sustaining the urban agriculture movement “best practices ... · beautiful movement, resulted in...
TRANSCRIPT
2013.02.15-26
GPSS-GLI Field Exercise in Frontier Issues (FEFI): Philadelphia and Portland (USA)
SSUSTAINING THE UURBAN AGRICULTURE MMOVEMENT ““BEST PRACTICES” FROM PHILADELPHIA AAND PORTLAND Group Members: Joanne KHEW Nami AKINAGA Suthirat KITTIPONGVISES Wonjin JEONG Hyeji KIM XUE Ting XU Luyi Staff: Prof. Makoto YOKOHARI Ass. Prof. Toshinori TANAKA Dr. Psyche FONTANOS
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Contents Part 1: Introduction ................................................................................................................. 3
Philadelphia and Portland: Background and Context .............................................. 4
Methodology ............................................................................................................................. 5
Part 2: Key Findings ................................................................................................................. 7
Multi-sectorial connections sustain Urban Agriculture as a Primarily “White” Movement in Philadelphia and Portland ..................................................... 7
Social classes and UA development ................................................................................. 9
Roles of different types of NGOs ..................................................................................... 11
Wide range of perspectives on community gardening .......................................... 13
Sustaining Community Garden System by different ownership ......................... 14
Limited Connections among Multi-Stakeholders Sustaining Urban Agriculture ................................................................................................................................ 16
Part 3: Appendix ...................................................................................................................... 18
FEFI trip schedule ................................................................................................................... 18
Minutes & Records: .............................................................................................................. 19
Greensgrow Farm ................................................................................................................... 19
Delaware River, Chestnut Hill and Levittown ..................................................................... 22
Awbury Arboretum ................................................................................................................ 25
The Mill Creek Farm ............................................................................................................... 29
Aspen Farms (Near Mill Creek Farm) ................................................................................... 36
Community Farm and Food Resource Center at Bartram’s Garden ............................... 38
Eastwick Community Garden (or Common Ground Garden, Airport Garden) .............. 43
Greenworks Philadelphia ...................................................................................................... 45
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Pennsylvania Horticulture Society (PHS) ............................................................................. 51
Walter Biddle Saul High School (W.B. Saul High School) .................................................. 65
SHARE Food Program ............................................................................................................. 67
Zenger Farm ............................................................................................................................ 73
Institute for Sustainable Solutions, Portland State University ......................................... 83
Portland Community Gardens Program .............................................................................. 88
Village Market ....................................................................................................................... 100
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Part 1: Introduction
Advances in food technology, coupled with subsidies placed on the agricultural industry, have
encouraged rapid expansion of the United States food system. This development has alienated the
bulk of urban-dwelling citizens from knowing the process through which their food is made, changing
the nature of food as something historically intimate and cultural to yet another uniform, mass-
produced commodity (Patterson, 2006). Furthermore, ‘factory-produced’ food has been associated
with higher food miles (despite improved transportation, due to relocation of more people to urban
centres which are further from food producing rural regions) (Priog et al., 2001), heightened use of
chemicals and pesticides and increased contamination, weakening consumers’ faith in the integrity of
their food (Clancy, 1997).
As such, alternative food and local food movements have increased in prominence through the United
States and has been recognized as a response to the perceived detriments of the current globalized
food system (Hendrickson & Heffeman, 2002; Selfa & Quazi, 2005). Alternative food movements
usually have the primary aim of decreasing dependence on the centralized food system in order to
separate consumers from the health and environmental detriments of mass-produced food and
secondarily, to foster community and participatory democracy through reconnection with the land and
people who produce food (Kloppenberg et al., 1996; Feenstra, 1997; Hendrickson & Heffernan, 2002).
These food movements take on several forms and are usually associated with food production within
the confines of urban food sheds (urban agriculture) (RUAF foundation, undated).
Prior research into the alternative food and urban agriculture movements within the United States
have revealed Philadelphia and Portland as two prospective case study areas due to their long-
standing history and current robustness in the field of urban agriculture. As such, for the duration of
the 15th of February, 2013 to the 26th of February, 2013, a team of seven students (one PhD Candidate
and 6 Masters Candidates), one research staff, a project assistant professor and one full professor from
the GPSS-GLI program conducted a field exercise (FEFI) to these two locations to investigate
possible reasons behind the success of the urban agriculture movement.
The purpose of this field exercise was to test the hypothesis that the urban agriculture movement in
Philadelphia and Portland was sustainable because it exhibited a multi-stakeholder and multi-channel
connection model (Jaroz, 2008). This would mean that the organizations involved in urban agriculture
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in Philadelphia and Portland were able to sustain themselves because they had sufficient connections
to provide them with avenues for production and distribution, overlaying a climate which promotes
urban agriculture practice at the city level.
While executing the main goal of the exercise, the group also were mindful about underlying trends
present in the current urban agriculture model executed in both Philadelphia and Portland. This group
report aims to provide an overview of the group’s activities while on the FEFI trip, as well as to detail
the results and key findings of the trip. A detailed account of the group’s activities as well as a
detailed interview data can be found in the appendix of the report.
Philadelphia and Portland: Background and Context Although Philadelphia and Portland were identified as cities which both have a robust urban
agriculture program, different development paths have created differing contexts through which urban
agriculture has developed in the respective cities. Figure 1 shows an overview of the current and
historical characteristics of Philadelphia and Portland.
Figure 1: Overview of the geography and characteristics of Philadelphia and Portland.
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Philadelphia was founded in 1682 and centred its growth on a shipping trade industry along the
Delaware River (Warner Jr., 1968). Portland’s beginning in 1843 also saw the same trend where its
initial inhabitants occupied settlements along the Willamette River due to a port trade of lumber,
supplied to support the gold rush in California.
Having dense settlements crowded around the port area (commercial centres of the two cities at that
time) resulted a skyrocketing of property prices around portside housing, pushing the poor deeper into
the city-centre. While this problem was never completely addressed in Philadelphia (Warner Jr.,
1968) money from trade through the transcontinental railway constructed in the late 18th Century in
Portland resulted in a growth of city improvement movements. Such measures, such as the City
Beautiful movement, resulted in an increase of green space and better infrastructure in Portland. The
interest in improving Portland through green space inclusion and sound urban planning continued into
the Early 20th Century with the development of the 40 mile greenway and the implementation of John
Olmsted’s integrated park system.
Philadelphia, in the meantime saw the transition of the shipping industry into one which is more
service/ commercial based. Infrastructure however, remained divided between the haves and the have-
nots, resulting in areas which were clearly demarcated according to income. As a result, urban
agriculture movements which have sprouted in these two cities could not only serve to address food
security and safety issues but also could potentially reflect underlying development conditions.
Methodology
Literature reviews, face-to-face interviews, case studies selection, and on-site observation were used
to understand the overview of UA implementation, especially in developed country like the United
States. Philadelphia and Portland were primarily selected as the case studies.
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References for Introduction
Clancy, K. 1997. Reconnecting Farmers and Citizens in the Food System. In: W. Lockeretz (Eds.),
Visions of American Agriculture. Ames, IA: Iowa State University.
Hendrickson, M. & Heffernan, W. 2002. Opening spaces through relocalisation: Locating potential
weakness of the global food system. Sociologia Ruralis 42(4): 347–369.
Feenstra, G. 1997. Local food systems and sustainable communities. American Journal of Alternative
Agriculture 12 (1): 28-36. 447.
Kloppenberg, J. Jr., Hendrickson, J., Stevenson, G.W., 1996. Coming into the foodshed. Agriculture
and Human Values 13 (3): 33-42.
Patterson, B.L. 2006. Niche to mainstream in sustainable urban food systems: The case of food
distribution in Portland, Oregon. Bachelor of Arts in Environmental Analysis, Thesis,
Unpublished. Pomona College.
Pirog, R., Van Pelt, T., Enshayan, K., Cook, E. 2001. Food, fuel, and freeways: An Iowa perspective
on how far food travels, fuel usage, and greenhouse gas emissions. Ames, IA: Leopold Center for
Sustainable Agriculture.
RUAF (Resource centres on Urban Agriculture and Food security) foundation. Undated. What is
urban agriculture? Accessed online at: http://www.ruaf.org/node/512. Access date: 22/03/2013.
Selfa, T. & Joan, Q. 2005. Place, taste, or face-to-face? Understanding producer–consumer networks
in ‘‘local’’ food systems in Washington State. Agriculture and Human Values 22: 451–464
Warner Jr., S.B. 1968. If all the world were Philadelphia: A scaffolding for urban history, 1774-1930.
The American Historical Review 74 (1): 26-43.
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Part 2: Key Findings Multi-sectorial connections sustain Urban Agriculture as a Primarily “White” Movement in Philadelphia and Portland
The interview results from this field exercise proved the hypothesis that a multi-stakeholder model
aids in sustaining an urban agriculture organization through provision of funding and materials
required for production and through making distribution channels for agriculture goods available.
Connections providing business opportunities or providing farming material for urban agriculture
were found linking non-profit organizations, farmers and governmental institutes in both Philadelphia
and Portland. For both cities, many linkages were found to exist even between the organizations
interviewed by the team where organizations were aiding each other’s survival through providing
services which aided in the material productivity of the urban farm or through providing channels
whereby urban farms can sell their goods for a profit. The table below shows an example of the
connection between different organizations for sustaining their urban agriculture movements.
Organization type Food Provision Services Food Distribution Services
Greensgrow
Farm (NPO)
(Philadelphia)
[Farmland acquisition]
- From Government (Mayor’s Office of
Sustainability & City Redevelopment Authority)
[Finances]
- Government (Sustainability grants from the
Mayor’s office of Sustainability)
- Private donations
- Private corporate sponsor (Subaru)
- Sales from food distribution services
- On-site farmers’ market
However, upon examination of the motivations behind the organizations interviewed, the
organizations were not only concerned about growing local and organic food but as motivated about
bringing such food to lower-income citizens. This view was exemplified by interviewees making a
point to stress that part of their produce goes to programs which aid in helping people of lower-
income neighbourhoods gain access to fresh food. Interviewees also attempt to engage people in low-
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income neighbourhoods in community gardening to produce their own food, while encouraging
community formation to discourage vice-related activities.
It is interesting to note that most of the low-income participants are elderly blacks and people of
colour. Through field observations, the organizers of urban agriculture movements are 100% white.
Participants at farmers markets (Greensgrow farm, Weavers way co-op) also reflected similar
demographics. However, people who are actually conducting regular farming in community gardens
are almost 100% black or people of colour. It is often that in low-income neighbourhoods, fresh
groceries are not readily available as compared to cheaper alternatives like fast food. Consequently,
going back to the roots of urban agriculture as a movement born to provide healthier alternatives to
mass-produced food, organizers of urban agriculture movements often find themselves trying to
enforce these values on the people who they think need drawing away from fast food the most –
people of lower income.
However, research by Guthman (2008 a, b) has pointed out that this top-down approach is seldom
successful, resulting instead in backlash from the people that urban agriculture movements are trying
to help as they are more concerned with putting food on their plates rather than the immediately
intangible health benefits they may receive from eating organic. Consequently, as observed in the
field and also through literature search (Slocum, 2006; Guthman, 2008 a, b) most of the targeted
blacks are either not interested in participating in community gardening or have no time to do so due
to a working-class lifestyle. This results in the bulk of community gardeners being elderly blacks who
either want to reconnect with their farming roots or who have time to spare – a phenomenon which is
not in line with organizers’ initial goals of introducing urban agriculture as a tool for food security and
social repair for a wide range of the lower income.
References
Guthman, J. 2008a. Bringing good food to others: investigating the subjects of alternative food
practice. Cultural Geographies 15: 431-447.
Guthman, J. 2008b. “If they only knew”: Colour blindness and universalism in California alternative
food institutions. The Professional Geographer 60(3): 387-397.
Slocum, R. 2006. Anti-racist practice and the work of community food organizations. Antipode 38
(2): 327-349.
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Social classes and UA development
The American social class is defined using income education and occupation as the predominant
indicators. There are three main classes in the United State: i) Upper class (e.g., educated and affluent
professionals), ii) Middle class (e.g., college-educated individuals employed in white-collar
industries) and iii) Lower class (e.g., the working poor and the unemployed underclass). Using this
logic, social class differences among the case studies as well as the main purpose of urban agriculture
were simply defined:
Study areas Social classes Purpose of UA/CG implementation
Local communities
along Delaware
River
Lower-Middle
Class
The common of agricultural practices refers to an
integrated urban farming or urban agricultural system as
a way by which urban poor and, to a lesser extent, middle
class, make their living. Its purpose is to generally
revitalize communities, create job opportunities and also
improve local environment (e.g., crime, drug abuse, and
violence prevention, etc.)
Chester Community Lower Class
Garden City
Community
Middle Class Urban agricultural practices became a hobby of the
middle and upper class, who have money enough to
sustain urban farming activities, to buy organic products,
and promote green building in their community.
Chestnut Hill
Community
Upper Class
Levittown Middle Class
Community appearance and landscape design of the study areas are shown in Figure 2.
Neighborhood Unit
(Garden City) Grid design
(Chester, Chestnut Hill) Super block design
(Levittown) (a)
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Chester
Garden City
Chestnut Hill
Levittown
(b) Figure 2: Study area: landscape design (a) and community appearance (b)
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Roles of different types of NGOs
During the whole trip, we have visited several NGOs and NPOs. Some of them are running well,
some of them even can’t be supported by themselves and mainly rely on government subsidies. We
have discussed during our trip on how and why these NGOs are facing totally different situations and
how to improve, and we can generally divide them into 3 types:
Rich and Powerful NGOs (e.g. Philadelphia Horticultural Society, PHS)
Typical Grassroots (e.g. Mill creek farm)
New type of grassroots, social innovation, social enterprise (e.g. Greensgrow farm)
Strengths Weaknesses Opportunities Threats
A -Own money,
resources, and lands.
-Have strong
connection with
government and
several organizations.
-Lack of connection with
local community.
-Without other
organizations support,
cannot work by themselves
individually.
-Using all the resources and
connections to build a strong
network.
B -Strong connection
with local community.
-Involved in local
community.
-Lack of funding.
-Controlled by donor.
-Volunteers, Education
programs.
-Funding issue.
-Few staffs.
-Weather
/Climate effected.
C -Not so much funding
problem by using
business way to run
their program.
-Connection with
local community.
-Not in the main stream.
-Price is higher than
average.
-Volunteers, Education
programs.
-Have chance to get profits
and can use these money for
running NPO projects. More
rights to do whatever they
want to, but not only
controlled by donor.
-Crime in local
community
(Stuffs stolen).
-Weather
/Climate effected.
Table 1: Different types of NGOs
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Each of them has strengths and weaknesses, some have resources but lack of local connection, some
fully involved in the local community but lack of funding. From the individual level, the sustainability
of all of these NGOs seems not very high. However if we take all the NGOs and other stakeholders as
a whole network, we could see that their strengths and weaknesses could exactly make up to each
other. In this society, different NGOs are playing different roles, have different visions and missions.
In most of times, NGOs, especially grassroots NGOs with less resource and financial support always
have to adjust their missions and activities to make do with make out the financial crisis. In this sense,
if all these organizations could be tightly connected and work together, how to support those
grassroots NGOs and what kind of responsibility they should take will depends on the different
division of labour in society.
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Wide range of perspectives on community gardening
Community gardening is widely recognized as an effective grassroots response to urban disinvestment
and its roles vary enormously according to local needs and circumstances. According to the
Nottingham conference aimed at raising the profile of community gardening and its contribution
towards global sustainability, five perspectives on community gardening were identified (Ferris et al.,
2001): community, health, children, food security, poverty.
Likewise, community garden exists both in Philadelphia and in Portland but the meaning of
community gardening was different between two cities. In Portland, community gardens play a role as
a community development. The need of community gardening is increasing as a movement that
fosters the development of a community spirit and increases a sense of community ownership and
stewardship in Portland. Community gardens also bring people together from different backgrounds,
serving as a talking point for neighborhood issues. It allows people from diverse backgrounds to work
together on common goals and fosters communications within gardeners. Another significant point
about community gardening is that it contributes to build community leaders in terms of volunteer
management (Portland Community Gardens Program, personal interview, Feb 22, 2013).
While community garden is a focal point for community organizing in Portland, community gardens
addresses social issues including health, food security and poverty in Philadelphia. In some areas in
Philadelphia, there is no grocery store in the neighborhood and residents have difficulty in getting
access to fresh vegetables and it is costly to buy fresh foods (Mill Creek Farm, personal interview,
Feb 18, 2013). In such places, community gardens provide access to nutritionally rich foods for low-
income families and individual, it thus provides food security and alleviates hunger.
Common use for community gardens is education: it heightens people’s awareness and appreciation
for living things, teaching issues of environmental sustainability, the significance of community
stewardship and food security.
References
People, Land and Sustainability: Community Gardens and the Social Dimension of Sustainable
Development, Ferris, John, Carol Norman, and Joe Sempik (2001), Social Policy & Administration
35(5), 559-568.
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Sustaining Community Garden System by different ownership Although the sites we visited are mostly organized by PHS, which is a big NPO with a history of
almost 200 years and starting funding of 23 million dollars, there still exists a large portion of
community gardens that don’t have any connection to PHS. What is worth noticing is that PHS built
over 600 gardens in Philadelphia. They were close to 300 vacant lots, and worked with 100 to 150
existing community garden sites. It worked for a while, but some people quit and they were older and
less able to sustain the projects. This throws questions on whether leading NPO supported urban
agriculture is sustainable or not. However, PHS plays an important role in reallocate the food
produced from the gardens, who also steps into supporting real urban farms for only food production
purposes. In a sense, PHS does a great job in outreaching to different organizations, but still, the
portion is small and is quite restricted to funding from grants. The university and other educational
institutions helped in the projects under PHS and had certain initiatives, but the share that they are
playing is rather small. The unique government system, the mayor-council form, sometimes impedes
the urban agriculture in Philadelphia, under which the decision making process is highly dependent on
the district leader in the council. And most of the vacant lots where urban agriculture activities are
located are owned by the Redevelopment Authority of Philadelphia, who cares more about the taxes
generated from certain properties than the healthy food production.
The community gardens in Portland are overwhelmingly managed by the City Government, which is
funded by the city and makes it more sustainable both in land ownership and funding, there exists an
underlying concern on the problem of taking the public space for private use since almost half of the
community gardens are built on a park property, which is supposed to be a public open space for
anyone who comes.
Apart from that, shares of university and other organizations also exist in the community garden
system in Portland. However, they tend to be smaller in scale and don’t necessarily have overlaps
with each other. City government plays an important role in funding those organizations, but more
cooperation between different stakeholders is anticipated.
For the rest of the urban agriculture story, Portland has been aggregating more and more green
practitioners through its green branding, which enables its citizens to enjoy a healthy life with fresh
food from its 18 farmers market and other fresh produce stands.
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(a)
(b)
Figure 3: Different community garden systems in Philadelphia and Portland: Community garden share in Philadelphia (a) and Community garden share in Portland (b) References
Vitiello, D. & Nairn, M. Community Gardening in Philadelphia 2008 Harvest Report, 2009.
