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The Editors' Desk
It’s the height of summer, and the Civil Eats team couldn’t think of a better topic to dig into than urban ag. Growing food in urban and communal spaces might have seemed novel when we first started reporting on urban agriculture more than 14 years ago. It has since become a serious endeavor, with tens of thousands of people and projects dedicated to growing fresh, local food for their communities.
Urban farming, and the attendant issues—food deserts/food apartheid, food sovereignty, and food access—remain the topics of some of our most-read stories. And for good reason: The need for community-driven solutions have become even clearer in the face of rising food insecurity, the supply chain crises of the pandemic, and the increasing desire for homegrown our own food. It has also received local,
state, and federal funding.
In this issue, our feature story reveals how the latter—funding for urban ag initiatives from the USDA—might be on the chopping block. We also follow up on earlier reporting on a growing trend in urban farms atop convention centers and take a look at an innovative urban farming program in Chicago. We check in and talk to the director of the Mayor's Office of Urban Agriculture in New York City. And we created an interactive map showcasing some of your favorite urban farms.
Thank you for being part of the Civil Eats membership program; your ideas and support fuel us. If you'd like to increase your support for our work with a tax-deductible donation, please click the button below.
Our next Deep Dish newsletter will be sent in September. Until then, we wish you all a restful—and cool—summer.
~ The Civil Eats Editors
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Member Updates
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Falani Spivey at the Urban Incubator Farm. (Photo credit: Lisa Held)
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First Look: Congress Puts Federal Support for Urban Farming on the Chopping Block
By LISA HELD
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On a Monday morning in June, four farmers worked in fields framed by a Baptist church, an elementary school, and a community garden. The air was heavy with heat. Earlier, sleeping bees had been snuggled up in Christina Flores’ snapdragon and marigold blooms; now, butterflies flitted between the flowers she tended. Across a grassed waterway filled with clovers and vetches, Isaac Zama, grower of West African crops including bitter leaf and njama njama (a variety of huckleberry), used a broadfork to prepare a bed for planting.
At the top of a gradual slope, Falani Spivey leaned on a shovel as she pointed to several rows of malagueta and Carolina reaper peppers and described the salad greens she planned to plant for fall harvesting. As a former “nomadic gardener” growing food on tiny plots in multiple locations, Spivey was most excited about the five varieties of watermelon plants already in the ground. “Last year, I wasn’t able to grow much because I didn’t have the space,” she said. “And watermelons need so much space!”
Spivey, Zama, and Flores operate three of 10 different farm businesses at the Urban Farm Incubator at Watkins Regional Park in Prince George's County, Maryland, located just outside of Washington, D.C. and home to nearly 1 million people. Created by Eco City Farms and several partner organizations, the incubator is meant to provide a stepping stone for early career farmers who want to grow more food in densely populated areas but struggle to access land and other resources.
It’s one of dozens of diverse projects funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Office of Urban Agriculture and Innovative Production (OUAIP). Although the larger agency has historically focused on serving large-scale farmers in rural areas, it has granted more than $50 million since 2020 to build school and community gardens in Hawaii, expand residential composting in Fort Worth, Texas, and add hydroponic production to an urban farm in Dubuque, Iowa, among dozens of other projects. The office also oversees a federal advisory committee and is working to improve technical assistance and resources for urban farmers, with the establishment of 17 urban service centers announced just last week.
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However, the USDA’s work has been stymied by a lack of funding, and now the urban agriculture office could disappear entirely. While
lawmakers authorized $25 million annually in the 2018 Farm Bill, Congress must reallocate the money each year. Despite high demand for grant funding, the latest appropriations bills in the House and Senate would eliminate the funding entirely. National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) just sent policymakers a letter signed by 140 organizations, farms, and businesses, urging them to change their
minds. At the same time, they’re pushing Congress to use the upcoming farm bill to raise the office’s annual budget to $50 million in mandatory funding, which would secure the program’s future.
The OUAIP is a rare example of a new set of programs created in the last farm bill in response to advocacy by NSAC and other groups. Those groups pointed to urban
farming’s unique potential to improve food security for the increasing number of Americans who reside in cities while also benefiting community health and well-being in multifaceted ways.
