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FIGURE 10. Historic Timeline of Urban Agriculture in Philadelphia
FIGURE 10. Historic Timeline of Urban Agriculture in PhiladelphiaDISPLACEMENT COLLECTIVE ACTION COMMODIFICATION OF LAND EXPLOITATION & ERASURE EXCLUSIONARY INSTITUTIONS
PRE-1600s
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The Lenni Lenape or “original people” of the Delaware River valley, sustain themselves by hunting, fishing, gathering foods from the land, and subsistence farming. They practice companion planting by growing the “Three Sisters”—squash, beans, and corn—together. People lived in harmony with the land, migrated to avoid depleting natural resources, and understood the land as a living entity, to be protected, and not owned by any one individual.
1630s
European colonists (first Dutch and Swedes, then Finns, English, Welsh, German, and Scotch-Irish) arrive, bringing food, farming practices, and disease. The Lenape suffer devastating epidemics at the hands of colonists. Violent conflicts over land and trade further threaten their survival.
1681–82
William Penn arrives, claiming lands unlawfully granted by King Charles II of England for what would become the Pennsylvania colony. Penn establishes “a large Towne or City” that we know today as Philadelphia. Although the colonists and Lenape negotiate a peace treaty beneath an Elm Tree at Shackamaxon along the Delaware River, increased colonist population and violence eventually displace the Lenape people.
1684
Enslaved Africans stolen from their homes and families are shipped across the Middle Passage, and disembark in Philadelphia to be sold into slavery by and for Quaker settlers and then forced into debilitating unpaid physical labor and unlivable conditions. Among those stolen are African agriculturists who bring with them ancestral knowledge of farming methods and seeds for crops that become mainstays in American agriculture and cuisine, such as yams, black eyed peas, rice, okra, collard greens, millet, and melons.
1680s
“Liberty Lands,” 10,000 acres north of William Penn’s original Philadelphia City plan, are set aside to be granted—for free—to white colonists.
This stolen land is given only to those who purchase large tracts of land in Pennsylvania.
1784
Agricultural innovations and entrepreneurship take root. Landreth Seeds at 12th & Market Streets becomes the first large seed distributor in the United States. 1785 Subsistence farming shifts to become more profit-driven. The Philadelphia Society for the Promotion of Agriculture experiments with agricultural practices.
1865
Congress ratifies the 13th Amendment,
abolishing slavery in the US.
New laws emerge to oppress freed Black people. The Black Codes (Jim Crow laws) perpetuate segregation and disenfranchisement of Black and other non-whites.
1827
The Philadelphia Free Produce Association is founded, part of a national movement to abolish slavery by eliminating demand for goods produced by enslaved people. The subscription service provides customers with “free” produce, grown without slave labor.
1680s–1860s 1865
As European colonists seek to grow profitable crops (e.g., tobacco, rice, coffee, cocoa, and cotton), the demand for stolen land, stolen people, and exploited labor increases. Extractive practices result in huge growth for the US economy and private wealth for white landowners, initiating the generational wealth gap that remains today.
President Abraham Lincoln signs Special Field Order No. 15, announcing land “set apart for the settlement of the negroes [sic] now made free by the acts of war and the proclamation of the President of the United States.” The 40 Acres and a Mule idea was a radical, short-lived effort to provide reparations to newly freed slaves, proposed by a group of Black ministers who asked for land to “best take care of ourselves.” President Andrew Johnson overturns the Order less than a year later.
1876
The Centennial Exhibition opens in Philadelphia, with significant focus on agriculture and horticulture.
1877
Maule’s Seeds publishes
the first seed catalog, an innovation that changes the industry.
1875
Ridge Avenue Farmers Market is built in the Francisville neighborhood of Philadelphia. Soon after, the Farmers’ Hotel opens nearby to host farmers after they deliver their meat and produce to the city.
1870s
More than one million immigrants—many from Europe, but also from South America and the Caribbean—arrive in Philadelphia, drawn by the promise of economic opportunity. The city’s
neighborhoods shift from “mild to pronounced segregation by income and ethnicity.”
1892
Growing unemployment among the working class results in the return of urban gardening, supported by philanthropic efforts that position farming as a social safety net. The Vacant Lot Cultivation Association starts a Philadelphia chapter with 27 acres of vacant land for cultivation by 96 participating families. Food grown is kept for consumption or sold with profits shared among participants.
1900
Bethel Burial Ground in South Philadelphia is recognized as a park and recreation space. It becomes the site of the city’s first Black community garden, planted in 1904; radishes, turnips, lettuce, peas, tomatoes, lima beans, carrots, and string beans are grown on 250 individual plots.
LATE 1860s
Although slavery is abolished, the demand for exploitable labor to sustain the Southern agricultural economy remains. White landowners adopt sharecropping for the illusion of employment rather than enslavement, imposting crushing expenses (e.g., the cost to use the land, supplies, and housing) on Black farmers, who still work in brutal conditions and without fair compensation or the ability to save, while white generational wealth accrues. These conditions, coupled with the Jim Crow laws, fuel migration of Southern Blacks to northern cities, including Philadelphia, in the coming decades.
