A recent posting from Anna Lappe's delicious blog:

Taste a Bite of Urban Ag

Topics:

Urban Agriculture & Community Gardening

Friday, August 1st, 2008

With not one but two petitions (here and here) being launched to convince the next occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania House to transform the front lawn into a vibrant organic garden, it seems like forward-thinking San Franciscans are getting their hands in the dirt none too soon: Inspired by the lead-up to the foodie pow-wow, Slow Food Nation, gardeners dug up the lawn in front of City Hall and planted… food.

Does growing food in front of City Hall and the White House sound wacky?

Well, it won’t be the first time you could pick a parsnip on these green patches. Back in the 40s, SF’s City Hall sprouted food. And, over on the other side of the country, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt planted her own Victory Garden on the White House lawn.

Providing abundant healthy food to neighborhoods, knitting community together, and reducing that ever-growing carbon footprint are only some of the many reasons these initiatives are encouraging cities — even our nation’s capital — to embrace the grow-it-yourself trend.

Along with news about the White House Project, Eat this View, and the Slow Food Nation garden, we couldn’t help but notice other urban ag initiatives getting props in the nation’s press, too.

Take this TIME magazine article or New York Times piece about such initiatives, including our very own Added Value community farm in Red Hook, Brooklyn, sprouting produce from a former asphalt baseball diamond, supplying local restaurants and providing a farmers market for local eaters.

Denniston Wilks farms in East New York, Brooklyn (Photo: Todd Heisler/The New York Times)

“Hundreds of farmers are at work in Detroit, Milwaukee, Oakland and other areas that… have low-income residents, high rates of obesity and diabetes, limited sources of fresh produce and available, undeveloped land,” wrote Tracie McMillan in that New York Times article.

Some organizations have even figured out not only how to turn on city dwellers’ green thumbs, but how to turn a profit making an old lot grow. “On a fringe of Philadelphia, a nonprofit demonstration project used densely planted rows in a half-acre plot and generated $67,000 from high-value crops like lettuces, carrots and radishes,” says McMillan.