The Bookworm: Street Farm

The Bookworm reading the best and weeding the rest

A REVIEW BY LEEANNA TATUM OF STREET FARM:GROWING FOOD, JOBS, AND HOPE ON THE URBANFRONTIER BY MICHAEL ABLEMAN

Billed as a how-to, Michael Ableman’s book is more inspirational than instructional. But the examples of agriculture’s ability to do far more than merely provide sustenance abound in this non-fiction depiction of Ableman’s urban farms in Vancouver, British Columbia.

The urban farms scattered throughout downtown Vancouver are collectively called Sole Food and not only serve to provide a source of fresh produce to the City but also provide jobs for the local residents, many of whom would be unemployable elsewhere due to their drug addiction, lack of marketable skills and/or mental and psychological issues.

Ableman does a fantastic, if somewhat disjointed, job of weaving together the stories of unique individuals, agricultural endeavors, administrative

pitfalls and social and economic successes and failures that define his urban agricultural experiment. His storytelling is vivid and embraces a corseness that is reflective of the hard and downtrodden environment in which his farms exist; surrounded by concrete, traffic, rampant drug use, homelessness and industrial debris.

His book takes readers through his journey as he endeavored to begin a project that was virtually unheard of here in North America: bringing full-scale farming into an urban landscape and making it

Though a far cry from a howto manual on starting up an urban agricultural program, this book would definitely be a great starting resource for community leaders, non-profit managers, farmers, social workers, or others who are looking to implement an urban agricultural program. It would also be inspirational for those who use agriculture as a platform for social programs like drug and alcohol rehabilitation. It readily addresses the intersection of food production and emotional and social restoration.