And under the leadership of Secretary Tom Vilsack, the agency has leaned into its new role. “Our office is really helping employees at all levels . . . to understand that USDA supports agriculture regardless of the size of the operation, where it's located, or how the products are produced,” said Brian Guse, who leads the OAIUP and its team of six.
Now, as the office faces an existential threat, advocates are concerned about losing momentum on a wide array of important projects. “The office has done great work in a very short amount of time,” said Hannah Quigley, a policy specialist at NSAC. “And there's just so much demand.”
The Need for On-the-Ground Infrastructure
In its first round of grants in 2020, OUAIP had funds to support just 4 percent of the projects submitted. In 2021 and 2022, agency officials were able to draw from money provided through the American Rescue Plan. But even with that influx, they still only funded 40 percent of eligible projects.
“This is a program that is heavily oversubscribed,” said Guse, who explained that the applications have also gotten better as his team has conducted outreach with farmers around the country. On July 18, the USDA announced it had awarded $7.4 million to 25 projects out of more than 300 applications for 2023—just over 8 percent.
Projects that do get support can focus on planning or direct implementation. The Urban Farm Incubator is an example of the latter, and the farm bought two new hoop houses, an irrigation system, and four shipping containers with its $300,000 grant.
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“A lot of times somebody will offer you their backyard or a church property, but you’re not going to have water, electrical, or a place for a dump truck to back into.”
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Land access is consistently cited as the biggest barrier to success faced by young, beginning, and under-resourced farmers, especially in urban and suburban areas where real estate is more expensive. But Jon Berger, the incubator’s farm manager, said the challenge can be more complicated than finding a patch of ground. Eco City Farms partnered with the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission, which owned
the land and was eager to support the project, but infrastructure was the key missing piece.
“A lot of times, somebody will offer you their backyard or a church property,” he said. “But you’re not going to have water, electrical, or a place for a dump truck to back into.”
Infrastructure is one area in which the OUAIP money has made a real impact, Quigley said. “It’s one of the few grants that actually allows [farms] to buy production equipment.”
To that end, Berger will soon oversee the installation of additional shipping containers with the sides cut out for ventilation. Inside, food waste from the nearby town of Edmonton will be transformed into compost the farmers will use to add fertility to their fields. That project is being funded by a second award through the OAIUP’s composting grant program.
Planning and Policies That Support Urban Farming
In New Haven, Connecticut, the city’s food system policy division also made use of one of those composting grants. It used $90,000 to expand a facility run by Common Ground High School students, who turn the food scraps from their cafeteria into fertilizer for the school’s 1-acre diversified learning farm.
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Inside one of the hoop houses at the Urban Farm Incubator. (Photo credit: Lisa Held)
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But Latha Swamy and Kimberly Acosta have much broader goals, and they’ve been supported by the OUAIP. With a $500,000 planning grant, the pair initiated a three-year, community-rooted process to create an urban agriculture master plan. The hope, says Swamy, the division’s director, was to address their small city’s “deep and enduring economic and social disparities.”
The grant paid for Acosta to run the process and 33 members of a community advisory board to meet once a month. During the meetings, Acosta provides research on urban agriculture and the board talks through how to apply it to policies, resources, and programs that will work for their city. Swamy and Acosta also hold public meetings for the broader community.
“We have a lot of very diverse growers, but those who make the decisions or have conversations around policy are not reflective of New Haven and all its diversity. That prevents policymaking that really meets all community needs,” Acosta said. In September, when the process concludes, they’ll present a plan that remedies that, with recommendations on new zoning, for example, and resources that the city should make available.
OUAIP grants are supporting other urban agriculture planning processes focused on community input and equity in Newburgh, New York, Tempe, Arizona, and Washington County, Oregon.
At the national level, the new advisory committee on urban agriculture is developing its own recommendations. The USDA selected the first 12 members from among more than 300 applicants, and they include small-scale urban farmers, representatives of indoor agricultural businesses, and researchers. Since the committee’s first public meeting in March 2022, 4,400 people have registered to attend, with more than 250 in-person or written comments provided. During the meetings, members propose recommendations on how the agency might better support farming and food systems in urban areas and vote on each one. After the fifth meeting in August, a summary report of their recommendations will be delivered to Secretary Vilsack.
