Gardens provide a source for produce in areas with limited access to fresh fruits and vegetables they allow members to grow exactly the varieties they want to eat – for example, immigrants can grow crops from their home countries, which may not be available in community stores. As noted above, many were formerly abandoned spaces in low-income neighborhoods, which were reclaimed by members of the community. Community GardensĪside from individual backyard gardens, community gardens are probably the most common and most widely recognized form of urban agriculture. Today, urban agriculture takes many forms, from garden plots behind city rowhouses to high-tech, hydroponic vertical farms.

Through the 1970s and 1980s, the residents that remained in these neighborhoods, many of them immigrants and people of color, cleared out the lots and planted gardens, which not only supplied an important source of fresh food in areas abandoned by supermarkets and other infrastructure, but created a venue for the community to come together and organize around a host of other issues. 5Īfter WWII, suburbanization and white flight caused property values to plummet in cities around the US, and it wasn’t uncommon for landlords to burn down their own buildings to collect insurance money, leaving abandoned vacant lots in their place. Through an ad campaign of slogans such as “ Plant a Garden for Victory,” Victory Gardens became so popular that 20 million gardens produced more than 40 percent of the fresh vegetables in the United States in 1944 -much coming from towns and cities. 4 As the US entered both World Wars, the government promoted the planting of what became known as “Victory Gardens” in parks and yards, on rooftops and in other available spaces in towns, in suburbs and cities alike, to reduce dependence on food needed for the war effort. The gardens, called “potato patches” (after their primary crop), produced $14,000 worth of produce on 430 acres in the first year, with more than 1,500 families involved at the peak of the program’s popularity. In the US, in the middle of a depression in 1890s Detroit, the mayor requisitioned vacant land for unemployed city residents to grow vegetables. 2 Recent history dates back to British and European allotment gardens of the 19th century, the fertilizer for which was often supplied by nutrient-rich manure from horses, which were the primary transportation of the day. As long as we humans have been living in cities, it is likely that we’ve also been cultivating produce there: some research even suggests that urban agriculture developed before its rural counterpart. 1 A Brief History of City Farmingĭespite the focus on urban agriculture in recent years, it is not a new phenomenon. City farming operations vary in size: from chicken coops and beehives to household, school or community gardens, from rooftop and larger-scale farms to aquaculture facilities and indoor hydroponic “vertical farms” they may be privately, publicly or commercially-owned they may be run for profit, operated by a social mission or some combination of the two. Urban agriculture has gotten a lot of press in recent years: growing food in the city has a unique, even romantic appeal, upending one’s notions about what is urban and what is rural and providing many social, environmental and health benefits.

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