The state of urban farming: It isn't easy being black and green

The morning’s rain is still close on the air when Karen Washington unlocks the gate to her Bronx community garden, the Garden of Happiness, with a bag of food scraps in hand. “I love when it rains,” she says, following a mulched path through 36 plots of produce, including tomatoes, collard greens and herbs like pipicha and papalo. “I don’t have to water.” She unlatches another gate, to a coop where a dozen chickens are waiting. “Hey girls, good morning!” she says, scattering the scraps and some feed before letting the chickens out for breakfast. Just over a decade ago, Washington saw nearby gardens at risk: Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani sought to auction plots throughout the city for development, leading Washington and like-minded neighbors to form a five-garden coalition called La Familia Verde. Today, its yields — grown by neighbors, both for themselves and for La Familia Verde’s farmers’ market — are something of an edible metaphor for urban agriculture’s growth, popularly and politically. Nationally, organizations like Growing Power, founded by MacArthur fellow Will Allen, and Tanikka Cunningham’s Healthy Solutions, recognized by Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move!” campaign, are working toward sustainable agriculture and food security in under-served communities both urban and rural. As efforts in these demographics dovetail, a natural symmetry emerges between local, micro groups like La Familia Verde, who work to feed and educate their own communities, and macro ones like Healthy Solutions, which builds networks for increasing rural farmers’ distribution, in part by selling their produce in needy urban communities. Like her counterparts in cities across the country, Washington works to bring fresh fruit and vegetables into a community where residents, many low-income, are often steps from a bodega but miles from a head of lettuce. The Garden of Happiness began as a beautification project in 1985, and since then, La Familia Verde has enticed passersby with sidewalk stands of produce, launched social initiatives like health fairs and voter-registration campaigns, and started a farmers’ market (which it runs with four rural New York farms, to supplement the coalition’s crops). The market’s prices, comparable to local stores’, haven’t changed in eight years. They won’t turn away a hungry shopper who can’t pay, Washington says, or one who promises an IOU. Still, Washington occasionally has to defend the idea of $2 carrots when the nearest grocery store charges $1. “I say, ‘Here’s a farmer, who’s traveling from upstate to bring you fresh vegetables—he has to pay gas and tolls, so the money you’re paying is supporting him.’ A lot of it is education,” she said, “so that the consumer feels empowered with the knowledge that they’re buying [what they’re buying] because it’s sustainable for the farmer, and because they understand the dynamics of food: Whose hands touched that food? How far did it travel? How was it handled?” One organization La Familia Verde works with, Just Food, runs this type of model throughout New York: It started its City Farms program in 2005 — offering training and technical support to community growers, and pairing them with rural farmers to fortify their neighborhood markets — and now assists 18 such markets. (Washington is on the board.) “People have always been growing food in New York City,” said Just Food executive director Jacquie Berger. “It’s been an important component of people’s lives, especially those moving from the South, anywhere with an agricultural background, to connect to their roots and stay connected to where food comes from.” (more…)

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