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How urban farming is reshaping our cities and our ideas about food and sustainability.
— Nature is making a comeback in the American metropolis. In Philadelphia, a group of volunteers aims to replace 40,000 empty lots with orchards to provide food in the city in many poverty-stricken neighborhoods. In large, depopulated parts of Detroit, vegetables are now sprouting where old cars once rusted away. In certain sections of hipster Brooklyn, rooftop arugula beds are proliferating at an ever-increasing rate. Community organizers and a growing group of green-minded members of the creative class are redefining the urban environment as a place to connect with nature and to grow affordable and healthy food.
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VICTOR VERBEEK
The first thing I noticed when I moved to the South Brooklyn neighborhood of Red Hook was the remarkably translucent light. This is a peninsula in the Upper New York Bay and the sun reflects on the surrounding brackish water in a way that’s rare in this city of shadows. On a good day, the endless rows of yellow school buses and the nineteenth-century red-brick warehouses all exude the timeless Red Hook glow. On cobblestone streets with names like Van Brunt and Dikeman it takes little to imagine yourself in the port of New Amsterdam. The area is divided up into countless little pockets, each with its own specific atmosphere. Depending on your route you can have the sensation of walking through one of the last active waterfronts of NYC, a sleepy Midwestern town, a vibrant post-industrial artist commune, or a gloomy low-income ghetto, cut off from public transport and economic opportunity.
Part of the city’s demand for fresh, healthy food is met by an everexpanding network of farmer’s markets, which debuted in 1976 and have grown in popularity ever since. These markets create a dialog between the urban and the rural lifestyle; local producers will tell you everything you could possibly want to know about the origins of your food, from the location of the pasture where your lamb chops once hopped around to the organic credibility of the grains eaten by the free-range hens who laid your eggs.
I was on my way to the grocery store on a breezy spring morning when I first noticed the field with the young cornstalks in it. On a lot enclosed by a chain-link fence, they were swaying in the wind as if their location was the most natural thing in the world. There, across the street from a brand-new IKEA, I had accidentally discovered the Red Hook Community Farm, an urban farm growing more than three-dozen different crops on a layer of black soil and wood chips spread atop an old asphalt baseball field. Eric, a young university graduate with a major in urban studies, was busy preparing a raised soil bed. Meanwhile, two twenty-something girls were sowing lettuce seeds. I was surrounded by tomatoes, eggplants, and vertilaga, a Caribbean stretch-limo variant of zucchini. The smells of basil and compost moist from the sprinklers made it feel like the countryside, even though it was just a tiny plot in industrial Brooklyn and those smells were mixed with the occasional whiff of exhaust from passing trucks. Red Hook is a typical neighborhood in transition, partly gentrified—by people like me—and partly stuck in its struggling past. Urban agriculture has been especially successful in these kinds of shifting environments: revitalized neighborhoods that once suffered from urban blight, crime, and social isolation. During the eighties, many vacant lots and burned-down tenements in traditional immigrant neighborhoods (like Manhattan’s East Village) became community gardens, landscaped refuges that boosted the quality of life in these areas. Today, the same initiatives that spawned these green oases are the driving force behind many urban agriculture projects. In Harlem, the South Bronx, the East New York section of Brooklyn, and on vast stretches of unused land in declining American cities like Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Detroit, urban farms are thriving. It’s a simple matter of supply and demand: the supply of undeveloped space and the demand for healthy and cheap food. In poor neighborhoods where liquor stores are likely to outnumber grocery stores ten to one, fresh produce is considered a luxury, and urban farm crops are a welcome supplement to the existing food palette. Besides growing crops, the Red Hook Farm educates school kids, trains interns and volunteers, and distributes farmer’s market coupons among Red Hook residents in need. The slogans of farms like these bespeak lofty goals: “Food security”; “Growing food, skills, jobs, and communities”; “Eradicate hunger!” It is clear the farmers do not take their work lightly. I can afford to cook my own dinner from fresh ingredients. Red Hook just happens to be the location of Fairway, one of the best and most affordable organic supermarkets in the city. Yet there are only three locations serving 8 million New Yorkers, and affordable is really a relative term here. Whole Foods, a comparable market chain with stores in all the expensive neighborhoods in Manhattan, sells some of the best quality organic food there is, but at prices aimed primarily at the elite. The average income in Red Hook is $ 18,000 a year, before taxes. Food prices are a matter of priorities. If you’re looking for a good deal on a pair of sneakers, a flat-screen TV, or a bucket of chicken wings, this is your city. If you want to find a bundle of asparagus for under eight dollars, good luck.