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Limited Connections among Multi-Stakeholders Sustaining Urban Agriculture
This study focuses on the movement of urban agriculture in two cities of USA, Philadelphia and
Portland. Despite of differences of geographical and social background, these two cities are
commonly implementing the urban agriculture as a mean to solve social issues such as food security
and community building among neighbourhoods. During 10 days of field trip, this study had
interviews with different kinds of stakeholders making efforts to sustain urban agriculture and
identified the role of connections among multi-stakeholders to develop the urban agriculture in each
city. For this, the interviews were carried out with diverse kinds of actors, including non-profit
organization, government agency, and academic institution.
Name Type
Green grow Farm Non-Profit Organization
Awbury Arboretum Non-Profit Organization
Mill Creek Farm Non-Profit Organization
Mayor’s Office of Sustainability Governmental Agency
Pennsylvania Horticulture Society Non-Profit Organization
Table2: Interviewees from Philadelphia
Name Type
Zenger Farm Non-Profit Organization
Portland State University Academic Institution
Village Garden Non-Profit Organization
Portland Community Gardens Program Governmental Agency
Table3: Interviewees from Portland
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From each city, it brings out the result that there are connections among multi-stakeholders and those
linkages support to sustain and develop the urban agriculture. It provides the necessary materials fro
growing urban agriculture and to offer the channels which make possible to utilize the productivities
from the farms in real society and to give farmers a chance to earn profit. However, on the other hand,
the study finds out challenges of such connections developing urban agriculture. Despite of the
existence of linkage of multi-stakeholders, most of them are based on informal friendship. In addition,
currently existing linkages are mostly built between NPO and NPO, and it needs to be expand its
partnership much further.
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Part 3: Appendix FEFI trip schedule
Day Venue/Activity
Feb 15th, 2013 Travel from Narita to Philadelphia
Feb 16th, 2013 Greensgrow Farm
Feb 17th, 2013 Visiting communities along Delaware River, Chestnut Hill and Levittown
Feb 18th, 2013 1. Awbury Arboretum
2. Mill Creek Farm
3. Aspen Farms
4. Community Farm and Food Resource Centre at Bartram’s Garden
6. Airport Garden
Feb 19th, 2013 1. Greenworks Philadelphia, Philadelphia’s Mayor Office of Sustainability
2. Pennsylvania Horticultural Society
3. W.B. Saul High School
4. SHARE Food Program
Feb 20th, 2013 Travel from Philadelphia to Portland
Feb 21st, 2013 1. Zenger Farm
2. Portland State University
Feb 22nd, 2013 1. Village Market & Village Gardens
2. Portland Community Gardens Program
Feb 23rd, 2013 Visit to community gardens around Portland
Feb 25th, 2013 –
Feb 26th, 2013
Travel from Portland to Narita
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Minutes & Records:
Greensgrow Farm
Feb 16, 2013 Land Neighborhood People Practice Organization History Financial Used to be brownfield; Owned by government
Low income, working class, people of color
Consumer s from all over the city; Staff: 1 full time farmer, 20 employees, among which 5 are full-time, 5% volunteers
Urban farm and nursery; CSA; Farm market; Community Kitchen; LIFE program
Social enterprise
16 years history, started as social project on brownfield
Grants from private organizations + business sponsorship
Organization: Social enterprise, associated with some non-profit projects. Land: Government owned. Abandoned brownfield site in an economically disadvantaged neighborhood,
once occupied by a galvanized steel plant with heavy polluted soil. 6000 square foot greenhouse.
History: In 1997, the co-founder Mary Seton Corboy and Tom Sereduk (chef and grower) decided to start
Greensgrow with the idea of cultivating and delivering high-quality lettuce for local chefs and others.
With a $40,000 loan from Ben Franklin Technology Partners, they put down roots on a cheap parcel
of land in a scarred section of Kensington once occupied by a galvanized steel plant. They got the
approval from the Department of Licenses & Inspections to transform a vacant block (former EPA
superfund site) into a hydroponic lettuce farm. On that time the whole office had no idea on this
plan and just stamped it as a try. First 3 year was tough, lettuce season is short and the profits were
slim. They saved the business by growing and selling flowers to extend the farm's season, and
Greensgrow steadily expanded.
The land used by Greensgrow was initially a brownfield and soil quality was low. As such, fruits from
the trees grown on site are not safe to eat. Plants are instead grown on raised beds to counter this
problem. New soil is added to the raised beds to circumvent the problem of growing on polluted soil
within the brownfields.
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Neighborhood: It’s a low-income, working class neighbourhood, which is changing and getting better.
People: People come not only from local community, but also from other parts of Philadelphia.
Staff: About 5% are volunteers, 20 employees, 5 full-time employees, others are part-time. 1 farmer
maintains the 4 greenhouses. (Lots of students come to the farm to express interest in volunteering;
people from the neighborhood also come during festivals held in the garden)
Practice: -Urban Farm and nursery
-CSA: provides regular shares of produce and other foods from Greensgrow and dozens of farms
within 100 miles of Philadelphia to its 500 subscribers, including Summer CSA and Winter CSA,
Members select their pick up location and day of the week during signup.
-Farm Market: purchase from farmers within 150miles, and harvest organically grown food crops at
Greensgrow Farms, and “Greensgrow Made”, prepared foods in their licensed community kitchen
-Community Kitchen: located at St. Michael’s Lutheran Church, the kitchen is used to hold culinary
classes, make their Greensgrow Made line of prepared foods and can be rented out by food
entrepreneurs at an hourly rate.
LIFE program: The Local Initiative for Food Education was launched in 2010 to improve access to
affordable, local food for dozens of members of the community.
Financial: In 2011, the total revenue was $1,398,397 (grants 315,187, program service, 1.083.137, investment,
73); the total expense was $1,370,540 (salary 508,595, other salaries and wages 861,945).
Sustainability grants from the government + donations + sales
Subaru foundation: 5 year corporate sponsor and provides the trucks used on the farm
Findings: -Build a farm in the brownfield. The land used by Greensgrow was initially a brownfield and soil
quality was low. They acquired the land for free from the government after talking to them as no
one was using the land. As such, they started with hydroponics and using raised beds to counter this
problem.
-Founder plays an important role. The co-founder of Greensgrow farm, Mary, is a very energetic lady
with lots of great ideas. She is now also joining many social activities and promoting urban
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agriculture as a campaigner. She was studying political science in university and wants to create
some different thing for neighborhood.
-Volunteers. Most of people working for Greensgrow are volunteers. The volunteer we interviewed
is a retired teacher; her motivation for coming to Greensgrow is “not for dollar but for a wonderful
life.”
-Social Enterprise. Not only supported by donation and grants, their own productions also contribute
to their income.
Challenges: -Space is not enough
-Theft of metal parts from the farm by “Scrapers”
-Unpredictable weather
-Increased taxes on the farmland: This problem has also been experienced by some of the
community gardens in the area in order to pressure the gardeners to give up their land for other use
(connected to the land price and the vision of the city council in a particular district).
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Delaware River, Chestnut Hill and Levittown
Feb 17, 2013 Delaware: Delaware is located in the Northeastern United States along the Delaware River. It is bordered to the
south and west by Maryland, to the northeast by New Jersey and to the North by Pennsylvania (i.e.
PA). The state is the second lease expensive, the sixth least populous (917,092), but the sixth most
density populated (179/km2) of the 50 U.S (69% white, 21% black or African American, 3% Asian,
0.5% American Indian, etc.). Geographically, from north to south, the state is divided into three
countries: New Castle, Kent and Sussex. The southern two countries have historically been
predominantly agriculture, while the northern (the border of Philadelphia) has been more
industrialized. During the Colonial period, many of the early settlers in Pennsylvania frequently dug
caves out of the banks of the Delaware River and used these as primitive type dwellings. Because of
basic sanitation was very poor, the federal government of Delaware entered into slum clearance and
urban renewal (by requiring one slum dwelling to be eliminated for every new unit built) under the
Housing Act of 1949.
Chester: Chester is a city in Delaware country, with a population of about 33,972 at the 2010 census. Chester
is situated on the Delaware River, between the cities of Philadelphia and Wilmington, Delaware.
Historically, in 1641, the first European settlers in the Chester area were Swedes. They called the
settlement that became Chester first Finlandia, then Upland. By 1682, Upland was the most
populous town of the new Province of Pennsylvania. On October 27, the ship Welcome arrived at
the town, bearing William Penn on his first visit to the province. Penn renamed the settlement for
the English city of Chester.
As of the census of 2010, Chester’s population of 33,972 is 74.7% Black, 17.2% White, 0.6% Asian,
0.4% Native American, 0.1% Native Hawaiian ,3% from two or more races, and 3.9% some other race.
Chester is a partially abandoned deindustrialized slum in Delaware. For this reason, with regard to
social situation, Chester has Pennsylvania’s highest murder rate of 64.3 per 100,000 and 24
homicides in 2010.
Garden city: The small community of Garden City is located in the southernmost part of the Nether Province (the
border of Chester City). Garden city is a residential development of townhome, semi-attached twins
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and detached singles. Historically, in 1910, the largest planned subdivision to date was begun by
John J. Ryan, the creator of Garden City. Consequently, homes were primarily built beginning in
1930s-50s. Garden city has been referred to as a ‘distinctive lower middle class neighborhood
community’. As of the census of 2000, Garden city’s population of 48,549 is 91% White, 5.1% Black,
2.3% Asian,1.1% Hispanic, 0.07% Indian, 0.01% Hawaiian , and 0.28 % some other race.
Chestnut Hill: Chestnut Hill has long been at the center of Pennsylvania and American history. The city was
originally part of German Township granted by William Penn in 1683 and served as a gateway
between Philadelphia and the surrounding farmlands, especially in the colonial times. As early as
1704, the name Chestnut Hill was given to a tiny village at the intersection of German town Pike and
Bethlehem Pike in the Northwestern of Philadelphia. A possible explanation is that the name of
Chestnut Hill derived from the many chestnut trees that encircled the hamlet.
During the U.S. civil war, Chestnut Hill had become a gateway village, linking Philadelphia with the
rich interior farmland of Pennsylvania. In 1854, the Chestnut Hill Railroad was opened from German
Town to Chestnut Hill, and the Act of Consolidation made Chestnut Hill part of the City of
Philadelphia-Physically, the rural village was now connected to the city. From 1880 through 1920,
hundreds of Italians immigrated to Chestnut Hill to work primarily in quarries and stonemason’s
yards. After WWII, Chestnut Hill wrestled with the problems of reduced municipal services, rising
taxes, the breakup and development of large estates, and suburban flight. By the early 1950s, nearly
thirty percent of all German Town Avenue storefronts were vacant. Business leaders then reinvented
German Town Avenue as a horizontal department store by erecting colonial facades, developing
community parking lots, and mounting a cooperative advertising campaign. During 1950s and 1960s,
Chestnut Hills also many quasi-governmental civic groups that revived the neighborhood while
preserving its historic character, such as Chestnut Hill Community Association, Chestnut Hill local and
historic society. These organizations still act as local forums to shape policy on social services, crime,
aesthetics and other key issues. Since 1985, Chestnut Hill is being considered for designated as a
National Historic Land mark. Today, from the mid-19th to 20th, Chestnut Hill served as the
functional equivalent of both a railroad suburb and a street car suburb of center city as community
town. Architecture, building and housing in Chestnut Hill is very expensive of this region. As a
consequence, the middle and lower class incomes cannot afford to buy a house or even an
apartment in this area. To the many people who live, work, or visit here, Chestnut Hill remains a
unique and special place. Chestnut hill community also invests in sustainable practices by aiding its
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small business in reducing carbon footprints and encouraging homeowners to restore their homes
with energy materials to ensure the future of the neighborhood for generations to come.
As of 2000 U.S. census data, Chestnut Hill’s population of 9,608 is 79.4% White, 15.3% Black or
African-American, 2.3% Asian and 3% other or mixed race. The median household income is
approximately $ 60,179.
Levittown: Levittown is a census designed place (a concentration of population identified by the U.S. Bureau for
statistical purpose) and planned community in the Philadelphia metropolitan area. As of 2010, the
population was about 52,983 (e.g., 87.6% White, 3.6% Black or African American, 0.2% Native
American, 1.7% Asian, 0.3% were some other race).The total area is 26.4 km2 which is sometimes
recognized as the largest suburb of Philadelphia in Pennsylvania state. Historically, it was planned
and built by Levitt & Sons in 1951. They built six models of house in Levittown, all single family
dwellings with lawns: the Levittowner, the Rancher, the Jubilee, the Pennsylvanian, the Colonial and
the Country Clubber, with only modest exterior variations. The homes were moderately priced and
required only a low down payment. Construction of the homes commenced in 1952 and when
completed in 1958, 17,311 homes were built. Beyond this, there were three reasons why Levittown,
PA was built: i) a housing shortage, ii) increased mobility, and iii) plenty of jobs. In a way, the PA
metropolitan has lots of jobs to offer, especially large numbers of manufacturing jobs were located
in the Levittown area (e.g., general motors and the U.S. Steel Fairless Works).One thing they had in
common was that they all needed housing.
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Awbury Arboretum
Feb 18, 2013
Land Neighborhood People Practice Organization History Financial Public land German Town
(working class, 77% black, 15% white, 3.2% non-white Hispanic, and 1.5% Asian)
1 full time farmer; 1 intern; Volunteers; gardeners, local partners
Community gardens, provide greenhouse space for PHS, growing own food
Private, NPO 100 years of history
Revenue from selling crops at farmers markets, grants
History & Background:
Henry Cope purchased the property in 1852. A number of houses were constructed on the property;
all are now privately own with the exception of the Francis Cope House (1860) which is now the
Arboretum headquarters. The Cope family formally established the arboretum in 1916; it became a
NPO in 1984. As a consequence, the arboretum lies entirely within the Awbury historic district, a
national historic district designated in 2001.
In the 1850s, houses were built in clusters and people were preserving the views of the sunset from
places across what was most open property at the time. When people first came to the area from
the center city of Germantown, the place was all pastures and no wood, which had been cut down
mostly for fire wood and gradually for industrial fuel until the water power came into use. At that
time, the grasses were usually European cool season grass because they grow over winter. When
they commissioned, a western architect designed the property. As Germantown became more of a
suburb community, more white working class people working in factories came to live around the
area. In 1916, people living in the houses donated everything in the green space to the City Parks
because parks were for working class at that time. However, that changed dramatically in the great
depression during the Second World War when there was tremendous influx of African Americans
from the South. Many of them are actually grown up on farms. Germantown always has a massive
population of African American which is related to the Underground Railroad for escaping black
slaves to Canada. The people living in the area are now the second generation of the farming black
people and the managers of the garden are all black people. There was a history of the Victory
Garden started in the Second World War when everybody started to grow their own food in their
individual gardens.
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Soil on Awbury Arboretum is good and there is no need for raised beds. The land was initially
belonging to a paint industry. Composting work was moved down to the area which was initially
covered by the industry so that the compost would fill over and neutralize the soil, making it suitable
for growing.
In 1970s, there was a big food co-op in the area called Weavers Way. Weavers Way had a small
demonstration farm to show the possibility of unused land to teach the urban population with
different generations about where food came from, although it wasn’t totally organic and
sustainable then. The Awbury Arboretum has a couple of acres of organic farms in the area, which
produces wonderful leafy vegetables, some root crops, spring greens and some farms manage fruits,
which are sold to the Weavers Way Coop and several farm markets in the center city.
Having a farm this small is not economically profitable. Family production is good but if you want to
run a business, you should have volume of production or the market place is very unhappy. And you
have to be collective in terms of the items that you produce.
Because Weaver’s Way is committed to collective decision-making, it has all the problems that pure
democracy does, in terms of managing the farm. That’s also the problem with Awbury Arboretum
because they have many tenants to operate on consensual basis. The decision making process is
longer and is intended to listen to what everybody says probably because of the Quaker and Puritan
traditions. It brings a lot of difficulties in competing in the larger world which doesn’t operate in that
way, where people expect economic efficiency.
The area is famous for nursery in the US. In the middle of 19th century, there were 16 nurseries
within 5 miles.
Philadelphia is a location for a lot of hot peppers called fish peppers. They came from West Africa to
the Caribbean. And it’s the slave’s gardening in this country. A hundred years later in Philadelphia,
many of the people in the neighborhood raise this traditional African food.
Then they have Hessian moving into the neighborhood. They introduced African, Caribbean and also
French food.
They also have Jamaican blacks.
The black people in the area have entered the social class, so they don’t have a lot of poor people.
Size:
55 acres in total
Land:
The community garden’s organization need to sign a lease and abide by the rule.
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Staff:
1 farmer, 1 intern and volunteers
Also a problem with the scale of operation
Finance:
Revenue from selling crops at farmer markets and private donations
But not enough funding for manual labors
Partners:
-Weavers Way, which has the largest Food Coop in that part of the city
Weavers Way Community Programs (WWCP) was formed in 2007, as the as the non-profit arm of
Weavers Way Co-op, a 5,000-member community owned market with locations in the Mt. Airy and
Chestnut Hill. WWCP’s mission is to build the Northwest Philadelphia community by fostering
cooperative activities that support local food production, economic literacy, a sustainable
environment, and healthy lifestyles.
-Pennsylvania State University, Coop called Extension Service
-PHS, older voluntarily horticulture and agriculture service
-Philadelphia Orchard Project, committed to finding empty land anywhere in the city and planting
small orchards, using both private and public moneys, having 34 orchards, 35th year of permaculture
Awbury Arboretum is also often involved with local partners such as the Philadelphia Orchard
Project (POP). POP works with community based group and volunteers to plan and plant orchards in
the city that grow healthy food, green spaces and community food security.
- Germantown area (the location of Awbury Arboretum) is one of Philadelphia’s oldest settlements.
It was originally settled by Mennonite and Quaker German speaking émigrés from Holland, Germany
and Switzerland attracted to Philadelphia by William Penn's promises of religious tolerance. When
Philadelphia was occupied by the British during the American Revolutionary War, several units were
housed in Germantown. Germantown is home to many of the city's historic 18th and 19th century
homes originally built as suburban retreats for rich Philadelphians. Beginning in the 1930’s
Germantown began to see signs of urban blight and decay. Once a middle and upper class white
community, Germantown saw an influx of poorer African Americans moving to the city from the
south seeking employment. By the 1950’s Germantown had seen a large exodus of its middle class,
primarily German descendant residents for the Philadelphia suburbs. In such cases, middle income
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people (who usually live in suburbs like Germantown) are trying to participate in urban agriculture
and community garden program in their locality.
Other features:
Leaves mixed with wood chops, transported from other part of the city and other greens to compost
Animals from the Saul High School
Challenges:
-Limitation of land (e.g., not ideal for business and/or the source of economic profit)
-Food security versus multiple sources of production
-Challenge of identifying on farm management strategies (e.g., crop rotation, soil
amendments, etc.)
-Financial hardship
Community Garden on the site:
People are happy with the garden but they are not happy with the construction.
Food grown on the site is mainly for self-consumption and donation to the poor.
