The National Building Museum was packed this past Tuesday for a panel focusing on the challenges and opportunities for urban agriculture. The event was part of a larger public series at the Building Museum entitled For the Greener Good that calls on experts from diverse backgrounds to investigate links between environmental sustainability and design, public health, energy policy, bioscience, infrastructure, education, and popular culture.
The panel featured Josh Viertel, the president of Slow Food USA, Steve Cohen, Portland’s food policy and programs manager, and our very own Liz Falk, founder of Common Good City Farm.
Panelists stressed the need for everyone to get involved in the movement for “good food,” activating their networks of contacts to advocate for change on a both a local and regional level. Josh Viertel acknowledged the formidable structural barriers for sustainable urban agriculture, and pointed to the opportunities inherent in having strong government allies (Kathleen Merrigan, Tom Vilsack) and significant legislation pending on child nutrition.

Likening the movement for “good food” to other social phenomenons like civil rights, Viertel recounted what Obama had said to an aid, in confidence: “Show me the social movement behind it!” By marshaling activists, educators, and officials from the public health, environmental, and poverty sectors, we can create a movement that holds government accountable for producing food that is “good, clean, and fair” in the parlance of Slow Food USA.

Moderator of the panel Allison Arieff exposed some tension when she asked: “Is there a sustainable business model for growing food in the city?” Viertel actually answered no. He pointed out that Van Jones, a pioneer of green jobs for disadvantaged people of color, doesn’t believe that farming jobs can lift people out of poverty, which is the reason he focuses on more lucrative environmental career paths.

Other panelist were more hopeful about economic prospects for urban farming. Liz Falk stressed the need to connect the dots between for-profit chefs, urban farmers, and those of need of healthy food in the city. Cohen spoke about the SPIN gardening model of small, produce intensive plots being implemented in Philly. Further discussion deepened the initial question, teasing out the non-monetary benefits that urban gardens provide, such as public health, education, and quality of life, and their role in revitalizing large swaths of blighted industrial land in Detroit.

Ultimately, the power of the panel was in the connections it instigated and encouraged. One audience member rose to tell the story of how she had been forced to mow her front yard of native vegetables and flowers because of complaints from neighbors in Montgomery County. In the front of the room, another woman raised her hand. She was from the zoning board of Montgomery County, and was working to repeal those very restrictions that had mandated a grassy front lawn. A member from the Board of Trustees at the Building Museum from the Home Depot foundation received a gentle ribbing about the conventional fertilizers Home Depot sells, which pollute waterways, to some nods and raised eyebrows from the audience.

The fact that the Building Museum was hosting the talk at all was a testament to the openness of an institution which typically focuses on the built environment. In embracing the power of public spaces to grow healthy, economically robust and connected communities, representatives from the Building Museum demonstrated their willingness to engage in a larger conversation about sustainable urban place-making.

To close, Joshua Viertel related a story about an urban planning professor in college who had pulled out a map with all the urban green spaces marked on it. He then proceeded to fill in the streets and buildings around them. In order to push forward the movement for good food, we’ve got to do a similar task by using sustainable urban agriculture as a starting point to address larger issues of poverty, health and urban planning. By working toward healthy school lunches, local agriculture, and dense transit oriented development, we will transform the places where we live, eat, work and play.

Resources mentioned during the talk:
Diggable City Project, inventory of vacant public land in Portland.
Edible Estates project and book, turns lawns into gardens.
Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal, book by Tristram Stuart.
Harvest time at Harlem Project with Slow Food USA.
Carrot city, designing for Urban Agriculture.
Study on Green Roofs in DC [PDF]