Why Use It?

Urban agriculture can bring multiple benefits to communities.

• Improve health. Rates of obesity and associated health problems are highest and have risen the most rapidly among low-income communities and people of color. A healthy diet that includes fruits and vegetables has been shown to reduce incidence of obesity and other chronic illnesses in children, adults, and seniors.

Individuals make choices about their diet, but their decisions are influenced by the food that is locally available. Unfortunately, too many Americans live in unhealthy food environments. There is increasing evidence that our eating habits, obesity patterns, and related health conditions are influenced by the foods available in the neighborhoods in which we live.

• Improve access to fresh, healthy, affordable, locally produced food. Urban farming operations are being established in underserved neighborhoods in cities across the country to allow greater access to healthy, affordable produce for local residents. Local food from urban farms/community gardens is very fresh since the food does not need to travel long distances before being purchased and eaten.
• Urban farms can sell their produce through farm stands, farmers’ markets, and community supported agriculture (CSA). For example:
  • The Food Project in Boston, Massachusetts sells its produce at four farmers’ markets (all accepting EBT) in low-income neighborhoods in eastern Massachusetts.
  • City Slicker Farms in West Oakland, California operates a farm stand on a sliding scale, allowing very low-income West Oakland residents to pick up produce for free, those with limited means to purchase produce at below market rate prices, and higher-income customers to purchase at a standard rate.
  • Added Value Farm in Brooklyn, New York helped establish a new farmers’ market in the underserved neighborhood of Redhook in Brooklyn, New York and also runs a CSA for the surrounding Red Hook community that offers a sliding scale and work shares. In 2009, the P Patch community gardening program in Seattle, Washington donated 25,000 pounds of food to local food banks and The Food Project in Boston, Massachusetts contributed 48,668 pounds to anti-hunger organizations in eastern Massachusetts.
• Community gardens increase healthy food access for the farmers themselves, along with their families, friends, and neighbors.
  • In Seattle, the Department of Neighborhoods found that some families were able to cover up to 60 percent of their family’s produce needs through the city’s gardening programs.
  • City Slicker Farms in Oakland surveyed their backyard gardeners and found that 61 percent of garden participants reported improving their diets by eating produce from their garden.
  • Many community gardeners and urban farms, such as The Food Project, Clean Greens, and many others, donate a portion of the food they grow to local food banks.

• Increase access to culturally appropriate food, and help residents rediscover their community’s food culture. Community gardening and urban farming can help residents eat an often healthier traditional diet. When communities have closer connections to the farmers or are the farmers themselves, they can choose to grow foods that may not be readily available locally.
• Many urban agriculture projects, such as The Kansas City Center for Urban Agriculture (KCCUA), The Seattle Market Gardens Program, and Viet Village provide recent immigrants with the opportunity to grow culturally appropriate foods for their families and communities.
• Urban agriculture projects such as The Detroit Black Food Security Network and Nuestras Raíces, in Holyoke, Massachusetts, provide opportunities for urban residents to rediscover their food culture, by connecting younger residents with elders in the community who can share their skills and perspectives on food.
• In Brooklyn, New York, East New York Farms! runs 12 community gardens that connect youth gardeners with older gardeners who need help tending their plots. Many of the seniors receive food stamps and their garden plots help supplement their diet with healthy and culturally appropriate food for this predominantly African American, Caribbean, Puerto Rican, Bengali, and West African community.
• Improves the economic health of a community. There are several ways that urban agriculture can improve job and economic opportunities for local residents.
• Create new jobs. Researchers estimate that urban farmers could make reasonable incomes if they select the right crops and use the most appropriate growing techniques.
  • A for-profit cooperative urban agriculture business called Green City Growers Cooperative is being started in Cleveland, Ohio. The cooperative will include a five-acre hydroponic greenhouse growing leafy greens and herbs to then sell to grocery stores and wholesale produce businesses. Green City Growers expects to provide 35 to 40 long-term, living-wage jobs for low-income residents living in the surrounding area and worker-owners will build about $65,000 in savings in eight years.
  • SHAR has created a collaborative effort involving over 50 organizations and seven universities to help launch one of Detroit’s largest urban farms. The SHAR program will encompass approximately 30 acres of vacant land and will use an efficient, three-tier system and have three growing seasons. The farms will also have a packaging company on site. SHAR estimates that the project will create 150 jobs in around six months and 2,500 to 3,500 permanent jobs for local low-income residents over the next ten years. These jobs are expected to pay around $10 to $12 per hour plus benefits.
  • Viet Village Farm in New Orleans plans to cultivate a community farm on 28 acres of land in a predominantly Vietnamese American residential area, next to a Catholic church that serves this community. Project leaders estimate that the farm will create 26 new short- and long-term jobs for local residents, mostly full-time.