Philabundance, providing food for poor individual
Manaa, providing food for people having HIV/AIDS
There are totally 51 small plots in the garden. They have 7 or 8 people on their waiting list and 7 or 8
gardeners are now in their 90s. They pay a little money to their own organization. All of them live
within the walking distance, 5 to 10 minutes.
Involving Methodist Church in West Philadelphia to train ex-offenders and ex-prisoners
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The Mill Creek Farm
Feb 18, 2013
Land Neighbourhood People Practice Organization History Financial
Owned by the Water Department, the growing area is about 0.5 acre
Low-income African American and immigrants
2 full time + 1 intern + volunteers
Food access + education
NPO 8 years Grants + donation + fundraising
Interviewee:
Johanna Rosen, Director
Johanna has been doing farm for a long time and loves growing food. She enjoys any way that
involves people more. She enjoys working with youth and teaching people the possibility of growing
food. Johanna lives about a mile away from the farm. She studied about food and agriculture at
school from social science perspective and she worked on farms on workshops.
History:
The farm is called “The Mill Creek Farm” not only because it is situated in the neighbourhood called
Mill Creek in the West Philadelphia, but also the Mill Creek really runs underneath the land. It was a
small stream that fed into the Schuylkill River and it was buried in a big sewage pipe about one
hundred years ago. It was the same with all the creeks and streams around the city because they
had become the health hazard. As a result, the land collapsed. Around the area, some houses started
to sink and were torn down. After a while some places became open space and some were turned
into community gardens so different people had their own plots whether growing food themselves
or to share with family and friends. The east side of the farm started to be vacant when there were a
lot of vacant lots in Philadelphia and they tended to be covered in trash and weeds and nobody was
really taking care of them. This situation continued for about thirty years. The land was owned by
the city through the Redevelopment Authority and they decided to reset the land to the Water
Department as part of the Water Department - Storm Water Management1. In 2005, the Mill Creek
1 Because the city has a lot of buildings and street surfaces and when there was a big rain storm and there was not enough place for rain to filter into the ground and a lot of run-off occurred. Sewage systems were installed and all the run-off heads for the Schuylkill River. It should get cleaned and filtered before it goes into the Schuylkill River but when there is too much water in the system, some goes directly into the river.
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Farm was founded by Johanna Rosen and Jade Walker and nearby public schools doing school
gardening program and nutrition education. They proposed to the Water Department to use only
the vacant portion of the land to start this farm so it wouldn’t disturb the community garden. The
proposal of the Mill Creek Farm met a lot of the goals of the Water Department and so they helped
them to start the farm. In 2006, the Mill Creek Farm started their first growing season.
Usually in cities there are contaminations and metals. But before the Mill Creek Farm started
growing, they tested the soil and very luckily, there’s no contamination. Because there were greens
and weeds growing and dying there, they had pretty good top soil.
Land:
The land is owned by the Water Department. The Mill Creek Farm don’t need to pay anything for the
land.
Activities:
-Food distribution to local neighborhood2
The priority of the Mill Creek Farm is to get food delivered to the local neighborhood. Every year
starting in June going through November, they have farm stand every week on Saturdays and they
sell in the Farmer’s Market in the neighborhood3 on Wednesdays. Most of their food is getting sold
directly to the community at the market. They can accept coupons, senior citizens stamp and also a
program called WIC4. They can also accept Pennsylvania Access Card, which is out of a process of
“food stamps” or government assistance for organic food. They keep their food price affordable5
and they also donate some of their vegetables to “Food Cupboard”, where people can get free food6.
They sell a little bit to “Food Co-op” nearby and occasionally to some restaurants and cafes.
-Education
Trash, oil sneaked out of the cars from the street and other things were polluting the river. So the officials were trying to find the way the keep the river cleaner, and that’s what is called the Storm Water Management. There were a lot of different strategies for that such as planting trees along the street, using bricks for pavement, using the vacant land, catching water and reusing it, living roofs and green roofs etc. 2 The neighborhood doesn’t have a supermarket and so people’s choices of where to get food is pretty limited. There are some fast-food and corner stores where they sold a lot of chips and soda and junk food. There are not a lot of places to get fresh vegetables or healthier food especially at affordable prices. 3 The Farmer’s Market is located two blocks away from the Mill Creek Farm at the busier intersection. 4 Usually for young mothers, there’s an incentive for them to get fresh food. 5 There’s a story that there used to be a truck at the corner selling all kinds of vegetables at 1 dollar which is usually in low quality. 6 Usually people can only get can food and the non-perishable items from the “Food Cupboard”, so the Mill Creek Farm wish people can get fresh produce as well.
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The farm is facing to people who want to learn about growing food in the city and other
sustainability issues. They work with kindergarten and preschools all the way to graduate school
students. Professional groups come as part of their conferences, such as groups like the
Pennsylvania University, touring the farm and having discussions. For younger kids, the Farm tries to
make their hands on and emphasize on different senses, so they get to smell, taste and find things.
In the summer times, they have programs for high school students, where they are paid to work with
them for six weeks, so that they get more experience working in the field and at the farm stands.
They have an afterschool program with one of the elementary schools in the neighborhood where
the students come out every week and help with fencing and taking care of one section of the
garden. The farm has workdays every week when it is open to the public. People come and
volunteer and help them run the farm7. The farm also do workshops open to the public on different
topics like compost or beekeeping,
Farm Features:
-Green roof: Storm water management and energy efficiency.
-Beehive: Kids want to see some animals on the farm. They harvest honey in spring, summer and
autumn each year.
-The building: built by themselves with mud etc. The structure was built by a builder. Recycled
materials were used to save money and to show what’s possible. Outside wall was recycled concrete,
covered by small mosaic with all trash materials. Instead of sending them to trash fill, these things,
glass, tires, and bikes were turned into art. Wood came from other buildings so they didb’t have to
buy them new.
- Different composting: Compost toilet. The banana tree is breaking down the compost from the
toilet.
-Solar panel: for electricity and light.
-Irrigation system: drip system. Get water right to the root of the plant instead of spray in the air
which loses a lot of water through evaporation. The drip system also helps keep the plants healthier.
- Fabric: physical barrier to pests. No chemicals and pesticides are used.
-Soil maintenance: crop rotation, weed and compost.
-Products: In summer, they have tomatoes, onions, potatoes, etc. They adjust their growing
according to what people need. They also have some medicine herbs around. They grow a great
variety to show people the possibility of growing different things in the city.
7 There are only 2 people working on the farm full time.
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Q&A
1. Issues about the community garden next to the farm:
The community garden was started by the people in the community and has been there for 35 years.
When the Mill Creek Farm was started, a lot of the gardeners were getting older and having trouble
gardening. Some of them are no longer able to take care of their plots and new plots have opened
up. There are a lot of people in the community from the Caribbean Island, Jamaica etc., very often
grew up gardening and wanted to keep gardening, so they have taken over a lot of the plots when
the plots have become available. The Mill Creek Farm wants to support the community garden but
doesn’t want to step on their toes or get in their way. The person who coordinates the garden now
has been gardening there for a long time and lives around the corner.
There are about 15 people in the community garden. Some of the gardens in the city have very
small plots and strict rules but this garden does not and the plots are very big. About 5 of the
gardeners were gardening there for long and 10 are new. But even the new gardeners tend to be
older in age. A lot of them don’t have a lot of money so they are growing food really to supplement
their diet. Most of them are experienced gardeners but sometimes they got new gardeners who are
just learning. They are less socializing than other gardens because they don’t have required
workdays that everyone comes to. But they have other socializing networks.
2. Land trust
The Mill Creek Farm don’t need to pay for the land, rent or anything but they pay for the water use.
They are trying to get the land transferred to a land trust so that it can become protected open
space from new development ever. They don’t want to own the land by themselves but they want it
continue to be open space for gardening and education purposes. When they asked the city if they
would transfer the ownership to a land trust, the city council women of the district said no, even
though the Mayor’s Office of Sustainability and Water Department and other agencies supported
the idea. It’s because the council women really wants to build houses here.
3. Visitors
Usually about 1500 a year, but varies.
4. How do you promote your activities to public?
Very little, mostly people contact them. The Mill Creek Farm has information on their website about
how to come. They do a little bit promotions in the neighborhood to the schools that are within
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walking distance. There used to be a lot more field trips from the schools, but because there’s not a
lot of money in the school right now so it’s difficult for them to hire a bus to go on a trip, so they can
just walk to the farm, which is more affordable for them. It’s word of mouth as they’ve been there
for years. Some groups come back every year from different schools.
5. Staff
Only 2 people work full time and do all the farm management, education and all of the
administration, running all the non-profit fund-raising. Usually 1 intern works with their Farmer’s
Market Program, which is part-time and unpaid. Usually about 400 volunteers come every year,
some of whom come every week others come just once or twice.
6. Co-op and farmer’s market
There are two main organizations in Philadelphia that run Farmer’s Market. One is called Food Trust
and the other one is called Farm Tricity. They both run markets all over the city. Some of the markets
are very strong markets in wealthier neighborhood. They can attract a lot of different investors for
the market. For those markets, you will have to apply and maybe it’s harder to get into if you are
selling some of the same product that other vendors have. In the Mill Creek neighborhood, the Food
Trust runs the market and they had a hard time getting farmers to sell at this market because this is
a lower-income neighborhood. The Mill Creek Farm didn’t have a hard time applying for the market
and actually the Food Trust had them. In some places they will look for farmers to sell at their
markets, but other ones the farmers will have to apply. For the Mill Creek Market, there has been a
lot of change each year with farmers because they can’t make as much money as that market as
they can go in the center of the city, so they aren’t coming back and the market manager has to go
out to find new farmers.
The price is not controlled. The Mill Creek Farm tries to match the prices with other farmers at the
market so that they are not underselling them. The customers will give them feedback if it is too
expensive. But if they can charge a little bit more, they will try.
The co-op in the area is very committed to buying local organic as much as possible and the Mill
Creek Farm has had a relationship with them for a long time. They are happy to buy mostly anything
the Mill Creek Farm offered them as long as they are in good quality.8
7. Challenges
8 The name was called Mariposa Food Cooperative, a mile south of the farm.
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-Funding
The organization is non-profit and because they are keeping their prices affordable for the food, they
are not making as much as they could from selling the food, so they need to find other ways to
support the operation. Their education program brings in some funding. They are willing to receive
any amount of donation. A lot of their funding comes from grants from foundations and individual
donors. They have big fund-raising event every year. Their biggest challenge is finding the money to
run operation. Most of the governmental support comes from the Federal Government for farm in
the form of subsidies for crops like corn etc. and there’s very little support for vegetable.
-Staff
Because there’s only two staff managing the organization in addition to managing the farm, it is also
a bit difficult. But the farm itself hasn’t faced too many challenges.
-Evaluation
It’s really hard to tract the impact of the farm on an individual over a longer time. Kids coming more
recently are a lot more familiar with the ideas. They talk about composting, eating vegetables. When
the kids first come, they don’t want to get dirty; they don’t want to touch the soil. Now they feel
more comfortable. They are digging in the dirt and they want to learn more, they want to get their
hands dirty. They are eating fresh vegetables in the field and loving it and wanting more. It’s about
exposure and quality. The vegetables they eat at schools are not fresh and are over-cooked. They eat
spinaches right out of the field when they are still fresh, which builds up a different relationship to it
and makes them more open to eating more vegetables in the future. But it is very difficult to
measure especially when they are only at the farm for a brief time maybe only once.
8. Partnership
The Food Trust runs the Farmer’s Market.
The nearby organization called Neighborhood Bike Works brings their camp when they ride to the
farm every summer and help with the farm.
The Youth bring kids.
The PHS gives them a lot of support in the program of City Harvest. They give all their seeds and
seedlings, composts and a lot of other materials. That’s one of their most important partners.
9. Impact on neighbors:
A lot of the neighbors come to the farm stand to buy vegetables. Some may get more involved in
gardening and try to get a plot of land in other gardens.
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10. Working hours: Not fixed according to season.
11. Volunteers:
Tend to be adults such as college and university students. Sometimes there are kids in the
neighborhood come by on their own not in a group.
12. Size of the farm:
The size the Mill Creek Farm is growing is about half an acre. The whole space including the
community garden is about one and a half acre.
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Aspen Farms (Near Mill Creek Farm)
Feb. 18, 2013
Land Neighborhood People Practice Organization History Financial
0.5 acre, used to be vacant lot in Mill Creek neighborhood; now a land trust of NGA
Mill Creek Neighborhood, mostly black people and immigrants
Local resident & students
Community garden; outdoor science classroom for students
Run by NGA (a non-profit corporation)
Started in 1975, transferred to NGA in 2004
Member annual fee, fundraising; land cost and taxes covered by NGA
History:
After 14 years of hard work, Aspen Farms, a community garden at 49th and Aspen Streets, is the
newest land trust garden in Philadelphia. On March 16th, 2004, the City transferred title to the land
to NGA as a permanent, community-managed garden to benefit the neighborhood. Started in 1975,
this West Philadelphia vegetable and flower garden has endured as one of Philadelphia’s most
successful and celebrated community gardens, and has been featured in the national news media,
including Good Morning America and National Geographic. On the former site of demolished row
houses and a dry cleaning business in the Mill Creek neighborhood, the garden was started by
neighborhood residents with the support of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, and doubled in
size in two years, filling the entire half-acre vacant lot.
Today, Aspen Farms boasts a beautiful assortment of trees, vegetables, flowers, a fish and lily pond,
as well as a colorful painted mural of a farm scene. It also serves as an outdoor science classroom for
students from two local middle schools. The garden is one of PHS Philadelphia Green’s Keystone
Gardens, larger long-standing community gardens that are significant in Philadelphia’s community
gardening past, present, and future. Keystone Gardens have received ongoing assistance from
Philadelphia Green, helping to ensure their success and viability.
The success of Aspen Farms is a tribute to its active and dedicated leadership, its well-organized
garden club, and the passion of its members. Each member pays an annual fee, and the group holds
yearly fundraisers’ trips, dinners, and donation appeals to help support the cost of operating the
garden. Hayward Ford, garden coordinator since 1986, has been a tireless leader working long hours
in the garden and serving as an advocate for Aspen Farms and community gardening citywide. Ford’s
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challenge is to connect with younger people in the community and the garden, encouraging them to
be the next dedicated leaders of this treasured community landmark.
-NGA
The Neighborhood Gardens Association / A Philadelphia Land Trust (NGA) is a nonprofit corporation
whose mission is the long term preservation of existing community-managed gardens and open
spaces in Philadelphia. Incorporated in 1986, NGA resulted from the efforts of the Pennsylvania
Horticultural Society (PHS), the Penn State Urban Gardening Program (PSUGP) and local business
representatives and community gardeners. They saw a need to create a mechanism for preserving
community gardens threatened by development. Often these gardens were former vacant, trash-
filled lots that had been transformed into gardens through the efforts of the neighbors in low and
moderate-income neighborhoods. In most cases, the land was not owned by the gardeners but by
the city or private (often tax-delinquent) owners. After years of caring for the land, some gardeners
lost their gardens to development projects. It was this possibility of losing more gardens that lead to
the creation of NGA.
Over the last twenty years, numerous challenges have faced the gardeners and NGA as they
attempted to preserve gardens. Each garden site had unique characteristics and required
individualized attention. NGA worked through each situation with the gardeners and now holds title
to twenty-four gardens on behalf of the community. These parcels range from 3.7 acres to single
house lots. The gardens are a variety of vegetable and flower gardens as well as sitting parks, and
are maintained by the local community residents. NGA handles the insurance and taxes so gardeners
can do what they do best — garden. These land-trusted gardens represent only a small percentage
of the successful gardening projects in the city. The significant inventory of community gardens and
vacant land in Philadelphia provides a challenge for NGA in the future.
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Community Farm and Food Resource Center at Bartram’s Garden
Feb 18, 2012
Land Neighbourhood People Practice Organization History Financial
3.5 acres in total on the 46-acre Bartram’s Garden
5-year lease with John Bartram’s Association
Low income neighbourhood with a lot of immigrants
Students, full time staff
Community garden, greenhouse seedling, food kitchen, etc.
NPO (University, NPO, City Government, Joint effort)
Started in 2011
Fund from City Government and PHS
History:
Opened on Oct.27, 2011, the Community Farm and Food Resource Center (CFFRC), is located in the
southwest quadrant of Bartram’s Garden, a public garden and National Historic Landmark at
54th Street and Lindbergh Boulevard. A year and a half ago, there was a baseball field and an
abandoned tennis court and nothing else. Ty, a farmer named Chris and about 13 high school
students built everything in the field. They plowed and made roads in the field, built the greenhouse
and 43 raise beds, which are used by people living around Bartram’s Garden. The idea has been
discussed with the people living in the neighborhood. Since the industrialization in the 70s and 80s
and globalization, Southwest Philadelphia is somehow lost in this jam. So they are trying to make it
more relevant and incorporating food and to increase the community’s access to local, organic,
affordable, nutritious and culturally relevant food and to provide a space for everyone to develop a
relationship with the land.
-Three goals:
1. Offer people in Southwest Philadelphia with affordable local fresh, healthy food. Because a lot of
time organic food is so expensive. The two spheres of access that they are trying to dig into are
culinary and cultural access to food for geographic affordability and financial access. How to
cooperate into food traditions for your family and how to cook it are still problems to be solved.
2. To provide space in the city where people can take control of their food system.
3. To provide the space for people to reconnect with their food, land and each other.
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Their goal eventually is to create an education center, a cooking center where they can hire people
from the community and give people who want to teach cooking the space and scale, being an ally
and providing the space for the people in the community to do the things they want. They try to look
at people’s stories and give space for intergenerational partnership between community gardeners
and the youth that they work with.
Future plans call for replacing a gravel parking lot with a food-education center, complete with a
kitchen and classroom space and a packing shed/walk-in cooler/wash station for pre-sale vegetable
preparation and a brick oven for baking. All programs are designed to engage interested Southwest
Philadelphia residents in healthy cooking and gardening.
- History of Bartram’s Garden
John Bartram came over around 1700s or maybe a little before that, standing over by the King of
England as a botanist to collect all of the new plants in the New World. He travelled up and down in
the east coast, all over Florida and back. He lived there and built his house right upon the field. So it
was his land of about 400 acres about 200 years ago. Before that, a lot of indigenous people lived in
the area. It was hunting ground for thousands and thousands of activities on the land.
-Immigrants in Philadelphia
In Philadelphia, they have immigrants from Nigeria, West Africa, Southeast Asia, etc. They’ve been
trying hard to make it a community based project instead of a community break project, which is
difficult.
Land:
Public land, donated by the John Bartram’s Association to the city
The field is on a 45-acre Bartram’s Garden, which takes up 3.5 acres.
They are responsible for the land for 5 years right now.
There are four main parts to the land that embodied the goals in a physical way:
(1) Orchard (50 fruit trees) and berry patch (1,000-foot-long), with dwarf trees planted last year,
cherry, apple, figs, kind of a sample orchard for what people can grow. There are three rows of
blueberry and the rest of them are rosemary and blackberry. They grow fruit because fruit is
very tangible in the city to be able to get and eat. The sweet taste gives more connection to
people with the greens.