The Future of Federal Support for Urban Farms
What Vilsack will do with those recommendations depends on many factors, but if Congress zeros out funding for OUAIP for next year, it’s unclear how long the office will even continue to operate.
The 2023 Farm Bill could also alter the course of the USDA’s support for urban farming. The biggest ask from NSAC and other advocacy groups is to boost the office’s funding to $50 million and make it mandatory, which would take it out of the annual appropriations process and guarantee its existence long term. To that end, Senators John Fetterman (D-Pennsylvania) and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) will soon introduce a marker bill dubbed the “Supporting Urban and Innovative Farming Act of 2023.”
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“We want to show people that you don't have to have a farm to have something to eat or to have something green.”
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The bill also expands eligibility for grants, investments in research on systems such as hydroponics and aquaponics, and reforms intended to improve technical assistance offered to urban farmers, so that farmers growing vegetables on rooftops begin to have access to the same kinds of USDA resources farmers growing wheat on thousands of acres are used to.
“We are still hearing that when the [urban ag] office was created, farmers flocked to their local [USDA] service centers to ask for help, and not every office was able to answer questions for those growers,” Quigley said. “We're looking for the farm bill to be a bit more directive about the type of technical assistance that needs to be available and incorporated across state and local USDA agencies.”
In the meantime, Guse said, OUAIP is working with the USDA’s boots on the ground, such as employees in local Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) offices, to better equip them with tools to serve urban growers. They’re also prioritizing building networks of people growing food in cities so that those individuals can share knowledge and resources. On July 21, Vilsack traveled to Philadelphia to announce the establishment of 17 urban service centers for city growers. In each city, the USDA chose a partner organization with local expertise. For example, in Philadelphia, Pasa Sustainable Agriculture will offer trainings and support for urban farmers.
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Isaac Zama's buckets, planted to demonstrate techniques for growing food in urban spaces where land is unavailable. (Photo credit: Lisa Held)
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At the Urban Farm Incubator, research and practices that could be used to inform that kind of future assistance and collaboration are already underway. Two researchers from the University of Maryland stopped by to take soil and leafy green samples for a project evaluating urban farm microbes and their impacts on health and food safety. Farmer Isaac Zama talked at length with Berger, the farm manager, about ways he might
control the beetles eating his callaloo plants without harsh chemicals.
At the same time, as it often does in dense areas, the farm work was already spilling out into the surrounding
community, offering food and connection. Zama was eager to point out collections of peppers, potatoes, and basil that he had planted into buckets instead of the ground to use as a teaching opportunity for children and adults. “We want to show people that you don't have to have a farm to have something to eat or to have something green,” he said.
Meanwhile, Spivey was planning to host “pick your own pepper” days in August and sell her watermelons and watermelon juice on-site, timed to when churchgoers across the street would be leaving services. As the day continued to heat up, it was hard to imagine who wouldn’t be grateful for that kind of neighbor.
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(Photo courtesy of Growing Home)
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Chicago’s Growing Home Is Feeding Neighbors and Setting Its Sights Higher
By CASSIE M. CHEW
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When Janelle St. John was hired by Growing Home, Inc. four years ago, most of the kale, chard, tomatoes, beets, napa cabbage, carrots, and collard greens grown on the 1.5-acre organic farm in Chicago's Englewood neighborhood were largely destined for farmers’ markets that served the city’s more affluent communities.
Today, the farm’s neighbors consume as much as three-quarters of its 150 varieties of vegetables and herbs. With a median annual income of just under $25,000, the Englewood community on the south side of Chicago is home to some of the city’s most impoverished residents.
Yet despite the new distribution strategy, St. John, now the farm's executive director, says Growing Home has increased its revenue and plans to deepen its engagement with the community and the city. The organization is in the midst of a $19 million fundraising campaign to help it build more space on an empty lot across the street from its seven hoop houses to allow its staff to pack the crops for distribution.
