Grow, Philly
May. 07, 2019
What do Bhutanese refugees in Due south Philly, a Japanese investment banking company, Drexel University and the Philadelphia Zoo have in common? In their ain means, they're all champions for urban agronomics. And peradventure, merely possibly, our municipal government can bring them together.
Every bit the planet's exponentially growing human population surges toward cities while climatic change wreaks havoc on conventional farming practices, the imperative to notice new ways to abound and distribute food produce becomes increasingly urgent. From Guangzhou, China to Greenpoint, Brooklyn, communities and corporations alike are taking on the challenge.
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Guangzhou is a instance study in the frenzied phenomenon of global urbanization. Already a massive city of 9.62 one thousand thousand in 2010, its population is expected to reach more than than 15 million by 2020. Spurred by the accelerating emptying of its surrounding rural regions and corresponding need to feed its growing population, researchers in Guangzhou recently undertook an experiment in urban hydroponic farming, a technique that virtually eliminates soil from agricultural processes. On a i,600-square-pes city rooftop, the researchers installed and operated fourteen hydroponic tanks, producing hundreds of pounds of vegetables annually. Not only practise those hydroponic systems generate locally-grown food, they likewise create a profit potential of more $six,000 per year, most double Guangzhou's annual minimum wage.
The team behind Guanzhou'due south rooftop hydroponics experiment made a couple of other interesting findings. They established that 6 out of the 7 vegetable types they planted were significantly cheaper to grow than to purchase at a local grocery. The researchers also tested several of the greens and determined that compared to their shop-bought counterparts, they independent a markedly lower concentration of arsenic, pesticides, lead and other harmful contaminants. For a metropolis like Philadelphia, which faces both poverty-driven food insecurity and unhealthy levels of lead contagion in city soil, these discoveries are particularly relevant.
Ironically, what makes Philadelphia peculiarly fertile ground for DIY urban farming is one of its least appealing traits: an embarrassing abundance of vacant and abandoned lots.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the globe in New York City, the green-thumbed entrepreneurs behind Gotham Greens accept been growing lettuce in the sky for nigh a decade. Having branched out to Chicago, Gotham Greens now boasts the nearly productive rooftop farm in the world, a 75,000 square foot functioning atop a Windy Metropolis mill that yields more than 10 million heads of lettuce and herbs each yr. Gotham Greens may cater to a customer base that is willing to pay a premium for the cachet of ownership locally-grown, sustainable produce, simply whether driven by personal aesthetics or personal economics, the increasing adoption of urban farming around the world is demonstrating its value in whatever number of means.
And the financial sector has started to recognize that value. Though Gotham Greens struggled as an early market entrant to convince investors of rooftop farming's coin making potential, banks are now coming around in a large way to meet the green in urban greens. As I've written previously, by way of merely one case, the Japanese conglomerate SoftBank last yr committed $200 million to an urban agtech start-up based in Silicon Valley.
Here in Philadelphia, urban agronomics is no newfangled fad, merely a longstanding, if unsung, aspect of our municipal culture. The Citizen has chronicled some community-based urban farms, including the Refugee Urban Agricultural Initiative in South Philadelphia, run by the Nationalities Services Center, to give Bhutanese refugees a chance to grow fruits and vegetables from their homeland available at the local Acme; the Sankofa Community Garden at Bartram's Garden, where mostly African American students help grow 15,000 pounds of produce per year, with a focus on the African diaspora; and the Philadelphia Orchard Project , turning vacant lots into urban forests open to the community.
As these examples suggest, the motivations backside urban farming in Philadelphia are numerous. For some, it's a matter of preserving the traditions and familiar tastes of a far-away homeland. For others, a means of forging solidarity and self-sufficiency in underserved communities, and for others nevertheless, a way to detect some connection with the natural environment within the city's physical jungle. Ironically, what makes Philadelphia especially fertile ground for DIY urban farming is i of its least highly-seasoned traits: an embarrassing affluence of vacant and abased lots.
