I’m with you on the goal. In my experience (15 years working with urban ag in Lansing, MI), its market access and profitability that holds the movement back. It’s entirely possible this is an us problem, but I suspect it is more widespread than that. We made a LOT of land accessible through a county gov’t program, $100/acre with access to a lot of great support services (tractor work, water support) but folks can’t sell their product at a fair price. I’ve watched farm after farm burnout because of the economics.
If this is still something that you and others in your area are struggling with, please send me a message. I have a coaching program that is specifically for farmers in this type of situation/challenge. I would love to find a way to make it available to help farmers in your area.
Dallas Inner City Growers (DIG) has been a good source of information and the city is giving grants to urban farmers. The biggest issue is the suburbs. There is underutilized land in the suburbs that Dallas can't touch because it's not within their municipality. Many of these suburbs are actively making laws against such things within their city, which makes it even harder to fight against.
Farmers Branch is a great example. I am currently digging into food insecurity and if urban farming can help with that. It came as part of some investigative journalism I have been doing into the city of Farmers Branch. They are trying to cut funding for the only food bank in town, when there is a huge need here. They are nearly 13,000 pounds of food short. So how do we get there? Well Farmers Branch doesn't want people actually farming in the city, because that could hurt property values.
All good ideas, however any rooftop garden will require a structural assessment of the building to hold weight it was never built to withstand. Especially older buildings that will very likely have had some deferred maintenance and some general deterioration that is often invisible. Just go watch a few of Plainly Difficult on YT, he examines all sorts of engineering disasters in detail.
Proper due diligence is required in all projects that involve a novel usage of an existing structure; that much is a guarantee. However, there are many organizations, Green City Growers is one, that are already doing this at sites around the US.
The purpose of this essay is more to suggest possibilities and available potential, not a carte blanche mandate to just go out and do things. This is simply the starting point for a much larger conversation.
Search query for those just getting started: ‘Permaculture and Urban Farming’
I’m with you on the goal. In my experience (15 years working with urban ag in Lansing, MI), its market access and profitability that holds the movement back. It’s entirely possible this is an us problem, but I suspect it is more widespread than that. We made a LOT of land accessible through a county gov’t program, $100/acre with access to a lot of great support services (tractor work, water support) but folks can’t sell their product at a fair price. I’ve watched farm after farm burnout because of the economics.
If this is still something that you and others in your area are struggling with, please send me a message. I have a coaching program that is specifically for farmers in this type of situation/challenge. I would love to find a way to make it available to help farmers in your area.
Dallas Inner City Growers (DIG) has been a good source of information and the city is giving grants to urban farmers. The biggest issue is the suburbs. There is underutilized land in the suburbs that Dallas can't touch because it's not within their municipality. Many of these suburbs are actively making laws against such things within their city, which makes it even harder to fight against.
Farmers Branch is a great example. I am currently digging into food insecurity and if urban farming can help with that. It came as part of some investigative journalism I have been doing into the city of Farmers Branch. They are trying to cut funding for the only food bank in town, when there is a huge need here. They are nearly 13,000 pounds of food short. So how do we get there? Well Farmers Branch doesn't want people actually farming in the city, because that could hurt property values.
Hey Corey, let me know if you want some help with this. I am down for causing some "good trouble".
All good ideas, however any rooftop garden will require a structural assessment of the building to hold weight it was never built to withstand. Especially older buildings that will very likely have had some deferred maintenance and some general deterioration that is often invisible. Just go watch a few of Plainly Difficult on YT, he examines all sorts of engineering disasters in detail.
Proper due diligence is required in all projects that involve a novel usage of an existing structure; that much is a guarantee. However, there are many organizations, Green City Growers is one, that are already doing this at sites around the US.
The purpose of this essay is more to suggest possibilities and available potential, not a carte blanche mandate to just go out and do things. This is simply the starting point for a much larger conversation.