Category — History

Today, urban agriculture is making a comeback

By Zach Behrens
KCET
February 11, 2011

Excerpt:

“Until the 1950s, Los Angeles County was the top agricultural county in the U.S. From approximately 1910 to 1955, this was it; it was bigger than Iowa or any of those Midwestern states in terms of its agriculture. We grew everything here,” Surls explained. “It sort of dates back to the founding of Los Angeles when people first came and looked at Los Angeles as a potential site for a mission. They saw that it had great soil, they saw that things grew well here and they thought, ‘ah ha, perfect place for farming.’ So that’s how it started.”

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“The home garden eliminates transportation and distribution costs and solves the marketing problem.”

By Frederic J Haskin
Los Angeles Times
March 16, 1927

In the greater part of the United States the time is at hand for getting out the spade, hoe and rake and starting a little preliminary work in the garden. That is, unless your home is in a city apartment and your garden is a box in a window ledge, and all the tools you need are wrapped up in one little old kitchen knife.

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A farmer, eh? Master of your own time, down to the city for a spree. Y’know, I’ve always wanted to break away and have a little farm in the country.”

[This article first appeared in American Mercury (November 1937).

I used to be a timid, thin man. I never got on very well in the city. When I was talking to people, they tended to drift away, or they turned to someone else and said: "Having nice weather, aren't we?" I didn't see in my job any of the heroic aspects my superiors were always glorying in, so probably I wasn't very good at it.

For a while I turned to poetry and wrote a beauty about the song of the hermit thrush, but everybody in the office thought it was la-di-da. I didn't like noise or smoke or subways or hurrying or playing golf or getting drunk Saturday nights, so I began to think there must be something wrong.

I went to a psychoanalyst who told me I disliked everything too much. For this I took a great dislike to the psychoanalyst. I refused to pay five bucks for this new hate, and the psychoanalyst ended by hating me. So I decided to "get away from it all" — to move from the city to the great quiet of the country and simplify my life. I bought a farm far up in New England, and I bought a cow, too. I had always wanted to own a cow and watch it cropping my grass while I dreamed the days away.

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In the spring of 1915, The Vacant Lots Cultivation Association in conjunction with the Toronto Rotary Club established over 80 garden allotments across the City of Toronto in under-utilized and vacant spaces.

From Soiled and Seeded Magazine
Issue 2 – Winter 2011

Excerpt:

Below is an article reproduced from The Rotarian, Volume VII, No. 5 November 1915, describing the success of the project’s inaugural year. The accompanying photos, not appearing in the original publication, are located in the City of Toronto Archives.

Vacant Lot Cultivation Yields $5,700
By B. A. Trestrail, Toronto Rotary Club

The land donated by citizens for public use for this purpose was divided into approximately one-eighth acre lots. A supply of ten varieties of vegetable seeds, a peck of seed potatoes, two dozen tomato plants and fifty cabbage plants were furnished free with each allotment.

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Washington, DC; Jac’s Presentation on Urban Agriculture at Wilson Center with Photo of Del-Mar-VA Greenhouse in Background; 2002; Photo by Wilson Center PR Department.

Issue 2 – Jac Smit tributes: On the past and the future of the urban agriculture movement Agriculture Movement

Reflections in tribute to Jac Smit
by Anne C. Bellows, Joe Nasr (editors); Diana Lee-Smith, Luc J. A. Mougeot, Michael Levenston, Peter Mann, Katherine Brown, Jerry Kaufman (contributors)
Volume 1 Issue 2 JAFSCD
December 2010
Highly recommended. Historical perspective on urban agriculture. Mike

Subscribe to the Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development (JAFSCD) here.

Excerpt:

The relationship between food and cities is newly maturing after decades in the shadows, with urban agriculture acting as a pivotal lynch pin in the development. To comprehend this reemergence, one must understand the role that Jac Smit, who passed away in 2009, played in it. His curiosity and vision pursued the ramifications of urban agriculture on planning for social, financial, and environmental systems and infrastructures, in and near cities, including job creation, food production and nutrition enhancement, gray – and wastewater recycling, urban composting, air cooling and cleaning, and the presence of a framework of green zones.

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1877. Upper right, “Tunnel From Dock”. Part of image: The Manhattan abattoir. By Kingsbury, V. L., artist. Harper’s weekly : a journal of civilization. Link.