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(2) Community garden. People from Southwest Philadelphia can come and pay 15 dollars to rent
the space for a year. What they can learn from the classes are the tools, the water and the
transplant from the greenhouse. They have around 43 beds right now and there’s more to come.
That gets close to their second goal.
(3) Farm (a crop field), which will be a demo-garden, takes up one acre. The first year they grew
7,000 pounds of food. Hopefully this year they will get 10,000 pounds. Before they sell the food
to the market, they have a farm stand right out the housing project near the garden. They grow
things like broccolis in the winter. In summer, they grow potatoes, eggplants, onions,
watermelon, etc.
(4) Greenhouse: provide seedlings in cooperation with PHS.
People:
- 13 students from Bartram’s High School in the neighborhood, all coming from poor background,
getting paid, helped to plant the trees, to build the bed and everything.
Activities:
They do cooking outreaches with different cultural foods so people understand others’ culture.
Partner:
- Pennsylvania Horticultural Society (PHS)
The greenhouse is part of the City Harvest Program, one of the three green resource centers, which
is a model for urban agriculture. They work with around 105 or 106 community gardens all over the
city, supplying resources with education. The seedlings in the greenhouses will be transplanted to
community gardens. The gardeners will donate 20% of the vegetables they grow to their food
kitchen, the Soup Kitchen etc. It’s becoming bigger, so they have three green resource
center/greenhouses around the city now. There’s one in southwest, one in northwest and one in
eastern part of the city. They grew 70,000 transplants in their greenhouse, which got distributed
through the city. Under different days in April and June, hundreds of people go there who have
signed up in their part of the project to pick up their transplants so that they grow food all over the
city. They meet monthly as a separately program to get interviews with professionals.
The Horticulture Society provides seedlings, resources and supplies to urban growers.
The Horticulture Society funded the start-up costs, building construction and general
consulting. The Society, in collaboration with the City of Philadelphia, has designated the project as
one of the organization’s three green resource centers, all funded through a $300,000 grant from
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the U.S. Department of Agriculture that has enabled the expansion of the Society’s innovative urban
food program, City Harvest, across Philadelphia.
They also help food supply and get other things to the ground.
They have a landscape architecture to help developing the shape of the community garden.
- Agatston Urban Nutrition Initiative, a program of the Netter Center for Community Partnership at
the University of Pennsylvania
They have a sense for community partnership. They started the University-Assisted Community
Schools model as a way for community development. The University is an economic engine, lots of
programs coming in and they have granters. The whole idea is having the University be tied to
schools, programs in communities to have more stability. It’s also the responsibility of the financial
power house, having so many humans and resources. There’s a discrepancy between the wealth of
Penn and the wealth of the community so this is some way to help grow the community. They also
have an award for keeping that as a priority in their university.
They have several landscape architecture students help them, too.
Student volunteer groups are providing much of the manpower.
- Bartram’s Garden/John Bartram’s Association: they also own the land and have partnership with
the city. They have a lease with the city. Bartram’s Garden will enhance its youth-programming
component and implement the orchard project, which is part of the long-term master plan at
Bartram’s.
The John Bartram Association, which manages Bartram’s Garden in cooperation with the City’s
Department of Parks and Recreation, contributes in-kind management of the land, including shared
equipment use and help with construction and maintenance.
- Philadelphia Parks & Recreation, City of Philadelphia: because they are using the public park land
and the City has provided a $30,000 donation to fund site approval, water-line installation for
irrigation and electric lines to the site.
- Students from Bartram’s High School
- Other partners
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The Dolfinger-McMahon Foundation has provided $10,000 for the farm, and the orchard will benefit
from a donation of 25 trees from the Four Seasons Hotel Philadelphia. An anonymous gift in memory
of Margery B. George and another from the S.L. Gimbel Foundation have also been received.
Other features:
They will build a solar sheet for the greenhouse, which is a solar panel that connects to the solar hot
water that will run breeding seeds to the bottom of the greenhouse.
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Eastwick Community Garden (or Common Ground Garden, Airport Garden)
Feb. 18, 2013
Land Neighborhood People Practice Organization History Financial
9 acres;
used to be residential area; lease from the Redevelopment Authority
Black people President and most gardeners are black; students from Pepper Middle School
Community garden
NPO 40 years history
Rent: 5 dollars a year for a plot
History:
The Eastwick Community Garden (aka Common Ground Garden or Airport Garden), located at the
north end of a runway, near I-95 on Bartram Avenue, is the largest in Philadelphia, at around 9 acres,
with about 100 plots. Gardeners have been tending plots here for over 40 years. Before the garden
was started, the community was different. It was a residential area and there were houses
everywhere. Then the airport was built. When the airport came in, they redeveloped the entire
space and decided to make it a garden.
In the spring of 2012, the Eastwick Gardeners gave a plot to the stewardship of the Rebel Gardeners,
current students and recent graduates of nearby Pepper Middle School, which is about 200 yards
away and for kids from 10 to 13 years old. The old people would teach the young kids and through
that they will learn together. The kids, who called themselves the Rebel Gardeners, built a garden
and maintained by themselves. No pets and livestock are allowed in the garden. Products from the
Garden shouldn’t be sold, but to be distributed to family, friends and community.
Land:
9 acres, which used to be residential area
Lease from the Redevelopment Authority
People:
Gardeners there grew up in the 1920s to 1930s during the Great Depression and learnt to do more
with less. The president and most of the gardeners there are black.
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Financial:
Rent: 5 dollars a plot for a year.
Others:
Gardeners have to buy their own seeds.
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Greenworks Philadelphia
Feb. 19, 2013
Land Neighbourhood People Practice Organization History Financial
Government owned
- 4 full time staffs
Community garden
NPO 40 years history
City budget
Interviewee:
Sarah Wu, Policy and Outreach Manager, Office of Sustainability, Philadelphia
History:
-Mayor initiative:
The office was created by the current mayor, who was elected in 2007 and came into office in 2008.
It took about one year to write their plan which was called Greenworks Philadelphia, which was
wrote by a guy from the University of Pennsylvania. The plan has been implemented for three years.
All the goals have a time deadline of 2015 because they don’t want to delay the sustainable goals,
which usually take a long time and they want to finish it before the end of the second term of the
current mayor.
- Population decline and vacancy:
The population once reached the peak of 2 million and now they have 1.5 million. But this year, they
are growing for the first time since 1950. Overtime, as the population declines, a lot of houses
disappear. In some areas, the cost of building the building is higher than the market value that
building actually has, which is a huge loss to the city. There are 40,000 vacant lots and properties in
Philadelphia, about 10,000 of which are owned by the city. It’s hard to access the land in private
hands because largely among the 30,000 vacant private owned lands, owners are missing in action
(MIA) and probably a lot of them are dead.
Contents:
-5 focus:
Energy: reduce cost burden in energy
Environment: environment footprints
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Equity: eco-system services equally throughout the city; one of the largest park systems in the world
accessible to everyone
Economy: attract companies with clean technology; resilient infrastructure
Engagement: report every year on how they are doing
-15 measurable targets:
In order to tract their progress
-4 energy goals:
• Target 1. Lower city government energy consumption by 30 percent;
• Target 2. Reduce citywide building energy consumption by 10 percent
• Target 3. Retrofit 15 percent of housing stock with insulation, air sealing, and cool roofs;
• Target 4. Purchase and generate 20 percent of electricity used in Philadelphia from alternative
energy sources;
- 3 environment goals:
• Target 5. Reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent;
• Target 6. Improve air quality toward attainment of federal standards;
• Target 7. Divert 70 percent of solid waste from landfill;
- 4 equity goals:
• Target 8. Manage storm water to meet federal standards;
• Target 9. Provide walkable access to park and recreation resources for all Philadelphians;
• Target 10. Provide walkable access to affordable, healthy food for all Philadelphians;
• Target 11. Increase tree coverage toward 30 percent in all neighborhoods by 2025;
- 3 economy goals:
• Target 12. Reduce vehicle miles traveled by 10 percent; (working with Mayor’s Office of
Transportation and Utility, cycling)
• Target 13. Increase the state of good repair in resilient infrastructure; (airport paving materials)
• Target 14. Increase the size of regional clean economy by 25 percent; (green jobs)
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- 1 engagement:
• Target 15. Philadelphians unite to build a sustainable future. (Urban Sustainability Design Network)
People:
4 staff:
-1 Director: Catherine, reports directly to the Mayor
-2 Policy Managers: Sarah (English undergraduate degree, Urban Planning master) and Alex (English
undergraduate degree, Sustainable Designing master), split the portfolio
-1 Engineer: who does all the energy targets
Water Department does all the Storm Water Management. The Office helps them do fundraising
and research on what is the best way to incorporate their goals into their work and the reports.
Challenges:
-The biggest challenge is funding. Philadelphia has a tight budget and sustainability is not prioritized.
But they are lucky to get a lot of Recovery Act’s money from the Federal Government.
-Another struggling is that the office could disappear if the Mayor finishes his term. They are trying
to institutionalize the agency so that it won’t go away after the current administration. They are
trying to sustain their sustainability and try to make themselves unnecessary.
-There’s a group called Sustainability Working Group calling all the agencies together. The Office has
to build up good relationship with them.
-The energy goals are easy to measure and easy to get people to understand.
-The greenhouse gas and air quality is out of their control. The air quality goal is largely driven by the
weather.
-The equity is harder to measure.
-Problem of city council. Because the council has the rights and if the city council is focusing on
development but not urban agriculture, it is hard to keep urban agriculture issue within that part of
the city. If want to change this arrangement of city councils they need to rewrite city code.
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- Land in Philadelphia is owned by 3 city departments, private organizations and individuals.
Government office is trying to create a land bank to get rid of so many layers of legal requirements
needed to acquire land. There is an inventory list of owned land(phillylandworks.org), trying to work
with agencies to standardize what people can and cannot do on land ,at least trying to combine all
the information is in one place.
City government is interested in about 5 years a least for land tenure ship, but the community wants
a longer time. However, if the land is leased permanently from the start, people may start
abandoning the land after a short time of farming. From MOS’s opinion, NPOs who take land first
and re-lease them as community gardens are helpful, maintenance activities contribute to the
quality control of the lands.
Partners:
- Building Energy Benchmark Legislation: requiring buildings to introduce their information about
their usage and energy patterns through the online tool by the USEPA and get scores for energy
efficiency, which create market incentive for tenants and builders to make more energy-efficiency.
They work closely with the Delaware Valley Green Building Council for the legislation issue, which is
a non-profit and local arm of USGBC, the United States Green Building Council, which is the
organization that runs the certification program. The program was collaboration. They work with the
City Council to introduce the legislation and there was no contract or payment involved.
- Energy work: the group called Energy Work provides subsidized energy audit. They have contract
and pay them.
- Food: Food Policy Advisory Council, which is a group appointed by the Mayor to give advice on the
food system.
- Waste Watcher: They work with Mayor’s Office of Citizen Engagement and Volunteer Services work
on green volunteer opportunities.
- PHS: They provide a lot of technical assistance for those who want to grow food.
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Community gardens:
From the MOS’s view, community gardens can revitalize neighbourhoods, settle farmers from
different countries and connect them to provide ethnically appropriate food.
Some of their community gardens are in South Philadelphia where they have a lot of ethnic refugees,
which are run by the non-profit organization, to revive the neighbourhood and provide food access.
These properties are largely owned by the city but a bunch of different agencies. Different agencies
have different tasks. The Redevelopment Authority’s legal task is to get land to redevelopment.
Philadelphia housing authority’s task is to provide housing for low-income people. The Department
of Property’s job is to own the city assets for the City Government. Until recently, they could put all
the land owned by the city together on one inventory list and put them on the website, which shows
the address, the ownership, the zoning, the size and the price. People who are searching land can
just fill out the name, the contact information and whether you are a tax payer, etc.
There are multiple types of urban agriculture: people who just want to grow food for themselves,
say pay 50,000 dollars and get the land as a garden which is totally maintained by the next-door
property owner. The Office will help them get the land easily as long as they don’t have a pool, park
their cars or other things that they are restricted from. If people want to grow food for the
community on the city land, they need to get liability insurance. The city releases the lease up till 5
years because of uncertainty of the tenure owners, but the farmers want permanent lease
immediately.
Some gardens are on very valuable lands, say 2 million dollars or 1.5 million dollars.
Philadelphia has a pretty strong city council and there are 17 of them. They got 10 districts and 7 city
council people at large. The council person for a certain district is the last one to say. There are
district where the council people are pretty supportive of urban gardening and it’s pretty easy to get
the project done and there are other council district where the council person wants only affordable
housing and thinks gardening is stupid and is total an obstacle.
The Office is administrative and has resource people need, the land and access to water, which
people need to grow food, but they don’t have the technologies about how to grow food and they
are not interested in getting into that because they have PHS and the Penn State Extensions. So it
doesn’t make sense for them to recreate their expertise. The NPO’s role is powerful.
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Pennsylvania Horticulture Society (PHS)
Feb. 19, 2013
Land Neighborhood People Practice Organization History Financial
- - 100 employees
Supporting community gardens programs city-wide, education programs, rehabilitating prisoners
NPO Over 100 years of history
foundations, corporations, membership fees, flower show and 4 mil of government money
Interviewee:
Sally, Director
Mark, the landscape architect, did the design of Bartram’s Garden
History:
In 1827 on November 24, a group of farmers, botanists and other plant enthusiasts held a meeting
to create the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society. There, it was resolved "to establish a Horticultural
Society in the City of Philadelphia for the promotion of this interesting and highly influential branch
of Science." After 2years from the establishment, PHS started to open the first nation level’s flower
show and began urban greening program, which became one of their representative programs of
PHS in these days. With such historical backgrounds, PHS has been grown up as an organization
having 19,500 strong memberships nowadays.
Location:
PHS is a Non-Profit Organization (NPO) which is located at 100 North 20th street, Philadelphia, PA
19103 in current. Its full name is Pennsylvania Horticulture Society and it is founded in 1827. Under
the leadership of current president Drew Becher, PHS offers diverse programs, activities, workshops
and publications regarding horticulture to citizen of Philadelphia. From neighbourhood parks to the
restoration of major public landscapes, such as Penn's Landing and the grounds of the Philadelphia
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Museum of Art, PHS has involved thousands of city residents in an on-going effort to make the city a
more liveable place to live and work.
Activity:
The main activity can be categorized into three groups, gardening, greening and learning. Each of
them has a number of programs regarding each topic, and held diverse annual events.
First, one of the representative events about gardening activities of PHS is annual
flower show. It starts in 1829 and becomes the world oldest and largest indoor flower show in these
days. It contributes to boasting floral and garden design, offering live entertainment to public, and gr
owing the gardening workshop and lecture by experts. In addition, it’s also done a role to develop lo
cal economy with a great green life of the region of Philadelphia. A number of foundations,
corporations, individual donators and city government are connected with PHS gardening program
as financial supporter, and its revenue has been passed to thousands of revitalization projects.
Second, about greening activities of PHS, there are a number of community-based green programs
which have been called as Philadelphia green. The main leadership for these works is taken by one
PHS program, City harvest, and it makes a connection with around 200 community gardens in the
city. Under the aims to encourage gardeners do green work by themselves by increasing their
working capacities and supply fresh local food to people in need, city harvest funds start-up costs,
creates infrastructure for beginning the gardening and offers education programs to diverse levels of
local from inmates in prison system to normal people who desires to start community gardening. It
encourages people to involve into garden tenders’ class and gives them a chance to learn how to
organize with their neighbourhood and how to design the garden and find out necessary resources.
Also, City harvest offers a model for urban agriculture through its collaborative work with
greenhouse partners. Partners such as Philadelphia prison system and Awbury Arboretum provides
seedlings in their green houses and transplants the yields to the networks of community gardens.
The gardeners donate 20% of the vegetables they’ve grown and another partner of PHS such as
SHARE (Self Help And Resource Exchange) and Weavers Way co-op helps such gardens connect to
near food kitchens and neighbourhood in food emergency. Especially collaboration with prison
system, which is called as Roots to Re-Entry, makes a contribution to offer inmates opportunity to go
back to society. Inmates who join the program can take landscape management training and basic
job-skill training.
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In addition to those activities, PHS established Mclean library and circulate collection of 10,000
books, catalogue, research papers, and DVDs for increasing public interest in gardening and
horticulture as well as supplying necessary knowledge for urban agriculture in the city of
Philadelphia.
Motivation:
To motivate people to improve the quality of life and create a sense of community through
horticulture. They connect people in the community to each other and to projects on the ground.
The community access to horticulture started in the 1970s. Before that, the Horticulture Society did
the flower show and connected with people who were interested in horticulture, only to beautify
the city, which wasn’t really sustainable and didn’t engage people live there so that doing a favour to
the residents. Then the President of PHS at that time changed the model of working with the
community. In 1970s, Philadelphia wasn’t a nice place; it was under a serious recession, the big
decline and so one way to help build optimism to help the city was to create opportunities for green
and beautification. In 1995, they built over 600 gardens in Philadelphia. They were close to 300
vacant lots, and worked with 100 to 150 existing community garden sites. It worked for a while, but
some people quit and they were older and less able to sustain the projects.
Model:
Intention to inspire people to act and transform the neighbourhoods in the communities, to build
excellent landscape and installations and make them sustainable so they will last. They want
excellence in design, to be a leader in horticulture, to promote healthy communities and to continue
sustainable projects and methods.
Business lines:
- Flower show
- Philadelphia Green: the name is historically given to their gardening programs and their community
based greening programs.
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- Meadowbrook Farm: a property donated to PHS. It has a greenhouse that supports their flower
show and retail operation to showcase horticulture and engage people in different ways to their
projects and also
- Education: teaching people how to create green in their community.
They do all those projects with community partners. They also have cooperate partners especially in
the funding, providing properties, but they also want to be volunteers and to experience and be part
of the big picture.
Things they do
- Restore the urban forest: They plant a lot street trees and trees in parks and public spaces in order
to restore the tree canopy.
- Revitalize neighbourhood parks
- Transform civic spaces
- Reclaim vacant land: Philadelphia is a large community in Eastern United States. The city has a lot
of vacant lands due to the declined industry in the city, which left a lot of vacant buildings. The
previous mayor decided that should become vacant property. He pushed the buildings down
because they were nuisance, leaving a lot of vacant land which need new strategy and PHS is a part
of that.
- Plan for quality open space
- Influence policy and practice
- Inspire youth: to participate in the greening in Philadelphia
- Grow community gardens:
The community gardens are led by the individuals and community volunteers. Community gardens
beautify neighbourhoods, increase property values, reduce crime, create a social network among
gardeners and non-gardeners that fosters a sense of community across different cultural &
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economic barriers, increase availability of nutritious food to those in need, provide opportunity for
physical exercise and give kids the opportunity to work with adults and an outdoor classroom for
hands-on learning.
In Philadelphia, there’s a generation gap. Many of the seniors who live in Philadelphia have
agricultural or gardening experience in the background when they were kids and they are passing
that to other kids. There’s a strong youth learning gardening movement for people from 25 to 40,
who don’t have that background and experience.
The amount of food produced on community gardens exceeds that comes to Philadelphia through
farmers markets and CSAs and other progressive food access. The food grown in community gardens
are eaten by people who grew it and to neighbours and friends and into projects like City Harvest,
where they connect gardeners to people who won’t have food access otherwise.