When it comes to harnessing the potential of urban agronomics, Philadelphia may, for the start fourth dimension in a long time, exist ahead of the game.
By Metropolis Hall'southward own estimate, there are some 40,000 vacant lots in Philadelphia. Enterprising community farmers deserve credit for taking the initiative to turn many of these fallow pockets of blight into something productive, but as it currently stands, their admirable efforts face considerable pitfalls. In the starting time identify, some 74 percent of vacant lots in Philadelphia are privately-owned, which ways that the farmers working that land have no legal right to do and so, and could be ejected with piffling to no recourse. Second, and more worrisome, is the presence of lead and other unsafe contaminants in Philadelphia's soil, which has the potential to render toxic the produce grown on these lots.
The expert news, nevertheless, is that the City intends to do something about these issues. Mayor Kenney a couple weeks ago named Philly'southward start urban agriculture director , Ashley Richards, a city planner who was co-chair of the City's Food Policy Advisory Council's Urban Agriculture subcommittee, and who volition work under the auspices of Parks & Recreation. Richards's work will connect to the City'due south forthcoming Urban Agronomics Plan, which "will outline the current state of agriculture in Philadelphia, offer strategies for sustain existing efforts, and guide the Urban center on how to better and create new pathways for support and resources for the maintenance and expansion of urban agriculture projects in Philadelphia." Crucially, the formation of the plan insists on "robust engagement with resident stakeholders, Urban center agencies, and non-profit organizations involved in urban agriculture."
This is an encouraging development for Philly. If smartly pursued, it has the potential to fuse a great opportunity for timely innovation with an infrastructure of back up for the resourceful individuals and groups who've been planting, cultivating and harvesting not for turn a profit simply for physical and social sustenance. With the imprimatur of city authorities behind urban agriculture initiatives, the scale and scope of investment in this initiative expands significantly. It may non draw the attention and dollars of a SoftBank, but as the business instance for urban agriculture grows more than compelling, investors will be looking for new and lucrative destinations.
To make Philadelphia even more than attractive to outside agtech investment, it would exist wise to spotlight not only the neighborhood level activity on this front, but the established institutions that are demonstrating an interest in advancing urban farming. In Apr of this year, the Philadelphia Zoo opened its new "Urban Green" outdoor restaurant and market place. Among other amenities, the Urban Green features an viii-pes past 40-foot vertical subcontract functioning whose produce will be used to feed some of the Zoo'southward animals. And in University City, the Drexel Urban Growers are helping would-exist urban farmers to get their easily dirty with pedagogy at the community garden of Drexel Academy'due south Dornsife Centre.
Of class, simply equally urban agriculture on its own is no panacea for the immense challenges of climate change and resources depletion (surprisingly, food transport accounts for merely 4 per centum of agronomical greenhouse gas emissions), efforts to infuse substantial agricultural investment into the city must accept care not to undermine and bulldoze the pocket-size-fourth dimension local entrepreneurs, activists and customs groups that have been disposed to Philadelphia's soil without back up or sanction for years. As I and others have suggested before, whatever incentives for private investors and corporate agtech interests must be tied to meaningful customs benefits, such as bounden promises to hire, railroad train and pay living wages to a local workforce, to share output and other equity with community members, and to amend–non merely maintain—environmental conditions in the area.
When it comes to harnessing the potential of urban agriculture, Philadelphia may, for the first time in a long time, be ahead of the game. Thank you to the creativity, resourcefulness and collaboration of ordinary Philadelphians making the best of challenging circumstances, the conditions are ripe for our metropolis to brand large strides toward becoming its own breadbasket. A coordinated effort on the office of policy makers, institutions and investors and local stakeholders tin can make Philadelphia blossom, just every bit long as we don't lose sight of our grass roots.
Photo via Flickr by Tony Fischer (CC BY 2.0) 
Source: https://thephiladelphiacitizen.org/grow-philly/
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