Well, our potential urban farming network meeting is off and running. We are scheduled for November 22nd – the first, of hopefully many, urban farmer get togethers.
The past few weeks have been intense. Besides reading and research, I have been meeting with lots of folks interested in urban farming. I realized (and maybe I wrote this before) that my goal for the next several months is to network with as many people as I can so that when anyone mentions urban farming that I am the first person that comes to mind. Not in a pretentious way, I just want to connect with that many people. I have already met with BOB, the FPC, and the founder of SPUD. Next week I meet with a city planner and I have a few more people on my near-future agenda.
I am quite enjoying it and am enjoying the different perspectives that people have on urban farming.
I am also becoming a little more skeptical about the potential for urban ag. in this city in the near future. There really are a lot of limitations and and a number of barriers. It’s not that it can’t grow, but that it is limited in growth. There certain areas that could really grow (indoor sprouting for example), but produce growing seems very limited. Cities really are the antithesis of farming. One of the challenges is the lack of vacant land in the city. Land that is vacant most likely will not be so for long, so this brings up the challenge of tenure for urban farmers.
But, onward and upward I say!