The first Great Migration begins. Many Black tenant farmers and landowners forced to seek relief from Jim Crow laws, lynchings, and the sabotage of Black land and businesses in the South move to northern cities, including Philadelphia, bringing agricultural traditions with them.
Industrial jobs are plentiful due to war efforts and decreased European immigration, but Black residents face new forms of brutality, including continued housing and union segregation, racist policies, and police brutality.
LATE 1910s–1940s
During World War I and World War II, residents plant Victory Gardens at private residences and in public parks to reduce pressure on the food system. During the Great Depression, urban agriculture experiences a resurgence as a means of subsistence and survival. Government-backed demolition clears so-called “blighted” areas of homes and residents, permanently displacing entire communities. Urban renewal displaces nearly 13,600 families in Philadelphia by the late 1960s, over 72% of whom are people of color. While much to the cleared land is redeveloped, some people use cleared land to grow food.
1920s
New Jersey pig farmers begin collecting
residential food waste in Philadelphia to feed their pigs, a practice that continues until 1995.
1910s–1930s
Black land ownership in the South is severely threatened by federal policies
that exclude farmers of color. The Agricultural Adjustment Administration, a New Deal program to restore agricultural prosperity, allots significantly less land and economic relief to African Americans.
1950s
Philadelphia loses residents, jobs, and the tax base needed to provide city services. As government policies and programs shift resources and jobs out of cities and into suburbs, white families flee the city and again experience vast economic gains. The shift of manufacturing to the South and overseas results in job loss and abandoned, vacant property across the city. Decades of disinvestment follow. Communities that remain in place find new ways to grow and rebuild, often reclaiming vacant lots where rowhomes once stood to garden and grow food.
1970s
Food and wellness become more politicized, as resistance and acts of self-determination surge. Urban agriculture begins to take form in ways we understand today, with communities reclaiming land in their neighborhoods to return to the practice of communal self-determination. In gardens that still stand today, including Glenwood Green Acres in North Philadelphia and Eastwick Community Garden near the Philadelphia Airport, Black and immigrant families begin to cultivate heritage vegetables such as collard greens, lettuce, peppers, eggplant, squash, string beans, okra, and blackberries to eat and share with neighbors. Gardeners tending formerly abandoned land that they don’t own risk eviction and displacement.
1974
Philadelphia Green, a program of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, begins, supporting the development and stewardship of community gardens and public green spaces.
1977
The Penn State Cooperative Extension launches its Urban Gardening Program. 1986
The Neighborhood Gardens Association, now Neighborhood Gardens Trust (NGT), forms to preserve and promote community gardening citywide by holding agricultural land in trust for growers, gardeners, and future generations.
1969
The Black Panthers begin a school breakfast program for students; the program is eventually adopted by the US government.
The Food Trust brings the Farm to City movement to Philadelphia with farmers markets across the city.
1996
Congress cuts funding for the USDA’s urban gardening programs. Penn State Extension soon scales back programs dramatically. Grassroots neighborhood groups such as the Urban Tree Connection and East Park Revitalization Alliance emerge, dedicated to food, land, and people. 2008
University of Pennsylvania researchers report that community
gardens in Philly have suffered a
55% loss since the 1996 cut to urban gardening funding. 2013
The Garden Justice Legal Initiative launches Grounded in Philly, offering education and pro bono legal support to gardens and farms at risk of losing their land. 2016
Soil Generation leads a large group of growers to City Hall for Philadelphia’s first ever Urban Agriculture Public Hearing. Philadelphia’s Food Policy Advisory Council begins a pre-planning process with growers, laying the ground work for the City’s first urban agriculture strategic plan.
2019
Philadelphia Parks & Recreation launches the planning process for the City’s first urban agriculture strategic plan, Growing from the Root. 2022
USDA names Philadelphia one of 17 cities to receive a dedicated Farm Service Agency
County Office of Urban Agriculture and
Innovation.
1940s
Industrialization in Puerto Rico forces people off their land and into metropolitan areas, as well as off the island and into the US, a process that continues for the next three decades. After World War II, manufacturing jobs draw large numbers of Puerto Ricans to Philadelphia, where they make a significant imprint on the urban agriculture community, integrating Boricua and Afro-Puerto Rican culture in many North Philly neighborhoods. Las Parcelas and other community gardens around Norris Square in North Philly take root by the mid 1970s, celebrating and preserving Puerto Rican heritage, culture, and horticulture within Philadelphia.
1960s
Refugees from Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos arrive in the US en masse in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, known in Vietnam as the Resistance War Against America.
Families fleeing violent conflict settle in South Philadelphia, bringing flavors and growing practices from home. In time, whole commercial strips are reactivated by Southeast Asian businesses, food markets, and restaurants, only to again risk displacement by rising property values and gentrification.