-City Harvest:
City Harvest has become an umbrella term for many gardening programs at PHS. Before people want
to start a garden, they are encouraged to attend the Garden Tenders program, such as how to find
the supply, garden design and what to grow, etc. In the past, PHS was able to provide resource to
start a garden but right now, they are not in that place. So how to empower people to find the things
they need will probably increase their capacity to be able to create their own gardening experience.
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They’ve been doing Garden Tenders for about 15 years, and have trained more than 2,000 people
who have started hundreds of gardens.
- PHS Garden Tenders: Training series for groups and individuals who are interested in starting
community gardens on abandoned lots, in parks, around schools and churches, and at other
neighbourhood locations. It empowers people to create beautiful, self-sustaining gardens that
enhance their neighbourhoods and increase property values, often serving as the impetus for
further community activism and development and provides additional support in the form of tools,
supplies, and networking.
The birth of City Harvest came when they had the private foundation funding for their community
gardening. They had a couple of big grants from a couple of foundations in Philadelphia. They
changed their funding priority and that worth a lot of notice and they run through a lot of resources
to support community gardens. They took that opportunity to imagine what the community gardens
should be. They talked to gardeners and knew that gardeners may end up with too much of a same
thing and the gardeners are generous and want to share the advantages of their gardens. It was
their opportunity to connect their growers in the food security issues in Philadelphia. The original
idea to create the program was in 2004 and 2005. Before that, the urban agriculture wasn’t given
enough notice.
They work with their greenhouse partners to grow seedlings to distribute to their network at
community gardens. In the first year, they worked with 22 community gardens and they have
expanded from there.
They connect those gardens with their neighbourhood emergency food cupboard and SHARE is the
organization in town, which is the food distribution place connected to all the emergency feeding
programs in the city.
They provide nutrition education from cooking demos and tasting on site at food cupboards and
occasionally at festivals at the gardens, so people using their programs can get a sense of how to use
it; they get recipes, talk to the person who prepare them and get some ideas.
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PHS City Harvest project is starting its 8th year. The program grows fresh produce through a network
of community gardens and helps feed more than 1,000 families in need each week. PHS connects 45
community gardens throughout the city to their neighbourhood emergency food cupboards. The
effort is led by more than 200 gardeners who volunteer their time and efforts to the project. They
have City Harvest Committee and receive seedlings from PHS, grow and plant them, produce,
harvest, wash them and deliver to the food cupboards. Since inception, 213,000 pounds of produce
have been grown and distributed to people who may not have had access to it otherwise. City
Harvest staff placed and supervised more than 1,400 volunteers, including youth volunteers and
university students at 104 workdays at gardens this year.
-Growers Alliance:
With funding from the USDA (United States Department of Agriculture), PHS in 2009 created the City
Harvest Growers Alliance, which is an off-shoot of City Harvest, which provides a support system for
urban food producers who grow fruits and vegetables in and for their communities. There is an
opportunity to extend the support they provide to entrepreneurs and urban farms, with the
intention to donate the food produced in to sell in their neighbourhoods or to restaurants and to
expand the farmers’ income. Farmers are actually trying to do this to connect to their
neighbourhood and the money they earned is to support their operation.
Farmers pay a little fee and PHS provides seedlings, soil, organic fertilizer, supplies and materials as
well as technical assistance to urban market gardeners who grow and sell their produce at farm
stands, farmers markets, and CSA’s and to local restaurants.
Comprised of 55 growing sites, participants in 2012 grew and sold or donated more than 55,000
pounds of fresh produce.
PHS is developing “Green Resource Centres” that provide supplies and offer hands-on training in
organic and sustainable gardening methods.
With Growers Alliance and City Harvest, they work with more than one hundred growing sites with
basically the same seedlings, organic pest controls. The USDA funding ended in August so they don’t
really need to make the same distinctions between those projects any more. Receiving seedlings as a
donation is different from actually deciding to buy it.
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They partner with the Philadelphia Prison System. They build greenhouse and takes it off-line to
funding issues. In 2006, they started their original greenhouse which is 24 by 40. As part of PHS City
Harvest, inmates of the Philadelphia Prison System grow seedlings at a prison greenhouse and
receive training in gardening and basic landscaping. In 2012, PHS worked with 98 inmates at the
prison, grew 20,000 vegetable plant seedlings for distribution, grew and donated nearly 3,000
pounds of produce to Philadelphians in need from the prison garden. The Prison helps fund the
project expenses and also pays for the step person. The seedlings they produce are distributed to all
their community gardens.
-Roots to Re-Entry:
• An innovative green jobs initiative created by PHS and partners to provide former inmates of
the Philadelphia Prison System with entry level employment through local food production
and landscape management.
• Create “real life” situations for participants
• Best-practice training program at both a prison-based greenhouse and a public garden/park
• Bring in industry experts to provide additional training
• Deep employer commitment
From the City Harvest Prison’s Program they created this new program. The Prison is changing their
administrative system and the change of leadership really wants the project to lead to jobs to try to
keep people out of jail. Urban greenhouse management and vegetable farming doesn’t really lead to
paid jobs in the city so they needed to meet the prisoners’ desires and offer job training. Roots to
Re-Entry is a landscape management training program, which all starts at their greenhouse to learn
how to grow seedlings and how to take care of vegetables, basic knowledge in water cycle and basic
science. From there, they will transfer to different facility and gets on-hand training at places at
Bartram’s Garden and Awbury Arboretum, where they learn how to operate machinery and also the
soft skills that they might need. Because they have many connections with the landscape corporates
in the city, they can use those connections to sign contracts with those graduates. It is a successful
model for keeping more people out of jail longer.
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Since 2010, they worked with 61 graduates, 52 got jobs and they have done more than $300,000
with the improvement.
Bartram’s and Awbury Arboretum are non-profits as well but they don’t have enough money to take
care of their landscape.
- Neighbourhood Gardens Association:
NGA is a separate entity from PHS but has undergone transformation and is now a subsidiary of PHS.
It’s a land-holder for 31 community gardens in Philadelphia. It was formed in the 1980s when there
was a clear need to preserve community gardens. They need a place to be held to remain as
community garden, not to be developed. NGA was born to play that role and still serves that role.
But for the last 5 or 10 years, there’s not additional endeavour they can make under that umbrella.
Because PHS steps in to revitalize and reshape all those gardening, local food production and urban
agriculture in Philadelphia, it is now in charge of the strategic planning for NGA to take another big
role. NGA preserves and protects 30 community gardens across the city. In 2013, NGA will be taking
on new land for preservation, and will be working to become a national model for urban land trusts.
PHS took over Management of NGA in 2012.
- Pop-up gardens
Over the last two summers, PHS has created temporary gardening installations on vacant properties
in Centre City, Philadelphia. One big open place has been vacant for more than 20 years. They
converted to a food production garden as well as a showcase for greens and plants. The structure is
reused from the exhibit from a local university at the Flower Show. People can come and visit and
see what they have grown and become inspired and get new ideas. They are connected with local
restaurants. There’s another vacant lot in the middle of centre city last year, which has been vacant
for 18 to 20 years.
• In 2012, over 50 activities, programs and educational opportunities were offered
• More than 100 volunteers assisted to plant and care for the space and to serve as docents
for visitors to the garden
• Over 6,500 Visitors enjoyed the pop up garden
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They extend the City Harvest Program to include the Grower’s Alliance, which need seedlings. The
expanded their seedling production by building a greenhouse at Awbury Arboretum with Weaver’s
Way Farm, because in City Harvest they exceeded the capacity with the Prison. They took the
greenhouse model and created the model for green resource centre. Their vision that they are still
working on and realizing is to have geographically appropriately located sites that have a greenhouse,
place for storage, place for growers to come to pick up supplies, place for workshops, a kind of all-
purpose stop to be able to maximize food growing production, three-season growing. In Philadelphia
it’s possible to get broccoli seedlings in spring but it’s really hard to get them in summer, so it
provides resources that are not available elsewhere. The farm on Awbury Arboretum with Weaver’s
Way was the first one PHS built up with SHARE and they created one in Bartram’s Garden. They have
two others which they are still working on the funding, access to the land, etc. They put forth the
challenge of creating the right look and feel. They want excellent design as well as good horticulture
and inspiration of space. They rely on their able colleagues and landscape architecture to create
those places.
Partnership:
The head of Department Parks & Recreation is also attached to increasing local food. There are a lot
of vacant lots in the inventory of the Redevelopment Authority. The mission of the Redevelopment
Authority is to get that land into productive tax-pay use. So if they want, they buy it, build something
useful and pay tax on it. There are a lot of lands that people don’t want to buy because they are in
neighbourhoods that are not desirable for some reason, still being empty and vacant. In 2006, the
Redevelopment Authority is not really open to leasing land for urban agriculture. In the last couple
of years, because of the pressure from the Mayor and outside forces and new leadership, they are
more open to leases for 3 to 5 years, which is long enough to put in an agriculture project and not
feel like wasting a bunch of money. That could show great interim use for food production. One
thing that they haven’t been able to convince them is that there are locations and opportunities for
urban agriculture or gardening is the highest and best use for that site. The Redevelopment
Authority is still focusing increasing tax for the city. The history of Philadelphia Government is
politics. The City Council People are responsible for their jurisdictions. If they want a project in their
district, it does happen; if they don’t, it doesn’t, regardless of anything else.
They have contract with city to do vacant land stabilization.
They meet regularly with the City Harvest partners.
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Government agencies sometimes provide technical support to help them comply with regulations.
For example, because their community gardens don’t have money to pay for the storm water
management, they are actually trying to help the government to solve some of the challenges, which
are all policy-based. They also get compost from the street trees, which otherwise will be purchased
from elsewhere by PHS and the government have to pay to bury these.
Usually, they don’t give money to other organizations or growers in community gardens. They don’t
pass through money but support such as technical assistance.
Financial:
PHS started 23 million dollars. They receive funding through various resources, through foundations,
corporations, members of Horticulture Society (since they are a membership organization,
individuals pay them for their memberships), the flower show, 4 million dollars from government
money based on the contract with the city country service or people service for landscape
management. For fundraising, they have membership development, corporate sponsorship
development, grant writer to private foundations, etc. Everybody in PHS has a fundraising role. The
expectation is clear that they are all ambassadors for PHS and they all look for money where they
can. The current President of PHS, Drew Becker is having new directions for fund raising.
The initial funding for their Growers Alliance was from the United States Department of Agriculture,
which is from the Federal Government.
They got State Money for Tree-Planting Initiatives.
They get city money for general community economic development.
They get government money from different levels for different parts of projects. It’s very project
specific.
Staff:
100, gone down a little bit in the last 6 years
They shrunk some teams and increased others.
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Role as Platform of network building:
PHS has made an effort to define themselves as a hub of information regarding horticulture and
community garden, and community builder in Philadelphia. In order to achieve the goal to develop
the community garden and increase of better access of citizen to fresh local food, PHS has
concentrated on the work for network building collaborating with diverse levels of stakeholders: 1)
Government (Federal government, City government), 2) Private corporation, 3) Public (Individual
member, Volunteer worker), 4) Other organization (NPO: SHARE, Weavers Way Co-op, Prison system)
etc. Using these connections, PHS’s activities are to be funded and meet the basic requirements
needed to develop the community garden.
Partners Classes Type of Linkage
Federal Government
City Government
Government PHS has made collaborations with city government of Philadelphia and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) which is affiliated into federal government. Funding from Federal government is received through around $300,000 grant which has enabled the expansion of PHS’s urban food program, called City Harvest, across the city. Support from city government is mainly offered through the contract with redevelopment authority which is the department controlling vacant land within Philadelphia. Recently, the lease extension has been increased to 3 to 5 years and there has been increasing tolerance of community gardens.
PHS has done management for keeping collaborative relationships with other organizations such as NPOs and prison system of Pennsylvania. Under the city harvest’s urban agriculture project, these greenhouse partners generate the land for gardening and connect the proceeds from the gardens to nearest food cupboards.
SHARE,
Weavers Way Co-op,
Prison System
Other
organizations, NPO
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Private corporation,
PHS member,
Volunteer worker
Public,
Individuals
One of the sources of funding inflow is individual giving through PHS membership and collaborations with private corporations.
However, the result of being a platform of network building and leader of community garden
development might not be purely based on grass-root movement. Although PHS is a non-profit
organization, its history shows that basis of PHS’s establishment is initially started with people’s
interest in horticulture rather than social urgent need of food security. According to the book
regarding history of PHS which is written by James Boyd (1929), first half of years of PHS has been
preceded by interest in horticulture and new plants. It introduces the most investigations and
activities of PHS concentrated on findings and introductions of new plants, exhibition of fruits,
flowers and vegetables. It is 100 years later from its establishment that PHS changed to amateur
organization and concerned on increase of citizen members and issue of urban agriculture. Under
this logic, it would be hard to define that PHS has taken a role to be a leader of urban agriculture of
Philadelphia having connections with various stakeholders from the ground, despite of current yield
of the Society.
Difficulties to encourage further development of community garden in Philadelphia
Second finding is regarded with current challenges PHS has met: 1) Access to land for community
garden and 2) Finding financial resource. It explains what the limitation is to be a leader of urban
agriculture for PHS through reviewing current situation as well as historical background. First, about
the needs of land, access to vacant land can be gained through the contract with city department of
agriculture, especially the redevelopment authority of Philadelphia. However, the biggest target of
city government is to make the land productive, that is, land for tax-paying use, rather than open to
site for urban agriculture. Even despite of the existence of funding, it cannot be utilized without
solving the problem of insufficient land. Thus, the biggest challenge is finding access to land and
financial support at the same time. Even though there has been increasing tolerance of city
government for community garden since Mayor Nutter entered into the authority, it would be hard
to assure whether this political condition can be sustained even after 2015, the last period of current
mayor.
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Walter Biddle Saul High School (W.B. Saul High School)
Feb. 19, 2013
Land Neighbourhood People Practice Organization History Financial
130 acres
Roxborough neighborhood, used to be the home to the wealthy owners of the Manayunk mills
Students Agriculture education
School See below N/A
History:
W. B. Saul High School of Agricultural Sciences is located in the upper Roxborough section of
Philadelphia on the rolling hills of the Wissahickon Valley bordering Fairmount Park. The multi-
building complex is located on a 130-acre campus. On one side of Henry Avenue are Academic,
Agricultural, Greenhouses, Physical Education/ Health, and Small Animal Laboratory buildings
bordered by an arboretum and athletic fields. On the opposite side of Henry Avenue is the working
farm which houses our poultry, dairy, swine, sheep, horses and our Meat Science program. These
buildings are bordered by the school's golf course, nursery, field crops and pasture area for the
livestock.
Activities:
The FFA (formerly known as the Future Farmer's of America) is a premier leadership organization for
agricultural students. Saul's Chapter is one of the largest in the country. Every student at Saul is a
member. Many students choose to apply for leadership positions in the local chapter and help run
many activities throughout the year.
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SHARE Food Program
Feb. 19, 2013
Land Neighbourhood People Practice Organization History Financial
170,000+ square feet warehouse
Northwest Philadelphia
Volunteers and community members
Provide food packages and emergency food relief; community garden
NPO Started in 1986
Donation and grants
History:
The Philadelphia Self-Help and Resource Exchange, SHARE, first opened its doors in 1986 under the
national SHARE umbrella organization. A founding member of the Pennsylvania Association of
Regional food Banks, now known as Hunger-Free Pennsylvania, SHARE has since become an
independent non-profit. At its beginnings SHARE served 50 host organizations with 1,248 packages a
year through the SHARE Food Package Program. This program which distributes discounted food
each month to those that contribute two or more hours of service within their communities has
since grown to over 16,000 per year.
In 1991 the organization expanded its services by becoming the lead agency in Philadelphia County
for the State Food Purchase Program and The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP), which
utilizes state and federal funding to provide food each month to over 500 food cupboards in
Pennsylvania.
By 1996 SHARE noticed a growing need in the community for immediate, year-round access to
nutritious food for communities in Philadelphia and opened a Community Service Store. This store
provides discounted, quality food to individuals every day that show proof of community service. In
addition to increasing the number of individuals and families served, SHARE also has a strong
commitment to increasing the quality of food families and individuals have access to. In 2001, SHARE
partnered with The Food Trust to offer high quality, locally grown fruits and vegetables in the Fresh
Food Package. Additionally in 2002, SHARE became the umbrella agency for the Coalition Against
Hunger, partnering to incorporate advocacy and educational information into their programs. SHARE
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provided similar services to Common Market who specialized in the aggregation of fresh, local
produce and continue to do so from SHARE’s warehouse. SHARE has also served as a United Way
distribution centre and housed the Philly Cares Teacher Store.
Today SHARE continues to serve these communities and more with the addition of its Nice Roots
Farm and Farm to Families Programs. With the recent purchase of its 170,000+ sq ft warehouse,
SHARE is poised for further growth and is looking to expand its current operation to better serve its
communities. With over 250 host organizations and over 500 food cupboards in the SHARE network,
the organization is looking to future to find willing and interested partners as it further develops its
programs the families and individuals they reach.
Practice:
Located in northwest Philadelphia SHARE provides nutritious food to a network of 550 food
cupboards and 250 host organizations each month. SHARE now serves as the lead agency in
Philadelphia County for the State Food Purchase Program and The Emergency Food Assistance
Program (TEFAP), which utilize state and federal funding to provide food each month to food
cupboards in Pennsylvania. SHARE also distributes below-retail “packages” of food to host sites in
Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland and metropolitan New York.
In addition to providing food packages and emergency food relief, SHARE has incorporated a
community garden at its warehouse and administers Philadelphia’s Farm to Families program. Nice
Roots Farm has become an opportunity to include locally-grown, fresh food in SHARE’s food
packages and offer residents in the surrounding community increased access to a variety of
alternative healthy produce. Nice Roots Farm continues to expand each year and recently added two
high tunnels which allow SHARE to produce food for 10 months a year. The garden helps SHARE
educate volunteers and community members on the process of growing food. SHARE is currently
working with the Philadelphia Horticultural Society to encourage homeowners and host
organizations to create their own gardens.
For the past two years, SHARE has also partnered with St. Christopher’s Foundation to administer a
new fresh food package program directed at disadvantaged communities in North Philadelphia. The
Farm to Families program provides fresh, healthy produce to low-income families each week at a
subsidized price. Farm to Families boxes are sold at rates of $10 and $15, each filled with produce
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that would ordinarily be prohibitively expensive at grocery chains and farmers markets. The program
currently serves approximately 500 families each month.
Programs:
-SHARE Food Packages
Through the SHARE Food Package program, those willing to give their time to their community
through volunteerism may access discounts on essential groceries, which saves upwards of 50% on
groceries, requires 2 hours of volunteerism and is open to anyone. Food packages offer meats, fresh
fruits and vegetables and grocery items valued at as much as twice the price you pay. SHARE
purchases the food from growers, brokers and packaging plants. SHARE Food is never donated,
government surplus, or salvage.