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For a growing group of New Yorkers, buying at a farmer’s market has been a first step toward changing the way they think about farms and food production. Riesling from New York State’s Finger Lakes region? “Italian” goat cheese from Long Island? All of a sudden, anything seems possible in and around New York. The next step, then, is doing it yourself. Eli Zabar, a scion of a famous New York delicatessen dynasty, has turned the rooftops of his two buildings on the Upper East Side into a gigantic greenhouse that produces endives and berries, which he sells to his well-to-do clientele in the store downstairs. Since last January, a city council member has been pushing a bill to legalize beekeeping within New York’s city limits. Urban farming can be as simple as filling some old lemon crates with compost and putting them on your fire escape to see if anything will grow. There is a practically endless amount of flat space in this town that can be put to agricultural use; just think how much more interesting the city would look with its rooftops full of cabbages, cucumbers, and chickens. The idea of producing one’s own food using sustainable methods is not new to Americans—in fact, during World War II, growing food in urban areas became a government policy. The so-called “Victory Gardensî or “War Gardensî provided 40 percent of food production in the United States, and the current “Great Recession” has inspired White House talk of reviving them. The urge to reconnect with nature isn’t new either—ever since [nineteenth-century American writer and proto-environmentalist] Henry David Thoreau there have been “back to nature” movements, which advocate escaping the city to return to a more simple and honest life on the land. But the current urban farming movement takes that sentiment in a different direction, one less nostalgic and more holistic. Urban agriculture is not so much about going back to nature as it is about going forward and integrating nature into modern life. The idea is simply that we’ve been missing something, that city life in our consumer society is incomplete, and that eating strawberries we grew on our own roofs just might help fill the void. Hundreds of blogs—with up-to-date pictures of said rooftop strawberry beds—are being written by critical consumers who want to know exactly where their food is coming from and how it was produced. All over the world city dwellers have begun to cultivate their private little patches of urban jungle. At the same time engineers, designers and scientists are working on large-scale versions of the simple but effective “compost on asphalt” concept used by the Red Hook Community farm. The basic idea stays the same: optimizing the use of urban space for growing food in a sustainable way. It is only a matter of time before high-tech utopian superstructures like the vertical farm will be a reality. With more and more community farms providing food for low-income neighborhoods and high-quality ingredients for environmentally conscious chefs, urban agriculture is becoming a social movement, an environmental movement, and a foodie trend rolled into one. It’s about vegetables that taste, well, like vegetables, and it’s not likely to lose momentum anytime soon. The farmers you’ll see on the following pages embody this same dedication to food quality and meaningful agriculture. Most weren’t born on farms, and many never set out to be farmers—yet they are happy to sacrifice comfort, free time, sleep, and financial security because they believe that their efforts can make a difference. Sustainable farming has become a rebellion against Big Food and Big Ag, helmed by those who have made the conscious choice to get involved.
Some specialize in eggs, some in herbs and lettuce, some in meat, and some in produce—but more than anything, these farmers focus on establishing a community based on quality of life rather than social climbing. Many of them have studied agriculture at college, yet all have come to find that the real education is right here, in the thick of it, on the land. CODE documents.