• Provide job training and skill development for youth, homeless, and formerly incarcerated individuals. The majority of urban farms are small operations with small staffs and so are limited in the number of new jobs they can create. However, many urban agriculture projects across the country are specifically dedicated to helping individuals find other jobs and/or providing basic job skills that will allow individuals to enter other job markets, all while using urban agriculture to provide productive and empowering transitional employment.
• The Food Project employs approximately 150 youth per year from diverse backgrounds in urban and suburban eastern Massachusetts. They build leadership by providing teens with deeply meaningful work—growing food—and placing then in highly responsible roles. Through distributing the food they grow, teens also gain job experience and greater awareness of food justice issues.
• Added Value farm, in a low-income neighborhood in Brooklyn, has provided year-long training to more than 175 neighborhood teens since it began its program in 2001. Youth develop new skills, build their leadership capacity, and engage with their community, as they help operate the Red Hook Farmers’ Market and explore issues of food justice. They also engage in educational and advocacy activities through media projects and other events.
• Growing Home in Chicago has trained approximately 150 formerly incarcerated individuals on its farms in and around the city since the program began in 2002. As of 2008, 59% of participants had been homeless and 76 percent had been previously incarcerated. Of those who had been previously incarcerated, 95 percent did not return to jail, compared to the average recidivism rate in the state of Illinois of 50 percent. Ninety percent of Growing Home’s formerly incarcerated and/or homeless participants end up renting their own apartments or finding stable housing, and over two-thirds get either full-time jobs or further job training after graduating.
• The City Harvest project of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society (PHS)works with inmates in the Philadelphia Prison System and teaches them to grow vegetable seedlings, which are then grown to maturity at 30 participating community gardens. In 2010, PHS established an additional program for recently incarcerated people, including a work release landscape job training program and job placement program for inmates. The program focuses on re-entry and connecting greenhouse work at the prison to workforce opportunities. The participants receive landscape skill training as well as training for resume writing, presentation skills, and are helped with housing issues, restoring licenses, etc. In the first year, 12 of the program’s 18 participants now have jobs and nine of those jobs are full-time.
• Incubate businesses. Urban agriculture operations can provide land, supplies, training, and technical assistance for community members to develop their own urban farming and food- related enterprises.
  • Nuestras Raíces in Holyoke, Massachusetts assisted the primarily Puerto Rican immigrant community of Holyoke with the creation of some two dozen food and agriculture businesses estimated to have added $2 million dollars of economic activity to southern Holyoke per year.
  • Clean Greens in Seattle establishes farm stands within parking lots and provides spaces where local entrepreneurs can also set up stands and sell local products.
• Save families money and generate supplemental income. Studies have estimated that a community garden can yield around $500 to $2,000 worth of produce per family a year, and that every $1 invested in a community garden plot yields around $6 worth of produce. Community gardeners can supply all or some of their family’s produce needs, saving money. Community gardeners sometimes sell their surplus produce as well, generating a small income.
  • City Slicker Farms in Oakland surveyed its backyard garden participants and found that 92 percent of the participants saved money because of their garden, and 62 percent grew half or more of their families’ produce in their gardens.
  • The Seattle Market Gardens Program, run through the city’s P Patch Program, focuses on the large immigrant and refugee community in Seattle and helps these residents earn supplemental income while acclimating to their new home. The training honors the agrarian skills that many immigrants and refugees bring with them, while teaching necessary business skills for doing business in this country, such as how and where to market their produce.
  • The Kansas City Center for Urban Agriculture (KCCUA) trains local community members interested in urban agriculture to become farmers in either full-time or supplemental businesses. KCCUA runs a New Roots to Refugees program that currently works with 17 refugee farmers, each with one-fourth an acre for a garden. Each refugee farmer sells their produce to area markets and participates in a CSA with one to six members, and is able to provide traditional foods to their community.
  • East Bay Asian Youth Center operates a four-acre organic strawberry farm in Sunol, California, for Oakland-based Mien families from Laos to grow strawberries commercially, as well as other products for their own consumption.

• Transform vacant urban property into safe, appealing spaces and foster a sense of community. Many urban farming operations make use of previously vacant or underused urban spaces, beautifying the area and cultivating a greater sense of community.
  • Provide an attractive and welcoming space for neighbors to gather, volunteer, or just enjoy the scenery. Many urban farms and community gardens incorporate gathering spaces within their overall site plan, and they often run educational workshops, gardening training, and food preparation classes for the surrounding community. In neighborhoods where access to parks and open space is limited, these urban farms can be a valuable asset for outdoor recreation and physical activity.
  • Foster a sense of community. Community gardens link different sectors of the city— including youth and elders, and diverse race, ethnic, and socioeconomic groups— in pursuit of a common goal. Research indicates that communities with high-participation gardens and farms have reduced rates of crime, trash dumping, fires, violent deaths, and mental illness, and even increased voter registrations and civic responsibility. http://vimeo.com/13584529
  • Increase home values. A New York University study examined over 636 New York City community gardens and found a statistically significant, positive effect on sales prices of residential properties within a 1,000 foot radius of a community garden when compared to properties outside the 1,000 foot ring, but still within the same neighborhood. This is beneficial for current home owners, but care should be taken to ensure that current renters are not forced to leave the neighborhood. Other tools in this toolkit provide strategies to address gentrification.
• Divert organic waste from city landfills into compost. Some urban farmers make productive use of food wastes from local food retail outlets, restaurants, and residences. They use these wastes to generate compost for their farms.
  • Growing Power in Milwaukee, obtains massive amounts of organic waste from Milwaukee businesses, such as the byproducts from the various breweries located in the city, to use in its composting operation. Last year they produced over 11 million pounds of compost.
  • City Slicker Farms in West Oakland has a bicycle compost pick-up program, where it removes compost from local restaurants by bicycle and brings the waste back to their farms to compost.