-Farm to Families
In partnership with the St. Christopher Foundation, Farm to Families provides affordable, local, and
healthy produce to communities throughout Philadelphia, with local and healthy produce, multiple
size offerings, half the price of a farmers market and helpful cooking advice and recipes.
Farm to Families works with community-based organizations to address availability and affordability
of fresh food in North Philadelphia by, facilitating the purchase, packaging, and distribution of fresh,
affordable weekly boxes of fruit, vegetables, meat, and eggs from local farmers, providing food and
nutrition education, including food budgeting and shopping tips, basic food preparation and cooking
skills, and demonstrations and taste tests, aligned with the weekly boxes and leading policy change
efforts to make fresh, local food available and affordable in the food deserts of Philadelphia.
Each week Farm to Families supplies North Philadelphia families with boxes of produce from local
farmers at a cost of only $10 or $15. Boxes are brimming with fresh fruits and vegetables, often
valued at double the purchase price. Additional fresh a la carte items including eggs, meat, and
seafood are also offered at affordable prices.
Farm to Families packages are full of fresh local produce year round. Junior box contains
approximately 12lbs of fresh fruits and vegetables for only $10. The grande steps up to close to 18lbs
of fresh produce for only $15. At less than one dollar per pound for fresh, local produce these boxes
cannot be beat.
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- Nice Roots Farm
Production right at the SHARE Warehouse, Nice Roots Farm is a growing operation that produces
several thousand pounds of produce each year. Nice Roots Farm is also a member of the Growers
Alliance. It is aimed to be an urban agriculture support centre which offers grower and consumer
education with extensive production facilities and to increases access and variety to produce.
The Nice Roots Farm and Garden Centre at the SHARE Food Program serves as a demonstration
garden for urban growing techniques, a source of local, chemical free, and affordable produce to the
SHARE community, a source of free produce to SHARE Food Program affiliated soup kitchens, and a
resource centre for urban growers.
Last year, they harvested more than 6,000 pounds of vegetables, half of which was donated to soup
kitchens. The remaining produce is sold on site or included in our Farm To Families package.
The garden centre supplies urban growers with the lumber, soil, compost, plants, and seeds needed
for starting a raised bed garden. These materials are available at the lowest possible price to make
gardening more affordable and accessible to the lower income community.
- Emergency Food Relief
Through programs such as TEFAP, State Food and CSFP, SHARE plays a vital role in providing food at
no-cost to a network of organizations to the benefit of those most in need of food with
supplemental food supply, supply to 550 cupboards in Philadelphia and essential support for
struggling families.
State Food Purchase Program
The State Food Purchase Program is a food distribution program where SHARE purchases family size
food items like canned vegetables, fruits, staples and meat that are distributed monthly to about
550 food cupboards in Philadelphia County. The number of food items range from 7 to 11 items. The
cupboards then give out the food to families and individuals that are economically disadvantaged.
The food is purchased from vendors, brokers, and the Philadelphia Food Bank. They deliver the food
to about 26 food cupboards. Depending on the number of participants a food cupboard serves, they
will receive from 5 to 9 cases of each food item.
TEFAP
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TEFAP (The Emergency Food Assistance Program) is a food distribution program where SHARE
distributes commodity foods purchased by the government when available, to the food cupboards
participating in the State Food Purchase Program. The food cupboards give out the food to
participants that meet the federal income guidelines of 150% of poverty. Food items include rice,
juice, fruit, meat and vegetables. St. Vincent DePaul picks up these commodities and delivers them
to our SHARE Centre. The TEFAP items are distributed with the State Food Purchase Program.
Commodity Supplemental Food Program (CSFP)
SHARE in partnership with Philabundance also provides support for CSFP. CFSP food packages do not
provide a complete diet, but rather are good sources of the nutrients typically lacking in the diets of
the target population. Eligibility for the program is limited to elderly persons with income at or
below 130 per cent of poverty. SHARE utilizes its volunteer power and warehouse to create these
packages which are then distributed by Philabundance.
- Sunday Suppers
A partner organization of SHARE, Sunday Suppers is an innovative family oriented meal program
located in West Kensington. This program brings families together every Sunday at Kensington
Church, which serves families in Kensington. In partnership with West Kensington Ministry, Sunday
Suppers provides healthy shared dinners, increased access to fresh local food, and other food
related support to families in the Norris Square area of Philadelphia. While the family meal is the
centre piece of Sunday Suppers, this program also helps families make better decisions in their food
purchasing, demonstrates how to prepare fresh foods in healthy ways, links families with available
healthy food resources and federal food benefit programs and introduces families to urban
gardening.
Financial:
-Donation
-Grants from the Philadelphia Foundation and United Way of Greater Philadelphia and Southern
New Jersey (UWGPSJ)
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Zenger Farm
Feb. 21, 2013
Land Neighborhood People Practice Organization History Financial
Purchased by the City of Portland's Bureau of Environmental Services (BES) in 1994
Wide range of classes with ethical diversity
Staff: about 10,
about 100 volunteers and 20 interns
Education programs, farmers markets, selling to restaurants, social security
NPO More than 10 years
Donations, grants, sponsorships
Interviewee:
Sarah, who went to the college in Vermont and majored in Environmental Studies. Through her
course, she started to get interested in food and farming, issues like sustainable farming vs.
conventional farming. After she graduated, she travelled for a year in Europe and worked on farms
through a program. I got her hooked on working outside with plants and animals, the satisfaction of
being tired at the end of the day. Then she moved to Portland about 11 years ago and took a farmer
apprenticeship at a 10-acre vegetable farm which is called Sauvie Island Organics for two years. Then
she found Zenger Farm and started as the farm educator, leading the programs such as fields trips
and so on. She was in that position for three years. When the position became available, she
dropped the opportunity, and she has been doing her current job for about 4 years.
Staff:
2 (seven years ago) to 9 or 10 in 2013
Full-time staffs usually work for 32 to 35 hours a week instructing on various topics and intentional
training on the fields.
Hundreds of volunteers
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Around 20 interns: help with field trips and summer camps. A lot of the interns come regularly are
college students who are getting college credit or paid through the college during the internship,
who are potentially making changes and want to go into this kind of work.
Alice, Education Director
Mission:
-Education
Getting kids at a young age connected to food, digging in the dirty, getting next to natural spaces,
learning about urban wetland systems, water and plants, etc.
- Goals for the farm operations is to increase their sale each year so they will support more and more
their own operating expenses to grow all the seeds, supple all the equipment and buying time of the
interns. Each program also has that goal to increase the income to the farm.
Organization:
Zenger Farm is a non-profit organization.
Land:
The property is owned by the Bureau of Environmental Services, the City of Portland.
Size:
16 acres in total
History:
The city purchased the land in the middle or early 1990s. In the 1990s, the government and other
communities began to realize that wetland eco-systems are very important especially in wet climate,
they help to store water and offer great habitat for wildlife in the city. That’s why they bought the
property. They bought it from the Zenger family, who ran the diary there for most of the 1900s.
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Zenger Farm was one of the many farms outside the city but now very much inside the city. Ulrich
Zenger Senior was the father, he moved to Portland, bought the land and started dairy with his son.
As Ulrich Zenger Junior was growing up, the landscape of Portland was changing and the
neighbourhood was also changing through the 1970s and 1980s. He really wanted the land to stay.
After he passed away, his family made the transition of the land into the city’s hand.
Although the city has interest in the wetland, they don’t have a plan for the farm. It was a group of
community members who hatched the idea to maintain it as a working urban farm and as an
educational space. In 1999, the non-profit, Friends of Zenger Farm was formed to conduct that
mission, connecting citizens to farming.
They have a 50-year lease starting around 2000. They are lucky to have a stable relation with the
land owner. There are a lot of other non-profit organizations who have projects on city land
probably have only 10 years lease. The 50-year lease allows them to restore the old farm house into
a teaching space.
For the past 13 years, they saw a lot of growth, the growth of the property (first growth was the
building) and staff. The building was restored to a place of teaching as well as an office.
The common thread for everyone come together is a connection to food and the soil and healthy
farms. Everybody who works there loves to cook. Almost everybody who works in Zenger Farm has a
backyard garden. They are hobby gardeners or they worked on the farm before. Everybody that
works there enjoys collaboration and community and committed to the idea to share the space with
others and share their love of food with as many people as possible.
Portland is a smaller city compared to Philadelphia and Detroit. There are bigger lots and more grass
and more trees, not so much concrete. The city has better infrastructure in terms of public
transportation. It’s hard to find a good job but there are job opportunities. There’s also a big value
on sustainability. The city is actually helping Zenger Farm be there. There’s a city wide value on what
they are doing and food. 10 years ago, there were 2 or three farmers markets in the city but now
there are 50 or so. Every neighbourhood has its own farmers market and people are really tuned in
to seasonal food, getting next door to their local farms and farmers.
In Philadelphia or Detroit, rich people moved out of the town to suburbs to let city to decay, but
Portland is quite opposite. There used to be a lot more low-income citizens in the middle of the city
but now the city has been revitalized and a lot of money comes into the city to restore different
neighbourhoods which makes it the place everyone wants to live. Lower-income people have been
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pushed out to find houses cheaper at the outer ring. But there are not many grocery stores around
and there are people living on the street who don’t have a regular house. Some live with family
members on food assistance or other government assistance. Portland is a small city and has less
crime.
The farm has open hours through March to November a couple of days a week for people to drop by,
take a tour, do some help and get some stuff at the farm stand. But most of the time they are closed
except by appointment. But they don’t lock. Occasionally, there will be people coming through and
taking vegetables, littering. But since they have the presence and people there every week for most
of the day, stealing hasn’t been much of an issue.
Neighbourhood:
The visitors to the farm are very diverse. The neighbourhood is very ethnically diverse, lower-income
for people who are struggling to have a meal on the table every day. They also have kids coming
from private schools, who come from very supportive environments. They have a school garden in
their school and they have chickens in their backyard at home. They go to summer camps at the
mountains. They have all range of kids and adults who come from those who don’t have any
experience or exposure to natural spaces much less fresh food and farms and haven’t an opportunity
to grow to kids who are very privileged.
There were Russian gardeners, Eastern European gardeners, English speaking Portland natives,
Spanish speakers, etc. There was a lot of sharing also a lot of conflicts.
Activities:
-During school years, they have a lot of field trips, led by Alice and her team. Often times, it’s a tour
or educational experience, sometimes they will stay longer and help on the farm. At first, there were
a lot of outreach, reaching out for schools, making connections to teachers. Currently, it’s a time of
word of mouth and people come to them.
Last year, they developed strong connection and formalized partnership with the local school district.
All the 5th graders from 9 schools, 860 students, in the neighbourhood come out their schools to
learn about the wetlands. During the winter, the teachers from Zenger Farm will also go to their
classrooms to do a program.
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People come to the farm are all kinds from schools, home groups, gardening clubs from pre-school
all the way to college-age or beyond.
-During summer, they have summer camp programs. People will come out for a whole week.
Depending on the age, they focus on different topics, cooking, organ-gardening or learning about
animals.
-In addition to their kids programs, they also have some adult education going on. A new program
called “Healthy Eating on the Budget” was designed to support the neighbourhood, which is one of
the food deserts in Portland where there’s not a lot of places to buy fresh fruits and vegetables and
other food products. They have gas stations and convenience stores but no other full-service grocery
stores or farmers markets or farm stands. The project is designed to get people cooking with whole
foods.
- They have Farmers Market in the neighbourhood on Sundays, down the street on 92nd. It is called
the Lents International Farmers Market. The purpose of the market is to support their neighbours
who have big lots and growing food in their backyards. They have very diverse population in the area,
recent immigrants and non-English speakers. The farmers market is meant to be a place for all those
people to come together and bring vegetables from their big backyards or from their farm at the city.
There are both a lot of traditional vegetables and interesting things. It is a good opportunity for non-
English speakers to sell their vegetables at the community table. The staffs of the market sell the
vegetables and in the end of the day, farmers can get a check from the sales, which is a facilitation
process. The farmer and the vendor at the market agree on what’s the fair price, and most of the
vendors at the market know each other so they know what the rate is.
- Farm Operation:
Sarah is in charge of growing on 3 acres of mixed vegetables and about 1 acre of orchard with fruit
trees, berries and other perennial crops. They grow tomatoes, radish, eggplants, and potatoes and
so on. For fruits, they have apples, plums, cherries and figs. Last year was the first year that they
harvested fruits. They can put them into their CSA for sale and for the tour visiting kids. Some of the
food is tasted by people came to visit, used for summer camp cooking experiences etc. There’s a
boundary in between the farmland and the wetland and they are not supposed to grow beyond that.
They raise a flock of 40 laying hens with the help of Zenger Farm Egg Cooperative, family members
who want to get involved in chicken keeping, which is an opportunity to get some training and learn
in a supportive environment. They can take home a share of the eggs. The hens also provide fertility
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for the fields. They also raise a flocks of turkeys every year to celebrate thanksgiving. Last year, they
did a chicken killing workshop for their farm interns and other people on the farm.
-CSA
The way they sell their vegetables is through CSA. They started with 20 members in 2011, 40
members in 2012, 50 households in 2013. They have 23 weeks of CSA. CSA provides great
opportunity for consumers to connect to farm. It provides money for the farmers when they are
buying seeds, tractors, maintenance for soil so that farmers can focus on just growing food for the
season. The CSA members can come to the farm every week to take their vegetables. One thing
different of Zenger Farm’s CSA is that they are accepting food stamps from low-income people,
which is a card called SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), charged every month with
food dollars, depending on the size and need of the family. Historically, CSA would be out of reach
for office-income people, which required them to pay 600 dollars at first, which was quite expensive.
For people enrolled in Zenger Farm’s CSA program, they pay a deposit for the whole season and all
their members sign an agreement. But they have the opportunity weekly for the vegetables together
with their food dollars in their SNAP card. They want to share a packet of information to other
farmers that this model makes CSA successful to a wider audience. This is their 3rd season.
- They also have relation with a handful of local restaurants.
- They sell summer vegetables on their farm stand every Friday. Fridays are big community days,
open to public. They have a community work party so everyone who wants to come out and helps
them on the field with various projects.
- The Mien gardeners have some space over by the farmhouse where they garden. Miens are ethnics
from Laos. They moved around the world mostly because of the Vietnam War. There are a lot of
them in Portland. They like chickens and buy from Zenger Farm for fair price. About 10 years ago,
they made connection to the Mien community; about 5 or 6 families garden there. It is an informal
community garden partnership. They have corns, beans, etc. They sell them at the farmers market.
They are growing organically. They are learning from each other about how to grow.
All the food stays in Portland households and restaurants.
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Finance:
Total revenue $453,755; Individuals and corporations (20%); Foundations (40%); Government grants
(19%); Program fees and earned income (21%)
Total expenses $393,900 (Year of 2011)
The sale of their vegetables and turkeys goes back to the farm to support farm operations, which
then support all the educational programs. It covers about half of their farm operation expenditures.
The rest of the farm operation is supported through various ways including fees for field trip groups,
summer camp, and workshops. Some of their helping workshops are free. They also provide
scholarship for their CSA members, school groups who cannot get there on their own. There are a lot
of programs that they run as a social service.
They get grants from private foundations, government, agencies, the USDA, ODA (Oregon
Department of Agriculture), the city, the Bureau of Environmental Services, which is a regular
founder of various programs, and other government organizations; they work with the City of
Portland to run the community garden plot.
They have corporate sponsors funding in different ways. Sometimes, it’s just funding a program or
providing products. They work with Bob’s Red Mill, which is a grain & bean company based in
Portland but has their products sell all over the country. They are focused on food security and
health education. What Zenger Farm is doing is lined up with their mission. One of their head is on
Zenger Farm’s board directors, which is the way they first got connected. Each year, they provide a
lot of products for their summer camps and farm stands such as dry beans, grains and flowers, so
that they can provide cooking demonstrations and give out to their CSA members. They also support
their program in a financial aspect. They also have such kind of relations with other corporations in
the city as well.
They do regular fundraising events. They get entrance fee. They have an annual fundraiser.
They have unrestricted funds paying for anything they need to pay.
Their grants are often restricted funds for supply instead of paying for time or staff work.
It’s a good balanced and stable income structure.
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Partnership:
In Portland there’s a very collaborative spirit between organizations that are doing similar works.
There’s always sharing information informally and presentations to different groups, community
groups or new non-profits trying to be sustainable in a longer term.
They will collaborate with another non-profit organization on a grant. They will write a grant to
USDA. They will collaborate with Growing Gardens, which is a non-profit in Portland that installs
gardens for low-income, and give them support and seeds and garden mentor to start growing. They
are aligned in the kinds of works they are doing. They collaborate and figure out the project that
they are going to do together. They would submit a proposal for grant-funding to a funder.
Sometimes representatives of local non-profits will be at the same training, trading ideas and getting
some ideas on education on fundraising, volunteer improvements. There is a non-profit organization
that helps non-profits continue education. They provide those workshops. But they are not
necessarily a group that they are all a part of.
Changes in kids:
Over the year, kids know better about the farm and getting connected to it. They do work each time
and they feel empowered and a sense of ownership. They began to know the staff by name and say
hello. Before that, they were shy and timid and little difficult.
At first, they don’t want to eat any of the fresh vegetables; instead, they eat chips and candy. By the
end of the week of the camp, they are trying things that they have never tried before. They pick by
themselves and prepare them into a meal and feel a sense of connection.
Kids who have come for 6 years become CIT (Consular in training) and are helping other kids.
Challenges:
Funding is the No. 1 challenge. They would love to hire more people and have a bigger budget that
they could do more with and grow their programs even more but they are on a fixed budget.
Dependent on grants funding to some extent, funders will get really excited about a certain topic for
a while such as school gardens, and then shifting towards Healthy Eating on a Budget. The winds of
foundations change. Things foundations and government want to fund changes. There’s a challenge
of keeping the program funded and also shifting to follow the trends.
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Features:
Cover-crop is one thing that they do for their sustainable farming. Cover cropping helps to keep the
soil in place in the winter time when you have heavy winds and rain. In spring, the plants will shoot
up and create quite a bit biomass. They will mow it and turn it into the soil, which feeds the soil and
gives back to the soil a lot of organic matter.
The wetland doesn’t affect the farm because the farm is upland. There’s a flow downhill. It’s an issue
about the farm affecting the wetland and so they have to be careful about the maintenance they put
on the field. They don’t want anything running off and creating situation with too many nutrients
and too much nitrogen in the water creating a bloom. The only thing that the wetland affects the
farm is that it brings geese and geese eat crops. But they want to keep the downhill part save and
protect their water source, which really affects the way they grow food. They don’t use any chemical
fertilizer or pesticides. They use their chickens, which provide nitrogen and other nutrients to the
soil and they also do fertilize with other organic substances to give the soil a little boost when they
plant or seed the crops.
Coming Plan:
They are planning to build a new teaching facility, which is called the Urban Green. They plan to raise
2 million dollars to build the structure, which is going to be a huge community hall used for classes,
events, workshops etc., and is about 3 times of the space of the old building. There will also be a
teaching kitchen that is also certified as a commercial kitchen so they can rent out the space for
people who want to make sauce and sell. The upstairs will be space for office for up to 20 staff so
that they can continue to grow in the coming years. The plan is due in 2014.