The development of urban foodways in New York City

Archaeological Documentary Study No. 7 Line Extension/ Hudson Yards Rezoning, New York, New York
April 13, 2004

Excerpt:

Historically, meat marketing and processing facilities in Manhattan were established along the shoreline to facilitate the movement of livestock and feed since the waterfront, with accessible transportation routes, was ideal for receiving goods from Long Island, upstate New York, New Jersey, and eventually the Midwest. Manhattan’s supply of beef in the 19th and 20th centuries came from local slaughterhouses, with livestock arriving by rail at terminals on the west shore of the Hudson River. Large stock pens were maintained primarily in New Jersey, where the cattle were kept until needed by the slaughterhouses in Manhattan.

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Girls working in a garden in Chatham NY, 1917.

To the Editor of the New York Times:

By Amateur Farmer
Bronx
Feb 10, 1910
An early use of the term “City Farming” for home gardening. Mike

– According to his definition, I am a farmer, as I own and occupy a piece of ground, roughly speaking, 50 feet by 110 feet, located toward the northern part of the Bronx, but well within the boundaries of the Twenty-fourth Ward. I farm a piece about 25 feet by 70 feet; the balance of the ground is taken up by the house and a green – not lawn.

– and now after sixteen years’ cropping, the soil is in fine condition, fit to grow almost anything, and I can surely say that there has not been one in all these years when I have not been amply repaid for the labor and money expended.

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1899. Man working in large garden. See larger image here.

Impoverished Brooklyn Truck Gardeners Elbowing Old-Fashioned Agriculturists Out of Queens

New York Times
Feb 6, 1899
An early use of the term “City Farming” for commercial urban agriculture. Mike

The recently increased assessments on lands in the outlying districts of Queens Borough have caused many farmers there to sell their property and move outside the city limits, where the tax rate is less. These farmers have feared that they might have to sell at a loss, but developments within the last few days, it is said, show that some of the land commands prices much higher than the assessed valuations.

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First head gardener, Catherine Shapiro, working in City Farmer’s Demonstration Food Garden in 1982.

City Farmer promoted urban agriculture in 1982

By Canadian Press
Lethbridge Herald
March 20, 1982

Vancouver (CP Canadian Press) – An urban agriculture group is urging Vancouver residents to save money and reduce Canada’s dependence on foreign farmers by digging up lawns, parks and boulevards.

Michael Levenston of City Farmer estimates 26 square kilometres of arable land in the city are not growing food. And he suggests some of the effort that goes into creating lush lawns would be better spent on producing vegetables.

City Farmer sprouted with a 1978 grant from the federal Department of Energy, Mines and Resources. The original members were not gardeners but people hoping to cut 12 to 15 per cent of Canadian energy consumption devoted to producing food.

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Uppsala in 1858. The majority of the town land in Uppsala consisted of arable fields in 1858.

The food produced on the town lands was important in relation to urban food provision

By Annika Björklund
PhD Thesis
Annika Björklund has a Licentiate of Philosophy in Human Geography and a Bachelor of Science in Urban and Regional Planning from Stockholm University. This book is her Doctoral Thesis in Human Geography.
September 2010
303 pages

Abstract

This doctoral thesis analyses the role of historical urban agriculture in a long-time perspective, through a combination of overarching surveys of Swedish towns and detailed studies of one town – Uppsala in east-central Sweden. The study shows how agricultural land – town land – of various sizes was donated to towns repeatedly during medieval times and in the 16th and 17th centuries.

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When Modern Was Green: Life and Work of Landscape Architect Leberecht Miggeby. By David Haney. 2010

Leberecht Migge’s “Green Manifesto”: Envisioning a Revolution of Gardens

By David H. Haney
In Landscape Jrnl. 26(2):201-218 (2007)

Leberecht Migge’s “Green Manifesto,” published in Germany in 1919, represents one of the most overtly political tracts ever written by a landscape architect. In this document, Migge proposed that all social and economic problems of the German nation could be solved by creating as many gardens as possible, which included parks, but most importantly, small, intensive vegetable gardens where everyone could grow their own food. If “everyman” could be self-sufficient, then they supposedly would enjoy relative freedom from the domination of the capitalist system.

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Fresh vegetables were collected from gardens all around the coast for the men serving in minesweepers and small naval crafts.

Thousands upon thousands of vegetables were given out

“Another Women’s Voluntary Service (WVS) activity was centred on our shores. Men in minesweepers and small naval craft were often unable to spend long enough on shore to get fresh vegetables. In East Anglia, WVS members approached people who have been evacuated from their homes for permission to collect the vegetables from their gardens and take them to the docks. All around the coast and in Northern Ireland the scheme caught on. Thousands upon thousands of vegetables were given out. In winter cakes and mince pies were added to the hampers.”

