Urban Agriculture in Providence, Rhode Island

“The Providence Urban Agriculture Task Force envisions doubling the amount of food being grown in and around Providence in the next ten years. This will be achieved by increasing the number of home gardeners, community gardeners, community gardens, commercial community agriculture projects, and urban agriculture businesses.

“In Providence, 59 food gardens were counted in about 5 hours of walking in 4 neighborhoods. Fifty-nine food gardens is an undercount, and only a very small part of the City’s 25 neighborhoods was surveyed.

“It seems reasonable to estimate that more than 500 food gardens are to be found in the city. Southside Community Land Trust has space for 200 garden plots. Several other community gardens exist across the city. Extrapolating from these numbers, we estimate that there are 1000 food gardens in the city of Providence. In a city of 63,000 families that means something like 1.6% of families in Providence are growing food.”

A number of excellent reports can be found on the Urban Agriculture in Providence web site. Link here.