Urban Agriculture

Community gardens are public and nonprofit groups of people who come together to manage plots of land. Some community gardens offer education instruction in how to best grow different crops. Others act as a shared service to the homeless for sustenance. Boston has over 180 community gardens, some handed down and managed by families for generation after generation. Many cities have Victory gardens or plots of land set aside to produce food and built during the period between WW I and WWII. Research community parks in your state and visit one or two to understand the community that gathers around the care and tending of plants. Map locations of different community gardens in your city and your state.

Agriculture is a central subject of many higher education institutions, and colleges and universities are in cities. Many urban farms associated with colleges whose student and community programs study better and more efficient ways of producing food. These fields and gardens offer courses and sometimes garden plots and goods to the public and integrate community learning with student-run organic farms, entrepreneurial farm start-ups, to agribusiness training centers, university farms provide a source of education and opportunity for communities to shift from grocery store to local fresh food consumption. Urban Agriculture offers many career paths including horticulture, crop farming, livestock (pigs, cattle, goats, microlivestock), marketing and research. What college and university farms and programs are in your city? Look at their offerings to the public. Make a chart to share what community classes, garden plots, and produce are for sale.

Food needs spaces to grow. Grown outdoors, most homes and school grounds have room for small vegetable gardens and fruit and nut orchards. Neighborhoods often have underutilized parks perfect for a community garden. Flat roofs can also offer large areas for growing food. Paris France has one of the largest urban acreage of food growing with raised beds, vertical farming, hydroponics and other strategies. Make a diagram of different layouts of raised beds for urban gardens and then place them on an aerial map of your community. How many square feet of food fit in each bed? How many square feet of food production have you added to your open green space of schools and small underutilized plots of land. How many square feet of flat roof farming can you add? Where could you plant fruit orchards? Where could you plant nut growing trees? Make an urban agriculture poster to support your community with local food growth.

Vacant lots are abundant in many cities. Research spin farming and see how simple it is to begin summer crops. Take a look at Spin Farming Models and be amazed at the potential income of farming vacant lots. Take a nearby neighborhood and map all of the open lots. Calculate how many square feet of food vacant areas could add in one growing season. Some cities rent the open lots for as little as 1$ to encourage people to farm. Review the Spin Photo Albums to see the sequence of preparing the soil, planning the plantings, seeding, thinning, weeding, watering and harvesting!

This is your chance to expand your understanding of different ways to grow food in your city. From outdoor farm fields, year-round growing greenhouses, towers of vertical farming, infill lot neighborhood farming, and flat rooftop farming, cities have multiple ways to increase agricultural production. Diagram the different growing types. Using Google Scribble Maps, transform your city into an urban area that feeds its people by locating space where year-round greenhouses and vertical farms produce and distribute locally grown food. Total the new square footage of food production you propose to add to your city.