Urban Farms Are Stepping Up Their Roles in Communities Nationwide
After a road trip touring farms around the country, our report provides a snapshot of how three innovative, resilient urban farms are fighting food insecurity and building connections with neighbors.
By Rachel Surls
Civil Eats
November 10, 2022
Excerpt:
This flexibility is part of urban farms’ enduring popularity. They can be what their community needs them to be, and they can turn on a dime. Since the beginning of the pandemic, communities have needed both food and connection, and farms like Fountain Heights, Tri Cycle, and Alma have delivered both. They have also served as community resource hubs. Tri Cycle, though it fallowed its land, was positioned to become an important center for community food distribution. Alma offered a place for everything from children’s activities to a farm stand. Fountain Heights Farms, along with its food distribution, was a hub for mutual aid organizing during the worst days of the pandemic.
The magic of urban farms is also in the way they bring communities together, for learning, for restoring hope, for getting to know neighbors we might not otherwise meet, for healing collective trauma.
And they can offer an infusion of much-needed beauty. In Birmingham, Gooden and Villanueva plant some of their crops in gently curving beds that are reminiscent of a smile, or an ocean wave. “We wanted people to feel like we were pulling them in, like a hug. With production farming, straight rows, we could have gotten more food, but it’s about balancing what is beautiful with what is productive,” said Villanueva. She paused, looking gratified, surveying the yellow snapdragons and red poppies, beds of bright green lettuce, and a robust crop of tomato and pepper seedlings, in her corner of Fountain Heights.