PHOTOGRAPHY TRIBBLE & MANCENIDO STYLING JASON JULES
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Sisters Hill Farm
One Earth Farm
— Stanfordville, NY —
— Kerhonkson, NY —
Sisters Hill is a 141-acre organic farm. Six of those acres are devoted to growing vegetables, flowers, and cover crops that feed over 200 member families. Bria: It’s definitely a lot of work but it’s good work—I don’t have to workout because I do that during the day. People are meant to use their bodies; it was normal fifty years ago for most people to have a little garden or a cow in their backyard. Now it’s like a novelty, but it’s coming back—like local foods, local farms, the idea of supporting the local community. It’s great that I know the people I’m growing food for and they know me and we have developed a relationship already. As it becomes more and more popular it becomes more sustainable, because it’s really about people understanding the system and realizing how vital it is to their health and the earth’s health.
I grew up in a rural area, half an hour along a long dirt road, so this is nice for me because it’s what I’m familiar with. Some might argue that you miss out on a lot of cultural things, which is understandable—but at the same time we bring out our own culture. A lot of farmers are musicians; we play our own music, we make our own music, we create culture in the community that we’ve built. Certainly it’s not as diverse as what you’d find in the city, but we make it happen. We also get off the farm sometimes; that’s essential. You do need to leave, and leaving makes it that much more beautiful when you come back.
One Earth produces fresh and dried herbs, as well as gourmet and heirloom salad mixes, on its half-acre of land. Lindsey: I’ve done a lot of farming and I studied sustainable agriculture at college, but my main interest is actually working with youth, so I teach an after-school gardening class. I thought maybe the kids would be bored or wouldn’t understand some of the activities, but it seems to fill a niche in their lives. The kids have been totally responsive and fantastic; they’re basically my driving force for continuing to farm. Part of my education in college was living and working in Costa Rica and Nicaragua with really impoverished coffee farmers and seeing their version of sustainable agriculture, of meeting their communities’ needs
with food and producing product for export. And so in years to come, I’d like to incorporate exchange networks with farmers from all different walks of life into my farmland, to try to expand our concept of what sustainable farming really means. It’s not just growing organic and selling to gourmet restaurants in New York City—it’s really trying to reach the youth and families in need, families who wouldn’t otherwise be exposed to the concepts of organic or local agriculture. We’ve moved pretty far away from local food systems, in America especially, so as we come back around it’s nice to try and include everyone.
www.onearthfarm.com (coming soon)
www.sistershillfarm.org
Awesome Farm
Esopus Creek Farm
— Tivoli, NY —
— Lamontville, NY —
Awesome Farm sells whole chickens, eggs, lamb, wool, and sheepskins. There are 70 ewes, 110 lambs, 1,200 meat chickens, and 100 laying hens on its 30 leased acres, and soon an additional 17 acres will be annexed for cutting hay. Owen: Kaycee and I first met on a vegetable farm in 2007. We started Awesome Farm in 2008. A business plan would have been useful, but we had a lease on 30 acres, some cash, some laying chicks, and some ideas of what we wanted to do, so we managed. We’ll be able to pay ourselves something this year—last year we had to get part-time work here and there—so we’re on the right path. Tracey: I grew up in a farm area, but I was never interested in farming until I took some time off from school to travel. I worked on some farms along the way, and when I came back I decided to start working on a vegetable farm here, which is how I met Kaycee and Owen. I’m still at college, technically studying Religion, but my thesis is going to
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be about beekeeping and honey and their cultural history. The Egyptians and the Mayans and other cultures used beekeeping and honey as models of community systems and of sustainability, so it’s sort of a religious history too. I’ve been working with different hives in the area, and this summer I’m going to be purchasing a couple and keeping them myself, which should be a lot of fun. But I really enjoy working with animals and working on the farm, and hopefully will continue to do that for a while. What really got me into farming in the first place was the manual labor and being outside. I’m academic in the sense that I feel that it’s important to go through that system, but I feel more comfortable in a rural setting, which is why I’m only at school part-time—I prefer to have a life outside of school. I live pretty near to New York City but I’ve only gone five times in the past four years. www.awesomefarmny.com
