“City Farmers, Urban Agriculture”

A quiet and distinctly non-violent revolution is underway, especially among our nation’s youth: The resurgence of small farms, local food movements and community gardens all across this land of ours are grass-roots attempts to reclaim some measure of control over the most essential things in our lives—food, health and community. I am now convinced that urban agriculture, in all its forms, is a vital player in this cause.

By Keith Stewart,
The Valley Table, Number 54
The Horticultural Society of New York
June 10, 2011

Excerpt:

IN MARCH OF THIS YEAR, I was invited to be a speaker and panelist at an Urban Agriculture Conference hosted by the Horticultural Society of New York. At first, I was hesitant to accept the invitation because I know very little about urban farming, and, to be honest, have never given it much thought. I’ve always thought of farming as something that goes on in the open fields and pastureland of the countryside, not in backyards behind Manhattan brownstones or on vacant lots in the Bronx.

At the same time, I’m not unaware that there is a very real urban farming movement in progress and that it has gained a fair amount of traction over the past several years. It would have been hard not to notice some of the substantial attention it has received in the media. I’d read articles on urban farms and food production in The New York Times, the New Yorker and the Atlantic. Some of these articles were written both by and about Annie Novak, who had worked on our farm in 2005 (ours was the first farm she worked on). I knew Annie as a strong, smart, high energy, delightful person and I was always pleased and a little proud to see the attention and recognition she was receiving with her Eagle Street Rooftop Farm in Brooklyn.

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