Urban Agriculture

In the city of Philadelphia, surrounded by asphalt roads and high-rise apartment buildings, is a small square where the sidewalk stops and leads to something unexpected- a farm. I’ve heard the term urban agriculture before, but I’ve never fully grasped the concept until today. Thanks to a group called SAITA (Sustainable Agriculture Internship Training Alliance), I was able to attend a seminar for farming interns at Greensgrow Farm in Philadelphia. This farm operates both a green market and CSA, which in this case stands for City Supported Agriculture.

Growing crops in the city requires a kind of innovation and creativity that is difficult to imagine, until you see the hundred foot beds amidst slabs of concrete, where soil has been poured on top of rows of rocks to allow for proper draining. With so little space, every inch of the farm is put to use, with crops even growing on the rooftops of the cooler and the bathroom. The farm also makes use of hydroponics to grow lettuce, which is a technique that adds nutrients to water so that crops can grow without soil.

The market at Greensgrow includes both crops grown on the site and crops imported from local farms in the surrounding area. To reduce emissions from transportation, they have even built a system to produce their own biodiesel fuel from leftover vegetable oil from local restaurants. In this way, city residents can have access not only to a beautiful green space and homegrown crops, but also to locally made meats, cheeses, breads, soaps, and more.

I think something clicked for me today, and I’m so excited I can barely sit still. Urban agriculture combines two of my favorite things, farming and the city, and does so much good for the community and the environment, that I know it is something I want to become involved in. This whole summer I’ve been secretly dreading having to leave the farm to go back to New York, but I’ve already started to do some research, and it turns out there are farms all over the five boroughs. Now I can’t wait to get back so I can visit them and learn more about this new farming technique.

Check out Greensgrow Farm at www.greensgrow.org