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
urban agriculture
Grazing with goats in the Crescent City
Goats for grazing is a super idea for the many open, untended sites we have in New Orleans and throughout the U.S. This is a simple fundraising idea for an New Orleans entrepreneur that wants to use goats to graze public and private green space. She has already been contracted to use goats on a park in the city (Brechtel Park) starting in 2014 and needs support to get her business prepared for the work ahead.
I see she also sees this as public art, which I’d have to hear more about to understand I guess, but the goat grazing is by itself an idea that I can certainly support. Maybe you can too?
…To comment further on the public art point, I’d rather this be seen chiefly as a serious farming and open space issue that helps urban people see that livestock can safely serve many roles in the larger natural survival loop, even in our ordered urban environment.
Designing Urban Agriculture: A Complete Guide to the Planning, Design, Construction, Maintenance and Management of Edible Landscapes — City Farmer News
This book, coupled with Tanya Denckla Cobb’s excellent book on urban agriculture organizing,Reclaiming Our Food: How the Grassroots Food Movement is Changing What We Eat seem like a good pair to have in any local non-profit’s library.
Helping Public Markets Grow 