Esopus Creek has five beehives and 22 laying hens on its 58 acres, three of which are used for growing and harvesting heirloom fruits and vegetables. Jacob: I’m originally from upstate, where there’s loads of farmland. I didn’t know what I wanted to do after school; I needed a job and a place to stay, so I started farming three days out of college and haven’t stopped. I did environmental studies at college, so I had sort of the outdoor focus, and school taught me that was what I needed—to be outdoors, to work with my hands. My mom, like all moms, wants me to be secure and have insurance, so she does worry. But she also wants me to be happy, and she knows this is what makes me happy. I’m not a nine-to-fiver, I’m not an academic; this is my life, and I work really hard at it. My social life is about nonexistent right now. Between the birds and the greenhouse, on a sunny day I can’t leave for more than three hours—the plants in the greenhouse will fry in five. Right now I’m working a 80-hour
week with no income, and it’ll be that way for six months. I think I’ll have to get other farm jobs during the winter: I milked cows for three years, so I’ll probably try and do that and just sort of scrape by. Ever since I was little I was enchanted by the Catskill Mountains—I was like, there’s something about this place. For the last few years I’ve just been trying to focus on being in this area. I thought it was too pricey to buy land, but this opportunity came up and I jumped at it. I’m actually leasing the land—the owner has put more money into it than I could ever afford—so it’s this great balance: I do the labor and he gets to live in a beautiful place with great food, while supporting a young farmer. I don’t have a huge overhead cost, but it’s still risky. All of a sudden this is my income; I don’t get a weekly paycheck, I don’t have health insurance. But the thing about farming is it’s not just a job, it’s a lifestyle. I wake up and I’m at work. I go to bed and I’m still at work. Day or night, there’s always something to do. www.esopuscreekfarm.com
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Ryan’s Farm — Wurtsboro, NY —
Ryan’s acre of farmland is home to about 250 laying hens that produce organic, farm-fresh eggs for distribution. Ryan: I raised chickens when I was a kid—I was in 4H club and stuff like that. I’m from a city, but I’ve worked with food since I was 18; now I’m 30 and I’m expanding into producing food. I feel a calling for it. I came up with the idea to start this place late last fall, and so far, so good. One thing I’ve learned is that chicken mortality is high—I didn’t realize how sensitive they are. I started with about 130 and got down to about 100 laying hens. It got cold really quickly this winter, and what happens is they pile on top of each other for warmth and the ones at the bottom suffocate.
Most of the work on this place came in putting it together. Now that I’ve got it up and running, it only takes me about an hour to come here, feed and water the chickens, and collect the eggs—but I do have to get here at least once a day to take care of that. They essentially feed themselves—I have to fill the feed about once every two days. I’m working on getting my own cartons, but for now I’m working with recycled ones. I carton them up here and then bring them to my house, where I fill up the sink and scrub them off so they’re ready for the consumer. I have so many eggs at my house right now, since market hasn’t started yet.
Regeneration CSA — High Falls, NY —
Regeneration CSA is so called because it regeneratively grows its vegetables, flowers, and herbs, using permaculture techniques that refresh the soils of its one and a half cultivated acres. Sarah: Prior to the farm we worked on for a year, I was a Willing Worker On Organic Farms—the WWOOF program—in different countries. When I came back to New York, where I grew up, I decided to work on different landscaping projects and learn about native plants so that I could eventually start a CSA [community-supported agriculture] farm. Kevin: I grew up in a kind of rural environment in Northern Idaho. I did my twenty years in the city, trying to knock it down in the fancy world, and now I’m here growing food.
People are going back to farming for all lots of reasons: the threat of global warming, the desire for a meaningful life, not wanting to be part of the suicide culture and economy that is killing us all. People know that eventually, we’re going to have to feed ourselves locally; rebuilding that local capacity in the Northeast is going to be important if we don’t want to leave a lot of people hungry. It doesn’t seem that way right now, because you walk into the store and say “What are you talking about? I’m at Whole Foods and there’s food everywhere!” Well, we’ll see.
www.regenerationcsa.org