Urban agriculture offers a multitude of economic and environmental benefits to New York City that are overlooked. When properly resourced, it can be utilized as a framework to achieve food justice and create a more sustainable food system rooted in equity, community power, and climate resiliency.
Urban agriculture can take on many different forms including, but not limited to, community gardens, urban farms, greenspaces, bioswales, rain gardens, community composting, beekeeping, and aquaculture. It is rooted in practices that support the environment, promote sustainable methods of food production, and minimize waste. So much more than growing food, urban agriculture provides safe havens for people to gather, heals communities, and restores land.
Innovation within the sector ranges from building smart infrastructure like multi-tier raised beds to increase food production to implementing rain barrels that capture stormwater from adjacent buildings for irrigation, thus minimizing flooding and supporting water conservation. This multi-pronged approach can be seen at Kelly St Garden located in the South Bronx, a neighborhood with one of the highest rates of food insecurity in NYC. According to Farming Concrete, Kelly St Garden grows about 1,500 pounds (680 kilograms) of food on 3,000 square feet of growing space.
Much of the urban agriculture in NYC originated in neighborhoods that were historically redlined and disinvested from for decades. The disparities affected not only housing and educational opportunities but severely damaged the environment. Hank Herrera, a long-standing food activist, was one of the first to describe this intersectional inequity as food apartheid. He argued, “Communities that lack access to fresh, healthy, affordable food result from structural inequities, deliberate public and private resource allocation decisions that exclude healthy from those communities.”
As a result, NYC gardeners have been addressing food apartheid themselves for years by turning vacant lots into food production and distribution sites. Gardeners tap into agricultural knowledge, experience, and training they’ve acquired from their homelands and tight-knit communities. Many utilize regenerative growing and composting to maintain healthy crop life cycles from seed to harvest and foster healthy soils. They grow healthy, seasonal food as well as culturally relevant options familiar to the diverse populations they serve such as bissap (a beverage made from hibiscus) and callaloo (a dish made with leafy greens).
Gardeners also share their food for free or sell produce and other locally made products at farmers’ markets and CSAs. These models support healthy food access while strengthening economic justice for urban and rural farmers alike, critical stakeholders in the city’s foodshed.
Urban gardens and farms are much more than just growing food, they provide safe havens for people to gather, heal communities, and restore land. Community gardeners are climate stewards addressing food insecurity, beautifying neighborhoods, and actively reducing waste. Yet, too often they are left out of the narrative nor get the credit or funding they’re due. They are putting in sweat equity, but their free labor is not quantified monetarily. And they’re regularly left out of the decision-making processes that impact the gardens in which they grow.
Community gardeners are not just tackling food security, nor are gardens simply emergency food sites. They are cultivating food sovereignty right here in the city—the right to grow, sell, and eat healthy food that the community wants in their neighborhood.
Urban agriculture is one of the City’s best nature-based solutions to address climate injustice. With the positive impacts to fostering healthy, safe neighborhoods, addressing food insecurity, sequestering carbon, and mitigating stormwater runoff, urban agriculture needs to be valued as an economic benefit to NYC. It empowers people to make decisions about their food choices, minimize their food waste, and lessen the reliance on emergency food.
With increased farming knowledge and improved land access by the city, New Yorkers would have more agency and impact on the City’s food supply and waste management. We need leadership to invest in a food system that reflects the people’s vision for a sustainable future.
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Photo courtesy of Kelly St Garden