Community Garden:
It is about an acre. They work with the City of Portland with a partnership agreement. The land is
owned by the city. Three years ago they extended their lease to include the space which includes 3
acres. There are 2 acres which are cultivated by Zenger Farm and 1 acre which is managed by the
community gardens. Community members or families have plots that are prepared for them for 10
feet by 20 feet or so. There are 20 or 25 plots in the gardens and there’s more and more demand in
community gardens. People are really interested in how to grow their own food and there’s a huge
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waitlist for the community gardens. At this neighborhood, people’s gardens are bigger and they
might not have much need for community garden’s space. There’s not much awareness about farm
your own food or local organic produce. People are busier on their tight budget, eating fast food.
The first year of the community garden, it was about half full even though the waitlist in the city
closer to town is long. Last year, 2012, it filled up entirely and has a waitlist. There’s more and more
room for opportunities for people who want a little bit of space to begin with and maximize that
space for more space. When the garden was started, the City didn’t have much time to do a lot of
outreach to tell people the existence of the garden. But as a matter of time and spreading of word,
neighbours know it and get a chance to see one growing season of their neighbours.
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Institute for Sustainable Solutions, Portland State University
Feb. 21, 2013
Land Neighborhood People Practice Organization History Financial
- - Mainly student orientated
Community interaction through modules, research projects, educational initiatives
University Started sustainability programs in 2006
Private/ state funded
Background:
Portland State University is currently doing research on the type of urban agriculture present in
Portland. Preliminary findings show that urban agriculture in Portland can be classified by
organizational types.
There are also a lot of community gardens throughout the city, partially helped by the fact that the
Portland Parks and Recreation Bureau is actively creating policy to support more community gardens.
However, there is currently too big a demand for what the city is doing. This results in the rise of
innovative practices when it comes to creating community gardens. These innovations stem from
people practicing urban agriculture despite government constrains. In response to such innovation
(e.g. guerrilla gardening) the city government responds by trying to legalize what people are already
doing.
Opportunities for students to get involved in urban agriculture and community gardens:
- The Solutions Generator Program:
The program provides funding for students to design and carry out projects that make the campus
and community more sustainable. Faculty and staff have the opportunity to participate as project
mentors.
- PSU’s community garden:
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The garden allows students and faculty the opportunity to plant and harvest a variety of fruits and
vegetables on campus. Applications for garden plots are accepted year-round based on availability,
and on-campus residents receive priority.
- Composting:
It is happening in one of the resident hall and a dining hall.
-Others:
- The Sustainability Leadership Center offers employment and volunteer opportunities to help
students engage with sustainability ideas and efforts on campus and in the community.
- Students in PSU’s EcoReps program design and host sustainability activities, events, and projects
for students living in the resident halls.
- PSU partners with local businesses, non-profit organizations, and government agencies to connect
students with paid and unpaid sustainability internships and career counsellor Mary Vance is
specifically dedicated to helping students discover their pathway to green careers.
- In fall 2012, University Honours granted the first ever sustainability scholarships to incoming
freshmen interested in urban sustainability with funding from the Institute for Sustainable Solutions,
which seeks to expand the scholarship program into other departments in the coming years.
- Sustainability travel awards are available to assist students, staff, and faculty with expenses
associated with attending key sustainability conferences and events.
- Campus sustainability tours are offered throughout the year and for groups by appointment. Self-
guided green campus tour maps are also available at the Institute for Sustainable Solutions, MCB
110.
Research
Michael is looking at what types of urban agriculture are being practiced in Portland, what form
urban agriculture takes, how it is expressed and where and why it takes different forms in different
urban context. Portland has a big diverse setting and a huge range of types of urban agriculture.
(1) Organizational types: there are hundreds of community garden plots throughout the city.
There’s a new initiative by the Parks Bureau of creating 1000 new community garden plots in the
city of Portland. This is driven by municipal government policy. On the other hand, the demand
for community garden plots far exceeds what the city is capable of driving, particularly due to
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the budgetary constraints. These municipal-driven types of projects tend to be expensive
compared to what people can do on their own. There’s a surge of interest, but people are
stopped by the availability of garden plots. One plot comes out for every five years. Grassroots
efforts are driving municipal policy making. The City Government is trying to catch up with what
people are doing.
(2) Recently, things are moving more towards urban livestock instead of just annual vegetables,
with more perennial agriculture and urban forestry models. Lots of people are keeping chickens
and ducks. Climate in Portland is more suitable towards ducks. Goats are raised to clear vacant
lots from black berries and other invasive species. People are creating microenterprises like to
rent a goat or other livestock to clear areas. In recent years, backyard apiary occurs for keeping
beehives. There are hundreds of such backyards in the city, which harvest honey and sell it.
Another issue is accessing land. It’s expensive to own land in the city and not everyone can afford to
so do, so there has been yard-share program where people lend out or rent out their land at a
minimum price, creating non-monitory economic exchange, so that people want to farm can access
it. It is a parallel economy in certain ways.
The Portland Fruit Tree Program is an innovative project. In North America, people tend to think
urban agriculture is a new innovative thing and people are just discovering it. But actually previous
generation has already been practicing it. There are hundred-year-old English walnut trees, chestnut
trees and apple trees in the neighborhood, which have been realized recently. The volunteers in the
Program go around the city and harvest fruit for people, who don’t have time or inclination to do so.
They also teach people about different types of fruit through the process. They divide the harvest
into three ways. They give a third to volunteers, a third to food banks and homeless shelters and
different kinds of security-based organizations, and they give a third to the owners as well. The
model is really successful. A lot of people are trying to educate themselves what is edible in their
landscape. There’s a re-education process and people are trying to learn what people ate before the
industrial food system.
There’s also been a perennial permaculture in the city. There’s been interest lately in community
orchards and how to reclaim urban space. People are trying to grow the walnuts and chestnuts and
other perennials. Whereas the annual vegetable gardens have individuated plots to particular
people, many orchards tend to be more collaboratively managed. It creates more sense of commons.
People are interested in the design of the whole permaculture food system, integrating all sorts of
different elements like water systems, microclimates, etc. In the urban context, permaculture is very
interesting because the system has been divided and segregated in the component parts that
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recreating these integrated whole systems can sometimes be a real challenge. Mike is trying to look
at block-level permaculture interventions on the water system design and so on. They created a
grass-root neighbourhood coop in their neighbourhood where they go around to different people’s
yards where different foods are grown and try to reintegrate the social system.
Things that have been done are:
(1) Surveys to people who are practicing urban agriculture practices, what they are doing, what
types of practices and what are people’s motivations. The motivation could be sustainability or
Christian or so. They are trying to look at how urban agriculture expresses itself in different
political, economic contexts.
(2) GIS mapping of all the gardens in the city to try to understand what neighborhoods and how
does that change over time.
Portland, where people have shared value, does an excellent job in branding itself as a green
sustainable city and it is written into policy. There are 10 years long waiting list in certain
neighbourhoods and vacant plots in other neighbourhoods. In some parts, home gardening are
promoted in the forms of container gardening or raise beds.
The modelling behaviour spread through media attention and word of mouth. The ideas are
absorbed by people.
Food Action Collective originally came out of a class of Chiron Studies in 2011 called Food Affairs:
Systems, Society and Sustainability. For the final Student Action Project, she encouraged students to
do something ideally on campus. Eventually, what was formed was the food organization to raise
awareness around food issues. The events they had are to hold panelist discussion, dialogue session
and hands-on education. One of their first events in 2012 was the Edible Container Gardening
Workshop. They partnered with many anthropology student associations. 30 students came and the
first push of the workshop was teaching nurturing soil etc. Every participant was able to plant his
own edible container. They have also done sustainable walking tours introducing freshmen options
on campus that are supporting regional agriculture. They also took students on Wild Edibles Walking
Tour on campus to show what types of plants are edible. Currently they are involved in a series
called HEAL, which stands for Healthy, Easy, Affordable and Local. It expands basic cooking skills.
One of the Food Action Collective members has a plot in PSU community garden and donated it to
the organization. The organization uses that as a demonstration plot, working through the season,
learning how to winterize, planning the garden and learning how to turn what they grow into food.
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They have a major focus on eating healthily, locally but on a budget so there are a lot of DIY ideas.
They try to partner with many diverse groups on campus and community organizations. They go out
to Zenger Farm to do work and learn parties. They also have a social justice focus on farm workers so
they take out students to visit them. They organize in National Food Day, Oct. 24th, the Food Justice
Symposium.
The Graduate Program teaches people how to organize community and place-space learning. Two of
the graduates started Portland Fruit Tree Project, Zenger Farm and Growing Gardens. In a sense,
growing the garden is also growing the community, which is the most important thing.
The Learning Garden Laboratory is a 11-acre garden in the southwest of Portland. The six graders go
there twice a week for learning garden laboratory experience. Every one of the students from Lane
Middle School has a garden plot. There’s a new CSA, urban orchard as well as a community garden in
the space. It is mixed with OSU (Oregon State University) Master Gardeners and OSU Beginning
Farmers. It’s a way they create community within a community. A lot of the interns in Portland State
University are the garden educators.
Portland State University provides good opportunity for undergraduate student to interact with
graduate student or post-graduates students from different background.
PSU also pushes strong community outreach. Professors can create partnership with community
organizations, which can engage students. Faculties who are interested in doing food system
research will need community partners which ends up with recruitment for research proposal.
There are more practitioners in PSU and many community organizations in Portland.
There are five equal districts in Portland who will set up their own ideas and priorities in terms of
projects, which is supported by funding.
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Portland Community Gardens Program
Feb 22, 2013
Land Neighbourhood People Practice Organization History Financial
47 gardens, 22 acres in total, mainly owned by city and public property
All kind 4 full time staff
Providing land for community gardens
Government Started in 1974
City fund
Interviewee:
Laura Niemi, Program Manager for Portland Community Gardens (2 years)
Laura used to work in an organization in Seattle that teaches organic vegetable gardening and
growing food in the city. She was teaching classes and doing program management.
History & Background:
The program has been started since 1974 and is funded through the city. Property taxes paid for the
program is subsidized. The core mission of the office is to provide land for those who want to garden.
Coordination with other organizations:
The Office focuses on providing the land so they do partnership with educational organizations, such
as OSU Extensions Master Gardeners Program and Oregon Tilth that teaches educational classes for
them. The Oregon Tilth teaches in their gardens to their gardeners how to get to start gardening in
spring. They also have the same sort of relationship with OSU Extension Master Gardeners in
answering questions and helping gardeners at specific events that they coordinate.
The Office has tight connections with different educational organizations. PSU for example, they
have properties called “Green Thumb”. The Program has two community gardens on that site. PSU
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has a demonstration garden. The Oregon State University has a Beginning Farmer Program, which is
also on their property and a Master Gardener Demonstration Garden. The Park Department actually
owns the property so they lease out their property to PSU and OSU. They don’t really work closely
with PSU aside from physically.
They work with Zenger Farm a lot because they have a garden right on their property. Zenger Farm
helps them do a lot of outreach because they have outreach workers and multiple language
speakers to connect people in the neighborhood and let them know that the garden is available. The
community garden near Zenger Farm is the Furey Community Garden and was built in 2011, almost
2 years old. That property belongs to the Bureau of Environmental Services. They have a lease with
Zenger Farm. A small section of it is community garden. The office has a sub-lease with the Zenger
Farm for the property. But it is still city property. When they first opened that garden, they didn’t
even have occupancy rate with many open plots. They had a difficult time getting it worked out to
the community. That’s how they started partnership with Zenger’s because they helped them with
some translations. Then they were able to get more and more gardeners and a lot of word of mouth.
The new garden manager of that garden speaks four languages, Russian, Romanian, Ukrainian and
Moravian, which was great because they have Russian and Romanian gardeners there. Now people
in that community know that there’s availability of land with low cost. So now they have a waiting
list for that garden. It is a success story.
Janus Village Gardens and the Oregon Food Bank helped them by promoting their garden
opportunities, letting people know if they want to garden they can go to the Community Gardens
Office and also letting people know if income is a problem, such as they cannot afford the cost to the
plot, then the Office has scholarship funds available. This helped them a lot when they were
partnering with groups that really serve low-income people.
The waiting list problem:
Starting in about 2007, they had the problem with too much demand but not enough capacity to
meet that demand. They started talking with different stakeholders and developed a business plan
for expanding the program and also did a strategic process with community stakeholders. All the
people in this profession plus gardeners came together over about 6 month period to address a lot
of the issues, the demand, the capacity for the program to grow to meet the demand and how to
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reach new people, making sure they are equitably serving people.9 The strategic plan was done by a
group called Oregon Solutions10.
In Portland, they have a Commissioner System, which has selected officials govern over different
bureaus. The Commissioner for Parks is Nick Fish. He created the 1000 Gardens Initiative. They built
a thousand new plots in 17 different gardens, finishing in the end of 2012. They expanded the
program from 30 gardens in 2009 to 47 today. But they still have a thousand people on the waiting
list because they actually generated more demand by building new assets.
Traditionally each garden was built with garden plots of standard 400 square feet, which every
gardener will get. For gardens with high demand, plots will be cut and divided to be available to
more people.
The last thing they do is to manage the waiting list. They go through the waiting list each year to
confirm people are still living in Portland and are still interested. By doing that, they are able to cut
off people who are no longer interested, so the waiting list goes down.
How to find places for community gardens:
Most often, community members identify the sites for them. Most of the land now is in an existing
park, which is the already owned property by the Parks Department. So they just develop the
property they have and add a garden in it. They have a lot of property that they want to build a park
on but still waiting for the money to do it.
They also do a lot of partnership. The school districts, which serve the city of Portland, have been
great partners. Portland Public School District, which is the biggest one, has ten gardens on their
property. This year they built the Helensview Community Garden which is their first garden on
Parkrose School Property. They are trying to fundraise for two gardens that are on Centennial School
District. Schools usually have big fields and plots of land that they don’t use entirely and a lot of
schools are focusing on health education, encouraging students to eat healthy food and get activity.
They are willing to work with Parks Department because they have the benefit of getting the garden
but they don’t have to maintain it. The Parks Department maintains it, assigning their plots and deal
with the program administration. The school just provides the land at no charge. So the Parks
Department has a free lease and builds it. The cost of building and operation is on the Parks
Department.
9 Both the business plan and the strategic plan are available online. 10 http://orsolutions.org/osproject/portland-community-gardens
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The other main partners they have are different bureaus. Within the city, there are the
Transportation Bureau, the Water Bureau, the Bureau of Environmental Services and many others.
All of them have properties. The Water Bureau may have water tank facilities. The Program has
about 4 gardens that are on Water Bureau’s property. Sometimes the Transportation Department
owns a piece of property for freeway or street, and they don’t use all of it; there’s a section near the
street that is available. So they have some gardens downtown that are on Transportation
Department property. Within all these scenarios, they can have a lease for no money. So they have a
lease agreement and part of the terms of the agreement is that they don’t have to pay for it. They
do the maintenance but no expenses occur from their use of the properties.
They also do have some gardens on privately owned properties. The majority of them are church
properties because it fits very well with their missions and often time they have a lot of properties.
They have two or three gardens on properties that are privately owned by individuals. If the private
property owners have a lease agreement to use their land for a garden, they can get property tax
exemption. So there’s a financial incentive for property owners especially if they are not intended to
build anything right away. And that could be several thousand dollars a year depending on the size
of the property. The Program Office asked them to commit to a five-year lease. So their lease
agreement is set at 5 years plus another 5 years and if everybody agrees, then after ten year, they
renegotiate11.
Just recently, they had a piece of property that was offered by the inter-bureau transfer. The
Department of Transportation has a piece of property they put up and asked if other bureaus want
to buy it otherwise they are going to sell it to private. It was a piece of property right in the middle of
downtown and was too small for other parks like dog parks or other types of park uses, but it would
be great for a community garden. The Department of Transportation said the actual retail value of
this property is 1.5 million dollars, so if the Parks Department wants it, they have to pay for it
because otherwise they can sell it to developers for that.12 Often times, the city wants to keep
properties within the city ownership but they don’t want to be responsible for maintaining it.
11 In one case, the private land owner has been really clear when the community shifts or when the neighborhood is developed to the point when he could really make a good amount of money either developing the property or selling the property. That’s his main goal and his job as an investor. But in the interim, they can use the space. 12 Sometimes properties come up from inter-bureau transfer which is just an exchange, where bureaus just trade for the property they want. Or more commonly, some bureaus just assign the land to other bureaus so it will still be city land. If access to the equipment is needed, then they can negotiate within bureaus rather than selling to a developer. If a property is sold to a private party, they cannot get the right of access back.
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Usually the rejections happen early on in the project when they find a piece of property and talk
with the land owner to see whether they will support building a garden. The land owner, whether be
a private individual or private agency, will say actually they are planning on selling it or developing it.
And the Office has so many options of different gardens to build so they don’t have to push back on
the rejections. But if the office really wants to get the people on the waiting list in the urban areas to
a community garden, they will have to push a lot harder and keep trying and argue for the
importance of the gardens.
Who are applying for the Program:
The applicants are all different kinds of people and mostly they are the reflective of the
neighbourhood of where they live. In Inner Southeast or Inner Northeast, areas closest to downtown
with a lot of density and apartments, a lot of younger people live there. Older people, who have
been there for twenty years, are living in the houses, which were bought when it wasn’t such an
urban area. In the densest area, they have a mixture of people, older and potentially retired people
and new gardeners that are younger people may be renters or apartment dwellers. A shift in
demographics can be seen now in some of those areas.
East Portland, E205, is a more residential, suburban and lower-income area. The cost of living there
is less expensive. There are a lot more families of people of color and a lot of recent immigrants who
live in apartments13. Right now, they have a big group of Mien People from Laos. A couple of
gardens are almost 100% Lao in terms of the participation.
12% of the participants last year received financial assistance from the scholarship program. But in
East Portland, 30% to 50% of the participants have received the scholarship. In low-income areas,
there are more low-income participants and in higher-income areas, there are more higher-income
participants of different ages.
The start of the program:
The movement of community gardens started in the West Coast such as Seattle and Portland in the
1970s, which is a take-on of the Victory Gardens Movement.
The first 3 gardens started in parks. There was land in an existing park and they decided to build
community gardens. In the first year they built 3 gardens. And in the 3 biggest of their gardens, they
have between 70 to 100 garden plots. That was aimed to give people the opportunity to grow food
13 There are a lot of apartments out there especially along the MAX Line.
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in the city and do gardening. In the 1970s, there had been a couple of decades of industrialization of
agriculture and somebody started the push-back to get reconnected to their food. Seattle Tilth, and
also Oregon Tilth in Oregon etc., all started at the same time. People forgot how to grow food so
they gather together to have fruit trees in the cities and encourage people to compost. The
Community Gardens Program came with the same movement.
