Urban Farming

Urban farms today serve as a center for community development and empowerment and for unifying diverse interests and experiences. The values and history of urban farming in the United States overlap with the traditions of community, school, and wartime gardens. We might distinguish urban farms by an organized effort to grow a significant amount of food by and for a group, membership, or community, not in individual plots; however, the management and underpinnings of all these types of city growing are very similar. In addition to feeding its membership, the urban farm may also supply a farm stand open to the public, local restaurants, schools, soup kitchens, or food banks. Municipal composting projects, hands-on/how-to workshops and volunteer programs, rainwater collection, beekeeping, and small-scale egg production are often associated with urban farms as well. Urban farming efforts are sometimes tied in to job skills training or national service corps, such as AmeriCorps and VISTA, or to food business “incubators” for small-scale entrepreneurs. As city populations and urban area increase, agricultural production also increases within metropolitan and adjacent areas. Between 1980 and 1996 this increase was 30 to 40 percent and today in the United States, metropolitan areas add more than one-third of the monetary value of agricultural produce.