"We could grow as much food as we want. But if we can't process it, it's almost a waste, right?" St. John says.
But that's not all. St. John wants to expand Growing Home’s workforce development and computer training programs. She wants to open a farm store, café, and kitchen to provide more learning opportunities for trainees and have space to host activities that engage the community. “That's the future of Growing Home," she says.
Growing Home took root in 2002 as the brainchild of William "Les" Brown, founder of the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless. Brown wanted to create a workforce development program that used farming to help people experiencing housing instability attain job skills. The program commenced on a 10-acre plot of land 84 miles southwest of Chicago.
After conversations with the city, farming and training operations began in 2006 at the farm’s current location, a vacant lot covered in raised concrete beds laid with 2 feet of compost.
Through its paid training program, Growing Home has graduated dozens of students with skills and certifications to meet workforce needs within the city’s food production and hospitality industries. But beyond helping people with employment barriers get on the path to economic stability, St. John says that there was a narrow perception of how to incorporate Growing Home’s products into the community.
“[The farm produce] was perceived as, ‘Oh, that's just for those foodie people, or those earthy people, those vegan people' and not as a necessity for communities, a source of revenue for communities, or an option for grocery shopping.”
Now, that perception has begun to shift. Growing Home still provides produce for markets in affluent neighborhoods, but through its CSA program, it now delivers produce boxes to more than 200 families in the community and several food pantries in the neighborhood. The farm also created a learning garden to educate neighborhood residents about best practices for their own home gardens.
"We try to use tactics to meet people where they already are,” St. John says. “We also try to make sure that any interaction is very respectful."
Growing Home’s training programs used to run from April to October. But during pandemic lockdowns, the farm added a new cohort of trainees in the winter, increasing its number of participants to 80 from 50.
“The students [in the new February cohort] learn the business side of farming, but they’re also the ones that get the season ready with seedlings and planning what goes in the ground. So, they are a unique group that gets to see another side of the business,” St. John says.
Earlier this year, Andre Morgan was laid off from his job; three days later, he became a trainee in Growing Home’s new February cohort.
“My girlfriend told me about the program,” Morgan says. “She said, ‘It’s similar to landscaping.’” After graduating from the program, Morgan joined the sales team at the Thursday farmers’ markets, where he can be seen navigating between a half-dozen storage coolers full of produce, while having lively conversations with shoppers about the foods available for the week. “[The experience] has helped me understand live food production,” he says.
St. John says that in addition to expanding its operations, training programs, and outreach, the farm needs more government support to achieve sustainability.
"Urban farming isn't supported by the government. If we lose crops, there's not a program that reimburses us to make sure that our farmers continue to get paid,” St. John says. “The city and the state are in conversations about putting urban ag on the agenda seriously. I think they see the necessity of it.”
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Tending bees at the Baltimore Convention Center. (Photo courtesy of Sodexo)
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Even More Convention Centers Are Adding Farms to Their Roofs
By BRIDGET SHIRVELL
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The bees have been busy foraging on urban flowers. Perched atop the highest rooftop at the Baltimore Convention Center, the two hives, home to 70,000 bees, have frames full of honey, which will eventually make its way into the drinks and dishes served at the convention center.
Added in 2022, along with two aeroponic towers for growing fresh leafy greens, it’s one of a number of farms that now call busy convention centers home, where they not only provide hyper-local food for events, but also green space for staff and visitors—all while helping people to connect with and learn about the food system.
“For attendees, it brings a bit of it home. They’re traveling but they get to know how their food is grown and take that with them,” says Molly Crouch, corporate director of sustainability at Sodexo Live!, which provides management and hospitality services at venues including convention centers.
There’s a long history of convention centers supporting urban farms. In Denver, Colorado, the farm at the city’s convention center will celebrate its 10th anniversary this year, while in Vancouver, British Columbia, a green roof dating back to 2008, now includes more than 400,000 plants, grasses and seeds which the resident bees help to pollinate. And in recent years, many convention centers have taken the time to either add new farms—such as at the Virginia Beach Convention Center, which recently added raised garden beds—or reevaluate the farms they have, in some cases expanding them and others adding food waste and compost programs, bees or even aeroponic growing systems.