Criteria for scholarship for low-income people
They provide scholarship funds to anybody that asks. 2 years ago, they had some rules in place that
they only gave up to 75% of the subsidy and they asked people to prove their low-income status,
providing evidence of participation in local assistance programs, like Food Benefits or Medicare, or
providing most recent tax form and admitted only very low-income people that were making 25,000
dollars a year or less. At that time, they only gave away 3,000 dollars in scholarship funds. Last year,
they gave out 12,000 dollars. 2 years ago, there were very small amount of people participating and
then because they had a lot of money in their scholarship fund and people are really using it very
much, they deregulated their process and made it more honor-based and took away some of the
barriers because people were really uncomfortable sharing their personal information and
sometimes were ashamed of their participation in certain programs. So today all they need to do is
to fill up a form with the name, the address and phone number and how much assistance that is
requested. It’s been quite successful, because there have been three times as many people using the
scholarship funds. The diversity of people participating in their program has increased quite a bit.
In East Portland, they have 30% to 50% of people who are receiving assistance, and that’s the area
where they have Lao Mien, Russian, Ukrainian, Spanish and Mexican, Romanian, and many groups.
Generally, they are receiving scholarship assistance and it removes one of the barriers for people to
participate in the program. And a lot of recent immigrants come from farming background and don’t
need to be taught how to grow food. They could teach a lot of gardeners how to maximize the use of
the space and grow food all year round and multiple crops. It’s a way to give people the opportunity
to do things that they really love and are skilled at.
Gardening education:
They do a little education with their partner, Oregon Tilth. They do two classes in a year, one in the
spring about getting ready to garden and one in the fall about putting the garden to bed. There are a
lot of organizations in Portland that do education, so they try to get people to those educational
groups rather to try to provide the education for them.
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Benefits to the community:
The ability to grow food is a great thing. People like to garden may not have the space or the sun, if
they live in an apartment or having a shady yard. It gives people the opportunity to garden if they
want.
Also it gives people the opportunity to talk and to be around other gardeners and learn from them.
Also a lot more people are participating because they really want to get back.
They have a volunteer leadership program where they have volunteer garden managers in each site.
They are gardeners who are self-selected, coordinating things and work days and potlucks and
identifying projects in the gardens, getting people together to focus the work. A lot of the garden
managers want to get involved in their community and do something productive.
The difference between gardening in a community garden and gardening in your backyard is that
you have a chance to be on display for everyone. You are a steward of public lands and you are
basically taking care of public parks, creating beauty, food and function for the whole community
although the gardener may be the primary beneficiary and there’s a lot of secondary benefits. It’s
also a great way to get to know your neighbors because most of the people in a community garden
live in that area. Especially in new gardens, people start to talk about neighborhood issues, too, such
as what are the other impacts on the neighborhood. People start to develop networks and that can
support their neighborhood in other ways.
There’s a huge benefit for the city of Portland to say they have 22 acres agriculture land within their
city limits when thinking about food safety, what happens when there’s an earthquake or other
disaster situations, supplies to the grocery stores, etc. They had quite a bit of food production in the
city. And it really does connect people with food in terms of what it takes to grow tomatoes,
eggplants or corns, how much effort it is, how tasty they are comparing to what can be bought in the
store. So then people will patronize farmer’s market and giving their food to local farmers or maybe
they will get CSA. They start to look at organic produce. Gardens can have large impacts through
gardeners on their consumers so that it also benefits the food system.
Production from the gardens:
Food produced in the community gardens has to be personal use and cannot be sold.
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They have the Produce for People Program where they encourage gardeners to donate produce
either to Food Bank or to a Soup Kitchen in their program that provides meals. Last year, 20,000
pounds of produce went to the emergency food system.
Number of gardens:
47
Length of people to maintain the land:
It can be eternal. As long as the garden is maintained in a good condition according to the policies,
gardener can renew year after year. There have been some people with the program twenty years
or more. The longest started in 1984.
Conflict between public space and private space:
Public land for private use is a major criticism of the program. Many of the gardens have fences and
locks, so even you want to walk through, you couldn’t. But basically, the public says that’s okay. The
idea is that the program is open to anyone that wants to participate although you have to wait and
cannot participate right away. The idea of splitting the 400 feet is not a very popular perspective.
They had a lot of pushback from the community, especially gardeners really feeling threatened by
that. When sometimes people are not doing a good job, it’s really difficult to kick him out.
Management of the gardens:
They have the 3-chances out mechanism. Kathy, on an eight-week basis, visits every single garden.
She monitors the plots. She identifies plots that are not in compliance and takes the picture and
emails it back to the office. The office will send a letter with the picture attached to the plot owner
and ask the plot owner to take steps by the date. This will let people know what policies they are
violating, what specifically the Program Office wants them to do to ratify the situation. But that has
also been very unpopular because people are not willing to be told what they are doing wrong. But it
has also been popular, too, because the gardens are looking much better and they are much more
productive.
They had a lot of turnover when people weren’t really using their space and now they have a lot of
new people that are excited to use the space. So it’s paid off in a positive way although it might be
difficult to communicate with people who are very angry. They do educate about the public program
and there are a lot of people who want to participate.
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This is the second year of the policy enforcement and hopefully people will accommodate to the
new ways of doing things.
Crime issue:
The Clarendon Community Garden in Northwest Portland is on school property. But the school was
closed 5 years ago. Since then there’s been a lot of groups of youth aggregating there committing
crime and vandalism associated with the groups. The community said to the school district that they
really needed to do something about this property because it’s becoming a magnet for this kind of
activities and it’s not good for the neighborhood. The school district wanted to keep the property
because they may want to use it in the future and so they built a community garden there to address
some of these things. It was opened last March. They did a bit outreach with the schools focusing on
the case through the eighth grade and with the neighborhood association. They did get a bunch of
gardeners in the garden but it didn’t really solve the problem. The group of people would still be just
right out of the fence and that garden has got a lot of vandalism and theft. Most of the gardeners
actually left. It didn’t solve the problem right away and wasn’t an immediate impact.
Limitations on the program:
One of the biggest limitations is the staff time and it stems from funding. The program’s office has
grown from only 2 staff to 4 but they also have twice as many gardeners. They had Children’s
Garden Program and did a lot of classes in the gardens. They were duplicating efforts with other
groups. It was taking away staff time from their core things, so they had to discontinue these
programs and instead, developed partnership. They need to do a good job in just managing the land.
It’s good that they have those partners but if they have more staff time and more capacity, they
would like to focus on developing their volunteer program more. They really rely on volunteers such
as the leadership role of the garden managers and they should provide them with more resources,
support and tools to help them their jobs. They are the people on the ground working with
gardeners every day. Often times, people feel overwhelmed by what the office ask them to do, the
questions they are getting from gardeners and the time it takes to send E-mails. So if the office could
provide more templates, such as sample newsletters, sample correspondence, FAQ, etc. for them
and put together more resources, it could help the volunteers to support their program.
Another limitation is that they have a very multicultural group of gardeners. But all the staff
members are all English speakers so they have very difficult time communicating with all the
different gardeners. It is important to reach people a little bit more by more translation or having
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multilingual volunteers or staff members that can help to communicate the messages. It’s very
difficult to share program messages with all the different participants.
How to do the maintenance:
Kathy, in charge of all the maintenance, sets all the maintenance tasks of all the 47 gardens and all
the volunteer coordination with all the garden managers, supporting them and giving them
information and making the plans.
Neil is the person doing the real work, much more connected with each specific garden and its
operation.
Some of the common issues like general wear and tear. The life of a community garden might be 30
years until it starts really degrade. In that time, locks and fencing might break or graffiti may occur in
sites in urban areas.
In gardens, there are many common areas, such as pathways with weeds needed to be mowed to
maintain safe and accessible. Often time, there are communal planting areas. Some gardens have
native habitat planting areas or fruit trees, small orchards. The Program Office tries to get the
gardeners themselves to take over the ownership of these common spaces, which is part of their
community service hours. Each gardener has to put in at least 6 hours per year in these common
areas. But Neil also does the general and seasonal garden maintenance.
For infrastructure things, such as a new sign in the garden, carpentry, new wall to be put up, the
Office will work with the Parks Department because they have lock people, carpenters, and irrigation
specialist. Cathy coordinates with them to get them to the sites to do the work.
Their plot fee only covers 75% of what it takes to run the garden. The gardeners are asked to
support their own tools along with seeds and plants. But the office supplies the tool shed so each
garden has a shared shed. Often time, they will connect them with resources like local grants or
agencies such as hardware stores that may want to donate tools to them. Sometimes they get extra
funding to help gardens that need tools and purchase for them. If gardeners are purchasing their
own tools, they will take better care of them.
Monitor the 6 hours working system:
It’s an honour-based system. The Office will provide each shed with a piece of paper with garden
plot number, name and date and how many hours. The garden year is from November through
October. Within that year, 3 hours have to be completed by July 1st. What the staff does is providing
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the log-in sheets and in July they collect all the sheets and have volunteers to add up these
thousands of hours and tract that into their data base. Then they do it again in October. They use the
site managers, the local leaders to compile that information and encourage gardeners to tract.
Sometimes when they have English language barriers, they try to be more educational and get the
work out in other languages. If people are doing these hours but don’t check E-mail or speak the
language, maybe they don’t understand that they have to write it down or so.
Income and age:
At least 12% are very low-income and the majority of the people are 40 or older. A good portion of
them are the seniors over the age of 60 and many of them are long term gardeners.
In East Portland, they have a most multicultural group and tend to be seniors.
Increase community gardens in low-income regions:
The area is still much underserved. Still in East Portland there are lots of areas that don’t have
community gardens around and tend to be low-income area and much ethnically diverse. The Parks
Department is prioritizing developing new parks in areas that are underserved, areas where people
don’t already have access to a park.
Another big goal of the Park Department is to achieve equity and make sure they are providing
services to people all over the city regardless of income and really focusing on people that are low-
income and making sure that they have equal access. Developing program in that area and having
people participating such as scholarship program is very good for them because that really
demonstrates that they are achieving their goals and there is demand.
Process of garden manager selection:
Self-selection is conducted, at least for 1 year for consistency. Some managers have been doing it for
15 years. There are a lot of retired people or older people that might have been self-employed or
have extra time to devote. There aren’t a lot of students or young people. They are trying to get the
linguistic people for communication. It requires minimum 10 hours per month. The office is trying to
build up a mentorship within the managers so that the high-functioning managers can help the low-
functioning ones.
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Village Market
Feb. 22, 2013
Land Neighbourhood People Practice Organization History Financial
Owned by the housing authority
Ethnically diverse, mainly low income
Local residents, community leaders, Public Housing Authorities
Running Village Market; Community gardens; Food Works (Youth Program)
NPO Village Market started in 2011 under Janus Youth Program started in 1972
Grant fund
History:
Village Market is a part of the larger Village Gardens Urban Agriculture Initiative.
Janus Youth Programs is a non-profit organization since 1972, which has over 20 programs in
addition to Food Works, in Oregon and Washington. Its mission is to be a leader in creating
innovative, community-based services (programs) which enhance the quality of life for children,
youth, and families. They work in partnership with others to create a safe and healthy community. It
offers services for Residential, Homeless Youth, Runaway Youth, Alternative Ed., Urban Agriculture,
Washington State, Community, and Scholarship.
In 2009, the housing authority that owns the new development and manages most of the housing in
the region invited the Village Gardens to opening a store in the neighbourhood. There was a store
previously, but it wasn’t really meeting the needs of the community. It was mostly snack food. They
tried to start grocery, but ended up with candies and chips, which the Village Market still has
because people love candies and chips. The Village Gardens Organization (under Janus Youth
Program) worked with the community leaders to start a grocery business, which is different from a
garden. They worked for almost 2 years with an intense community planning process to develop the
model for the business like who to get products from, what kind of products do community
members want to have, how they are going to start the store. People did neighbourhood survey and
talked to 400 households. The store opened in May, 2011 so they have been open for a year and a
half. It’s a really new and young business. One of the reasons why both the housing authority and
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the community really want the store is the closest grocery store that has any kind of fresh food in it
is over a mile and a half away, which is a huge distance compared to other cities in the united states.
One of the things the organization has discovered from their original research with the community is
that none of those stores are on a direct bus line. There’s one on a bus line but it’s on more than two
and a half miles away. 30% of the households in the community don’t have their own transportation
so they are relying on public transportation, which is three times the average of the city of Portland.
It’s the highest concentration of people without their own transportation in the city of Portland
except for downtown area where there are a lot of condoms, high-rises and loft buildings with a lot
of shops and grocery shops right underneath them. There are a couple of convenience stores within
a mile from the neighbourhood but no grocery stores.
Neighbourhood:
The neighbourhood is called New Columbia and is a mixed income affordable housing development.
Historically, it was built back in the 1950s, where there was a huge ship building after the war in the
United States. They built the house for workers that were working in the shipyards. It was always
low-income housing. Over the years especially through the 1980s, it was a well-known high crime
and poverty neighbourhood. The Federal Government of the United States invested a lot of money
in helping to redevelop some of the worst affordable housing communities across the country and
the neighbourhood was selected to get a face-lift and redevelopment. In 2003, they moved
everyone in the community, knocked all the houses down and rebuilt the whole neighbourhood.
Some families, around 50% to 60% moved back into the neighbourhood starting in late 2005. It’s a
fairly new neighbourhood after the redevelopment about 7 years. It’s a very diverse community,
where people from all over the world, 25 different countries, are in the neighbourhood. Most of the
people that live there rent for properties, which are apartment houses. A third of the units are fully
subsidized units by the government, which people don’t pay any rent for. There’s another third of
the households get a reduced rent from the government so that people pay a little and the
government pays a little. The rest a third of the homes are purchased by people, who actually own
the home. Trying to take this model where low-income people will all concentrate by themselves,
really isolated, may turn this neighbourhood mixed in time. Some people have no income in their
families and some people own their homes and have employment in the neighbourhood make the
impoverished less isolated.
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Organization:
The Village Gardens was invited in to start community gardens when families moved back in 2005.
They started organizing around food production. They also worked in another community two miles
from New Columbia for five years before that in 2000, doing the same thing, working with families,
children and teenagers to grow and sell food and starting projects that would bring people together
to create job skills and training opportunities for young people and also cross-cultural understanding
building.
Land:
The building of the store is owned by the housing authority, who owns all the buildings. They
donated the space to the organization. As part of inviting Village Gardens to do the work, the
organization doesn’t have to acquire the property.
Finance:
Right now, the Village Market is still very supported by grant funds. It’s a highly subsidized business.
Because they have the hybrid model of non-profit, they are doing great as a full business. They are
trying to do their business study so that they can raise their own income rather to be relying on their
grants.
They got a little bit of support from the City Government and County Government. The rest of the
grants that they receive are from local foundations. One of them was a public health foundation,
who funded their project because of the public health benefits. The other two foundations are broad
of what they fund, but they are interested in the overlap of public health, economic development
and community building. They also received a little funding during the planning process from an
international organization that provides funding over the world and does international role
development and often funds urban agriculture projects in the United States.
People/Staff:
One of the goals of the project is to create employment opportunity to local residents. Through the
history of the store, they have about 16 to 20 different people who have worked there, most of who
are part-time, which is the decision made by the planning team so that more people can have access
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to positions rather than fewer people. We have a few staff members from the neighbourhood that
are full-time to help support and manage the operation of the store. They are also working to
develop a volunteer program as well. They have an informal volunteer program where people can
come and kids come after school to help but they are trying to develop something that has a little
more structure. There will be 3 or 5 people in the store as volunteers.
Challenge:
The biggest challenge for the market has been coming up with a financial model that works where
they can offer products to the community at prices that they can afford and also make enough
income so that they can support the operation of the store. Sometimes the social mission and the
financial mission conflict with each other. They are able to go on the social mission side because
they still have grants funding. But as those wrap up, they have to look a bit more at the numbers and
figure out what it is going to take to be there long term. Securing long term funding is really
challenging. They get one-year grants or three-year grants and the thing that they are doing is
community transformation work so it’s hard to do that work a year at a time depending on what
resources there are. But somehow they made it work.
Personal motivation:
Ms. Amber Baker came to the work through her commitment to food systems change, looking for
ways to have more sustainable justly systems. She’s been in the organization seven or eight years.
She is motivated by the commitment of the people of the neighbourhood, their love of their work
and the community. She regards herself as a partner with them helping to bring resources into the
community who already knows what the need is, but doesn’t have access to money or authority or
other things that keep communities like that from not thriving.
Agriculture is a theme for people from all over the world.
Partnership:
They had a partnership with one of the research departments in PSU processes all the surveys for
them.
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Features:
-Fresh produce section:
In summer, the growing season, they have a youth-run project, called Food Works, which is run by
teenagers from the community, having the whole section of the fresh produce, where mostly they
provide organic produce. The youth are subsidizing the price because their project is grant funded
and they can afford to sell it to the market at a fairly low cost so that people can actually buy from
their kids. Sometimes they will do cooking demonstrations. They will make a recipe out of some of
the products that they brought in and tell people how to make it to try to help people relearn how to
prepare food. In the summer, they do it outside in front of the store. Before the store opened, they
did it in front of the garden. (The other neighbourhood that they work with does it on the
playground in the middle of the community) In the fall, they do it a few days inside the store
because it was rainy and cold outside.
Most of the parts they get are from local distributors, not necessarily grown and produced locally,
which has been a price issue for them. They hope to find some other partners where they can get
the price they need to be able to provide the community. For them, Food Works is a very good
partnership, because it is within their own umbrella.
They are also starting this season to work with individual families who want to start their own small
farm and market gardens. As they are building their experience and businesses, they can come and
sell their products in the market. Most of those families are immigrant and refugee families from
different countries who have very strong agricultural roots but may not necessarily know how to
navigate the system in Portland. Having an outlet for them when they are just starting will be very
helpful.
They have not only healthy food, but also a diversity of options so that people could get what they
need to cook and prepare food at home. They also need to dictate people what they can and can’t
eat. They also have candy, soda, chips aside from good produce. But in the survey on what people
want to buy in the store, the produce was the main thing. But the fact is that people would like to
buy snacks, chips and drinks. So it’s both a grocery store and a convenience store. Some people
come in to buy a cup of coffee, some come in for grocery. They want to have access to whatever
people need to have.
They went out 5 or 6 times and knocked on doors. A lot of volunteers came and knocked on 600
doors and talked to 400 out of 600.
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Ideally, the store is designed for people to buy local stuff and healthy products, but they have to
compromise because the community is very price-sensitive. Sometimes they cannot find the kinds of
items at a price that people will buy them. When they first opened, they have a lot of organic local
vegetables, which are so much expensive for people live in the neighbourhood to buy.
- Dollar sections:
In summer time, they have toys and different things for the kids.
- Kitchen:
Volunteers come to makes some breakfast foods, soups to provide convenience to people live in the
neighbourhood. The kitchen reduces the loss of the fresh produce comparing to a deli.
Changes:
Some people say that they have changed their eating habits because instead of going to the fast-
food restaurant, they come to the store to get a sandwich which may be better than a hamburger.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
We would like to express sincere thanks to the Japanese government for providing fully financial
support (MEXT-GPSS-GLI Scholarship) throughout this FEFI study. Further, we would like to give our
special thanks to Prof. Matthew Potteiger for helping and spending his valuable time with us in the
Philadelphia city. Also, we want to give grateful thanks to all local respondents residing in
Philadelphia and Portland cities, the United States, for your time in answering interview questions
and their fruitful assistance in our data collection.