Across the San Francisco Bay Area, urban farming is in season

Brooke Budner, 30, co-founder of Little City Gardens, San Francisco’s first urban commercial farm, harvests chard for weekly customers. Photo by Lee Romney, Los Angeles Times

Cities are changing ordinances to permit sales of home-grown produce as residents demand access to high-quality food and greater connection to the source.

By Lee Romney
Los Angeles Times
July 31, 2011

Excerpt:

The urban farming movement is driven by people’s craving for a connection to their food source and for more affordable organic fare, said San Francisco Urban Agriculture Alliance co-coordinator Eli Zigas, and it “is forcing cities to think about how to bring back activities that we pushed out of cities a long time ago.”

Across the Bay, Esperanza Pallana is party to what may be a broader set of changes. Her compact yard abuts a gas station in Oakland’s Lake Merritt neighborhood and overflows with hops for beer, kale, peanuts, dwarf pears, bees, hens and Vienna Blue rabbits — first cultivated for meat in the early 20th century.

For Pallana, raising food offers a connection to her Mexican roots. She chooses seeds and breeds that are fading from use to enhance the gene pool. Raising her meat, she said, gives her some independence from “corporate food systems.”

“More and more people are rethinking what our local economy is going to look like,” said Pallana, a trim 36-year-old with dark curls who helped form the East Bay Urban Agricultural Alliance and provides her household with about 20% of its food.

Read the complete article here.