Re-envisioning New York City’s Green Spaces With Qiana Mickie
The first director of New York City’s Office of Urban Agriculture has a vision for growing food in every “underutilized, funky” corner of the city.
By Grey Moran
Civil Eats
August 21, 2023
Excerpt:
As a high school student, Qiana Mickie searched for work near her home in the Bronx by flipping through the phone book. She wasn’t picky. “I was just asking random offices to see if they had a job,” she recalled.
She came across an opening for pruning and weeding school gardens and other green spaces across New York City’s five boroughs. She got the job. “I just fell into it. That was really my first foray,” she said. This twist of luck soon grew into Mickie’s life work and passion. She went on to become a sought-after food systems practitioner and worked as executive director of Just Food, a nonprofit dedicated to shifting power by building community-driven food systems in the New York City region, from 2017 to 2020.
Mickie didn’t need to flip through a phone book for her latest job. Last September, Mayor Eric Adams appointed her to be the first director of New York City’s Office of Urban Agriculture. As she put it, she’s charged with “the unique challenge and privilege to try to build a bold, equitable, and innovative urban agriculture plan for New York City.” Mickie is excited about fostering more urban food systems that address the city’s sharp disparities by building living-wage jobs, sequestering carbon in the soil, and increasing access to healthy food.
