Massachusetts urban farm is at the nexus of food and medicine
“There’s no reason why your physician shouldn’t be able to write you a prescription for weekly vegetables that you come and pick up at Agric Organics, maybe at our own store.”
By Jacob Nelson
Greenfield Recorder
Oct 14, 2022
Excerpt:
“As we design our farm, we always take into account Mother Nature and how unpredictable she can be,” Bello said. “Getting better control of our growing environment is the most important thing, and so we would love to cover everything with high tunnel greenhouses.” They’ve received funding for a few and are looking to install more.
Laying down woodchip mulch between rows has also become a Swiss-army-knife adaptation strategy for them. The mulch’s capacity to absorb and hold water is a boon in both dry years, when it prevents precious moisture from escaping, and in wet ones, when it soaks up excess rain.
“We’ve also gone back to something we learned growing up in Nigeria, which is not weeding as much,” Bello said. “The weeds serve as a shade to the soil and retain moisture around main crops.”
In some ways, small-scale urban farming is a climate adaptation strategy in itself. Agriculture is a leading cause of deforestation and thus greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, and urban farmers make efficient use of already disturbed land, rather than clearing land to plant. In some areas, urban farms also provide oases of greenery, helping to cool neighborhoods during hot summers.
“We are directly embedded in the community where people who eat our food live,” Bello said, “and we can grow a lot in small spaces.”
Getting Agric Organics off the ground has come with plenty of challenges, chief among them the chicken-and-egg conundrum of access to land and financing that many beginning farmers face.
