4 minute read
Spare Ground
The Swift Transformation of Urban Agriculture
Words by: Lauren Rabbottini
Photos by: Brandon Portillo and Ngan Tran
Leaning against a cold, porous, hundred year old stone wall, Zac Efron sipped the fresh water from a fountain while carefully paying attention to a Parisian urban planner explaining its innovative approaches to many urban concerns. While unpacking the many solutions Parisians had concocted, the topic and benefits of urban farming—a method of growing produce in traditionally urban and empty plots of land— was highlighted. In overpopulated cities that are nearly running out of land, urban agriculture provides a new way of transforming previously overlooked space into flourishing farms filled with local produce. Within the past decades, previous city dwellers flocked to the suburbs in the movement of suburbanization. This stark shift occurred in predominantly middle-upper class and white populations, changing the economy of inner cities. Suburbanization led to many large grocery stores to follow in the wealthy and white populations and to move to the suburbs. In doing what may seem like a profitable business move, the flight of these large grocery stores to the suburbs led to many populations in the cities to not have access to affordable fresh produce, creating many food deserts scattered throughout the United States. “Geographic areas where residents’ access to affordable, healthy food options (especially fresh fruits and vegetables) is restricted or nonexistent due to the absence of grocery stores within convenient traveling distance”, is how the Food Empowerment Project—a nonprofit dedicated to raising awareness on healthy food options— defines food deserts. With the preexisting grocery stores relocated to the suburbs, many in cities were left with their local bodega or convenience stores to rely on to grocery shop.
Even in cities, grocery stores are still isolated from non-white populations, as public transportation may take an inordinate amount of time to reach these stores from various neighborhoods. With populations completely isolated from affordable fresh produce within urban areas, inner-city residents looked for alternative methods of bringing the fresh produce to their communities and neighbors. Gaining popularity in the 1970s in major cities, community organizations focused on establishing gardens to improve the landscape of an area while also providing locally grown food for its residents. With this history deeply rooted in community development, urban farming has become an integral part of producing and selling food to local communities. Urban farming is defined as “growing or producing food in a city or heavily populated town or municipality”, by Greensgrow, an educational urban farm in Philadelphia, PA. While similarly driven to grow and produce locally grown produce, urban agriculture strays from community gardens, as it does involve selling and profiting on the grown produce. Regardless, urban agriculture offers a method of using space in cities to grow and enhance the diets of those in the area. With its goals rooted in bettering the city’s diets, urban agriculture achieves beyond this to impact the local economy, carbon footprint, and culture. Growing produce in an urban agriculture system allows the farmers to avoid middlemen and transportation in distributing their goods due to the local nature of the business. This allows for more of the profit to go directly to the farmers and to emit less carbon dioxide in transportation, as distances traveled are drastically reduced. While urban agriculture is not the perfect solution for all urban problems, it offers the unique opportunity to improve quality of life, both for humans and for the earth.
A fantastic example of transforming the surrounding urban area is located in Boston: the Urban Farming Institute (UFI) in Mattapan, MA, is focused on developing local methods of growing food and a healthy community. Aside from training farmers and educating the general population, the UFI searches for empty, unused lots within the city and transforms them into fully functional farms. By establishing a connection between the city officials of Boston, UFI established itself as more than just a community movement but rather an influential and integral member of the city of Boston. With many goals and aspirations, the UFI infiltrated all aspects of the city to better advocate for their long term goals of improving the health of the community and access to produce. As the UFI exemplifies a larger scale farm built within the city of Boston, many of these urban farms take shape on empty rooftops, truly bringing to life the previously ignored space. The Boston Medical Center, just a few stops from Boston University’s campus, houses the first rooftop farm built on top of a hospital. By straying from the traditionally used empty lot, the hospital is able to move further towards its goal of being carbon neutral while also being able to provide its patients with fresh produce. To ensure no food grown on the 2,658 square-foot farm goes to waste, the hospital has a food pantry dedicated to providing nutritious aid to its lowincome or nutrition illness related patients. While urban agriculture can look very different from city to city, the local impact is not reliant on the magnitude or scale of the endeavor. This novel method of using overlooked land to increase access to produce and greenspace within an urban area enables urban communities to begin to tackle many issues in cities. This community driven push for instituting more sustainable growing tactics lets locals decide what space could be repurposed for the bettering of the community, enabling a completely grassroots method of improving underused spaces. Urban agriculture, specifically in Boston, highlights how transforming previously ignored and misused space into a more positive space positively impacts cities, communities, and Zac Efron’s opinion of the city.
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