Feeding our Neighbors - Urban Farming

Everyone is saying buying local is the way to go. I was watching a new show on the Sundance channel called Big Ideas for a Small Planet and the episode I watched was called "Eat". Which partly fueled my imagination for this blog topic. It's a hot topic and it should be. I have a romantic notion of inner city gardens that feed the community around it. Maybe they are roof top gardens, maybe it's a series of small gardens that feed the family that lives there.



Neighborhood gardens or p-patches as they are sometimes called are all over the city of Seattle and I know of a few in Portland, OR , as well.



I don't hear allot about these gardens helping to feed others, but according to the City of Seattle the p-patches here donate to neighborhood food banks.



Also, who exactly is working in these gardens. With most inner city households all the adults are working in order to pay the bills - maybe even multiple jobs. I'm just thinking out-loud here about the feasibility of getting local residents involved in maintaining gardens in the parts of town that need the resources the most. But it looks like it's happening on a small scale right now.

Some interesting links around this subject:

• Canadian work on the topic of community gardens.
• Business week article addressing local vs organic products.
• Soil Association buy local support.
• Interesting article about efforts in Lansing, MI to bring more food options to the inner city.
• Sierra Club article about folks bringing fresh foods to the inner city, through community gardens and the promotion of farmers markets in South Central LA with products grown and harvested by African Americans.
• L.A. community garden information.

So far some things I've found that I find really exciting:

• People's Grocery
• Food Security Organization
• Mo' Better Food