I am honored to be a member of this roundtable, and to be a new contributor to The Nature of Cities site. This topic is a bit difficult for me as I believe in cities and in their need to expand every type of good health and wealth creation – which certainly includes agriculture – but I worry about the obsession with what is called urban agriculture. In my city, talking about the corner garden or the delivery system for food into “food swamps” often takes every bit of the conversation and efforts of many urban food organizations, and so as a result, I find that few of them understand the challenges and successes of farming and harvesting past the city limits.
I believe that farmers markets missions are often about connecting the rural and the urban, and that was certainly true in the founding markets of our city, the Crescent City Farmers Markets. And so the fact that my city has not seen a large increase in the number of markets or in farmer/vendors bringing goods in tells me that this gap is growing, rather than shrinking. Rather, the city advocates for food have focused almost entirely on “demand” solutions that do not spend any time on linking new urban growers with the experienced rural farmer, or in curating any new or ongoing conversations about price, seasonality and sustainability.
And having said all of that, I also see innovation happening in many areas of urban food and believe that those activists can positively influence rural growers delaying a push to resilient, sustainable agriculture. My only question is, who will start the conversation?
The Nature of Cities Roundtable