Alabama’s community urban gardens are reinventing the way locals eat
In Alabama, 13 percent of households do not have ready access to fresh, unprocessed food
By Eric Velasco
Soul Grown
Mar 19, 2024
Excerpt:
It’s known nationally as a “foodie” city, but nearly 150,000 Birmingham residents—children, adults, the elderly—live in food deserts, defined as communities where the nearest large grocery store is 10 miles or more away. That’s 70 percent of the city’s population.
To help address food insecurity, a growing number of individuals and organizations are creating community urban gardens to cultivate vegetables, fruit, herbs, and other food on neighborhood lots to sell and distribute within the community. They provide fertile ground for families to grow their own food, just as people commonly did in those same communities a few generations ago.
For some, the urban farm also provides a platform to teach the benefits of eating fresh, organically-grown produce, and how to prepare it healthfully.
Here are some of Birmingham’s urban farms, what they do, and how you can support them.
