerline Road where Padron is growing various types of lettuce, peppers, tomatoes and strawberries on about 6000 square feet of a 1.15 acre industrial site. The produce is being grown hydroponically on verticle stands. More photos here.

Some municipalities are changing laws to allow farming on under-utilized lots, other small pieces of land

By Maria Herrera
Sun Sentinel
October 17, 2010

Excerpt:

Appropriately named The Urban Farmer, Jessica Padron will participate in a community agriculture program, offer workshops for children and adults and have a farm stand for the extras.

“If I won’t feed it to my daughter, I won’t sell it to you,” Padron said.

Padron’s is one of dozens of farms sprouting in urban settings and inner cities across South Florida. There’s Earth N’ Us and Roots in the City in Miami; Marando Farms in Fort Lauderdale; and the Girls U-Pick Strawberry Farm in Delray Beach. There are also smaller community gardens taking root behind backyard fences, church gardens and abandoned lots.

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