Since we first reported on New York City’s Javits Convention Center
Farm, which debuted in 2021 and in 2022 won the Jeffrey L. Bruce Award for Excellence in urban agriculture, the operation has expanded to include four full-time farmers and two part-time hydroponic assistants. The farm now grows 50 crops, chief among them carrots, cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, kale, and lettuce, which travel about 350 feet from farm to plate.
“The Farm at Javits also grew to include a food forest where over 70 native perennial flowers, shrubs, and fruit trees were installed to create additional biodiversity, safe habitat, and forage for migratory and native wildlife,” says Anastasia Cole Plakias, a co-founder of Brooklyn Grange, which manages the farm.
That farm also added a hydroponic grow system focused on lettuce and marking the start of a year-round growing operation for Cultivated, the dining and hospitality team that manages the Javits Center.
But the program the Javits team is the most excited about is an update to the existing tour program of the farm where, as part of a newly launched Lunch-and-Learn program, visitors can sign up to dine on the rooftop crops during their tour.
The learning piece of the farms at the convention centers is a huge benefit for both visitors and staff.
“It’s amazing. Our employees get so excited about learning about growing their own food they go home, try it and come in saying ‘hey, I grew my own lettuce,’” says Crouch. She added that the convention centers that have beehives, including Huntington Place in Detroit, Michigan, often also have workshops for employees that want to learn about bees.
In addition to the bees, many convention centers including Javits and also Miami Beach Convention
Center are now also helping to educate visitors and employers about food waste, thanks to collection programs where the food waste is collected, composted and used on these farms.
But the biggest impact from these farms may be the ripple effect they have on others.
“We’ve been approached by clients who've been inspired by what The Javits Center and Brooklyn Grange have created and are interested in using urban agriculture to create additional value for their food system, community engagement, or climate resiliency programs,” says Cole Plakias.
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The Check-In: Re-envisioning New York City’s Green Spaces With Qiana Mickie
By GREY MORAN
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As a high school student, Qiana Mickie searched for work near her home in the Bronx by flipping through the phone book. She wasn’t picky. “I was just asking random offices to see if they had a job,” she recalled.
She came across an opening for pruning and weeding school gardens and other green spaces across New York City's five boroughs. She got the job. “I just fell into it. That was really my first foray,” she said. This twist of luck soon grew into Mickie’s life work and passion. She went on to become a sought-after food systems practitioner and worked as executive director of Just Food, a nonprofit dedicated to shifting power by building community-driven food systems in the New York City region, from 2017 to 2020.
Mickie didn’t need to flip through a phone book for her latest job. Last September, Mayor Eric Adams appointed her to be the first director of New York City’s Office of Urban Agriculture. As she put it, she’s charged with “the unique challenge and privilege to try to build a bold, equitable, and innovative urban agriculture plan for New York City.” Mickie is excited about fostering more urban food systems that address the city’s sharp disparities by building living-wage jobs, sequestering carbon in the soil, and increasing access to healthy food.
And while Adams has pledged to make New York City a hub for “indoor ag tech,” Mickie is quick to emphasize the value of all forms of urban agriculture, from community gardens to growing food on rooftops. “People are starting to equate innovation in urban agriculture solely around one emerging sector, which is really not the case,” she said. “Innovation can be high-tech or low-tech.” She points to food forests—diverse, edible gardens that mirror natural ecosystems, free to harvest—as an example of innovation in soil-based urban farming that she’d like to further explore.
While the plan is due out in October, Mickie gave us a glimpse of what we can expect and described her broader vision for the future of growing food in New York City.
You've done a lot of work around food justice and environmental justice. How can urban agriculture bring justice to the food system?
I believe that urban agriculture can be a driver of equity—racial equity, economic equity, and environmental equity. In particular, I think it can effectively help us address critical climate health and food disparities. It also can help folks connect to a very localized source of food and their own community power.