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1908 Parks Annual Report image of children tending the De Witt Clinton Park Farm Garden.

Constant Gardens for New York

By Christine C. Quinn and Melissa Mark-Viverito
New York Times
August 18, 2010
Christine C. Quinn is the speaker of the New York City Council, and Melissa Mark-Viverito is the chairwoman of its parks committee.

Excerpt:

Community Gardens are as much a part of our city as the Empire State Building or Times Square.

Yet it wasn’t long ago that their existence was threatened. As mayor in the late 1990s, Rudolph Giuliani tried to auction them off to developers. But gardeners dug in, held rallies. One protester chained himself to a building in a garden. The state attorney general filed a lawsuit to stop the auctions. Some of the gardens were sold to nonprofit groups. And, in a settlement agreement in the lawsuit, almost all of the rest — nearly 300 of them — ended up under the jurisdiction of the Parks and Recreation Department. The city agreed not to sell many of them for eight years.

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Vacant Lot Transformed into a Garden by San Diego Firemen – in 1917

By Ben Jervey
The New Ideal at Good
Aug 11, 2010

Excerpt:

From The American City from 1917
“There has been agitation this season concerning the vacant city lots, and efforts have been made [throughout] the country to make such patches of land bring in returns in the way of crops, thus relieving the situation incident to the high cost of living. A group of firemen at one of the San Diego stations secured permission to cultivate a lot across the street from their building, which had been left vacant by the removal of an old stable.

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Inmates working. Photo By Marc Vasconcellos.

Save Our Prison Farms

This new Save Our Prison Farms website has been set up by the national campaign team to respond to growing public concern over the immanent shut down of Canada’s six prison farms. We believe that our government will reverse its misguided policy decision as it continues to discover that the vast majority of Canadians of all political stripes support this productive, cost effective, rehabilitative farm-based program.

Background

Canada’s six prison farms are located at,

• Pittsburgh and Frontenac Institutions in Kingston, Ontario
• Westmorland Institution in Dorchester, New Brunswick
• Rockwood Institution in Stoney Mountain near Winnipeg, Manitoba
• Riverbend Institution near Prince Albert, Saskatchewan
• Bowden Institution in Innisfail near Calgary, Alberta

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Haymaking (July) by Pieter Bruegel the Elder 1565. See larger, complete painting here. Note: click on ‘Miscellaneous paintings’.

In the time of Bruegel The Elder c. 1525 – 1569

From What Great Paintings Say Volume 1 by Rose-Marie and Rainer Hagen

“There was no more densely populated region north of the Alps than the Netherlands. This was largely due to higher wages. The textiles industry flourished: the Netherlandish ports attracted coastal trade from the Baltic in the north to Lisbon in the south; for several decades Antwerp, the site of the first stock exchange, was the economic hub of Europe.

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John Ameroso at a farm he started on Governor’s Island. Photo by Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times

“Anybody doing urban agriculture today should thank him personally”

By Tracie McMllan
New York Times
May 18, 2010

Excerpt:

John Ameroso didn’t hoe the rows of vegetables that help feed the Bronx at the Padre Plaza Success Garden in the borough’s Mott Haven section. He didn’t pick any tomatoes from the vines at the Brooklyn Rescue Mission’s farm. And he didn’t turn the composting bins that kept East New York Farms! fertile ground for collards, cilantro and chard.

But he’s responsible for all of it, along with the rest of more than 18 tons of produce grown in city lots for market last year.

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Kid’s program teaches rice cultivation. The Lanna village envelopes a terraced rice paddy farmed by blue-shirted farmers and resident water buffalo. (The harvested rice is donated to the local temple.) See larger photo here.

Chiang Mai’s Mandarin Oriental resort is landscaped with rice paddies

Lanna Kids Property Tour

Kids can explore the resort’s grounds by horse-cart or trishaw and make visits to various interesting places, such as the Buddhist prayer hall and the spirit shrine. The highlight of the excursion will be a visit to the paddy fields where they will meet the resort’s resident family of water buffalos.

Kids will be offered a change into farmer’s hats, pants, shirts and boots and wind their way through the rice paddies to the shady field hut where they can sit and ride a buffalo and learn the special technique of planting rice.

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