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Urban Ag Provides Sufficiency in the City

“I’m trying to show that this is a viable business model that can be recreated throughout the city as we find innovative ways to combat food deserts,” Wheet says.

By Melissa Shipman
Seed World
September 27, 2021

Excerpt:

USDA offers educational and financial resources developed by federal, state and local partners, detailed in their Urban Agriculture Toolkit. Topics covered include land access, soil quality, water usage, safety, infrastructure, production, market development, and capital resource and financing support.

“This fast-growing phenomenon has the potential to nourish the health and social fabric of communities and create economic opportunities for farmers and neighborhoods. But it also comes with a unique set of challenges and opportunities,” USDA says in the toolkit.

When considering these challenges, and especially the financial factors of urban agriculture efforts, Wheet encourages the consideration of broader benefits.

“Yes, we can give more people access to healthy foods, and we can decrease the cities’ carbon footprint, those are important. But from a business perspective, I often talk about how many jobs can we sustainably create, or how many downstream entrepreneurs can we support,” he says. “These are all big picture benefits that people might not originally connect with urban agriculture, but it helps justify that this is something worth investing in.”

Read the complete article here.