Similar to other cities, in New York City our historic land stewards have been folks of color. Of course, we can go all the way back to the Lenape people and how they were growing for their communities, but even in our more contemporary history, it has been folks of color and low-income folks who have been growing in their neighborhoods. Whether it was guerilla-style or advocacy
around acquiring land cooperatively, folks identified that they were going to live in their neighborhoods and feed themselves. Most of the time, they’re giving food to folks who need it the most, at its freshest peak, which is not necessarily what we see in food security models, where food is donated or dumped at the end of its lifecycle.
New York City has a long, vibrant history of neighborhoods and community folks sharing and growing with each other fresh, seasonal, culturally appropriate food. That work has happened in community gardens and in urban farms. And it’s continuing to happen even indoors and on rooftops. We're continuing to see innovations in the landscape, not just different ways to grow food but also urban ag models that focus on carbon sequestration, flood mitigation, and other climate-resilient models.
What is your vision for the future of urban agriculture in New York City?
I’m looking at: How can the city increase its efforts to support access to and the production of local, fresh food? How do we minimize our contributions to the climate crisis? How do we spur economic activities through agriculture? I don’t have a capital budget, but how can I collaborate and ideate with lead agencies to move the needle on more capital-intensive initiatives where we are weaving in urban agriculture and equity?
We continue to see the increase in desire to expand native plants and seed production in our rain gardens. Folks continue to explore how to bring food forests or other forms of native, seasonal, regenerative practices into food production. We're seeing an upsurge of folks growing food in controlled environments, including herbs, hearty vegetables, leafy greens, and mushrooms. We continue to see folks tending to the land to help work on soil remediation and reducing [atmospheric] carbon.
I want to see continued opportunities around urban agriculture, whether for free or for profit. For-profit doesn't mean it has to be problematic profit. I want to find ways to continue to build pathways to economic opportunities for folks who have been historically disadvantaged, from policy to creating businesses to being able to buy land.
An immediate way that I've been working on that is by identifying local procurement opportunities within the city. For [food] the city purchases, how can some of that funding go to local growers? Are there pathways that can encourage folks to get their minority- and women-owned business certifications or other certifications to help them be more eligible for [procurement] contracts? We’re going to need new business license agreements that allow folks to tap into the city’s resources or start a business, whether cooperatively or their own structure.
The reality is we need funders, whether federal or private, that value historically disadvantaged folks getting into [urban agriculture]. I don't believe in setting people up to fail. And I definitely don't believe in setting people up in a pipeline that doesn't go anywhere.
I’m also exploring how we can create learning gardens. School gardens tend to be insular, within school property, so there's not a lot of community access. The learning garden approach is really about taking that concept into the community. One great example is the learning garden in Bergen Beach in District 22, under Superintendent [Julia] Bove. I've been learning from her process. It took her years to go from turning an underutilized lot into what will be in the next few years a 2-acre learning garden for the community and plethora of schools in her district. I will continue to look forward to learning how to replicate that in a way that's relevant for other boroughs.
On a fun note, can you share one of your more meaningful memories at an urban farm or community garden?
One that really struck home for me was in the Bronx. A few blocks away from where I grew up, there is now an elder community garden [at the Castle Hill Houses, public housing for low-income seniors]. What had historically been an empty, grassy lot was now filled with multiple raised beds, herbs, and other fruit and veggies.
It made me think of all the years where I walked by this property and never thought anything of it in terms of a green space. But to see the elders having fun and talking about what they were planning to plant gave me inspiration about not just my current projects, but also how we can get more elders engaging in urban agriculture. How do we get more elders that may be at home, homebound, or nervous to come out?
We all deserve to have a piece of beautiful real estate and green space. Having the community build it, with many living in this high-rise looking down and seeing this growing from spring to summer, summer to fall, is really exciting. It's helped me think through programs and opportunities that I'm hoping to kickstart.
This interview has been condensed and edited for length and clarity.
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Some of Your Favorite Urban Farms
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In last month’s issue, we asked our readers to tell us about the urban farms near them—and you came through in a big way! We received more than 50 recommendations, and included some of your thoughts and ideas below; we’ve also created an interactive map of all the farms you sent our way. If you want to share a farm that’s not already listed, please email us at members@civileats.com and let us know!
Sweet Tooth Farm, Des Moines, Iowa
Recommended by: Elisabeth L.
“This is a network of small farms that has donated nearly 40,000 pounds of fresh produce to help alleviate hunger in Polk County since the organization's start in 2016. Our neighborhood is blocks away from downtown, [surrounded by] mostly old houses and apartment buildings, and is very racially and economically diverse. A lot of the produce grown on Monika’s plots goes to stock the Sweet Tooth Community Fridge, which provides free food, no questions asked.”
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Lexington Community Farm, Lexington, Massachusetts
Recommended by: Michelle C.
“A non-profit 501(c)3 community farm within the town of Lexington, this small farm of under 10 acres has been in agricultural use since 1648. Notably, they grow a portion of their food for the local food banks and operate a CSA. Since their mission is broad, they hold educational programs and events for the community throughout the year.”
Cosentino Family Farm, San Jose, California
Recommended by: Sue N.
“Often referred to as [owners of] the last orchard in Silicon Valley, this family has kept the farm running and kept the property in their name for generations. To visit this farm stand on a Saturday or Sunday morning is such a treat: You get to meet the original family members and they will welcome you into their yard to take a stroll through their orchard. Often they feature a baked good in the farm stand that they created during the week. It’s a treasure to live near this farm.”
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Franklinton Farms, Columbus, Ohio
Recommended by: Emma G.
“Franklinton Farms is a regenerative urban farm and environmental education nonprofit growing food using organic practices on 12 sites. They are based in a USDA-classified food desert, so they utilize sliding scale prices to make produce affordable to all neighbors as part of their mission to nourish neighborhood well-being and connection through farming, gardening, and education.”
Mi Oh My Farms, Bronx, New York
Recommended by: Rebecca V.
“Mi Oh My Farms is a worker-owned hydroponic farm cooperative and educational organization ‘dedicated to powering a local economy that can provide alternative means of buying food and earning income.’ Part of the educational aspect of the organization is teaching folx how to do this from their own apartments and spaces. Visiting the farm is proof that it is possible.”
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The Black Radish Urban Farm, Minneapolis, Minnesota
Recommended by: Lynn M.
"Carrie and Jade Thompson and their children and neighbors farm their yards and boulevards and have operated a CSA program for the past seven summers in their quiet residential neighborhood. I have been supplying organic eggs from my farm to Black Radish for two years, for inclusion in their CSA boxes. I am so impressed by their commitment to feeding their community healthy, local food."
Plantation Park Heights Urban Farm, Baltimore, Maryland
Recommended by: Isabella B.
“Farmer Chippy is dedicated to building up the youth in some of Baltimore’s most neglected neighborhoods through urban ag. Through years of hard work, he has built up a farm that fosters creativity, passion, and joy from the surrounding communities. It takes one conversation with Farmer Chippy to feel his radiant energy and passion for the cause.”
Thank you to everyone who recommended a farm—see the full map here, and please email us if you have other farms to recommend!
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What We're Reading
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Can a City Feed Itself?
By PETER YEUNG, Bloomberg
In Paris and elsewhere, cities are exploring the economic and environmental benefits of building-based agriculture and racing to protect farmland at the urban edge.
On Rooftops and Under Bridges, Community Gardens Will Bloom in South L.A.
By BRENNON DIXSON, Los Angeles Times
A new three-year pilot will enlist agricultural experts, nonprofits, and businesses to support the expansion of urban gardens across South and West Los Angeles..
5 Reasons Why Cities Should Create an Office of Urban Agriculture
By KATE LEE and MICHAEL SHANK, Fast Company
The mission of an urban agriculture office reaches across an array of city priorities, from housing and health to public park use and zoning.
Urban Agriculture Offers Food, Climate, Cooling Benefits—and Can Pay for Itself
By YSABELLE KEMPE, Smart Cities Dive
Urban farms and food forests are “extremely productive” and have the potential to address local demand for food and build equity even
in highly developed areas of San Antonio, according to a recent report from the Natural Capital Project.
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That's all for this issue of The Deep Dish. Thank you for reading, and thank you for being a member of the Civil Eats community. If this is your first time reading The Deep Dish (welcome!), be sure to check out our previous issues:
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