With the steadily growing movement of urban agriculture spreading across paved and chain-linked cities of America, thousands of urban residents are discovering and rediscovering the land around them-land that has lain forgotten or poorly used for decades. Agriculture flourishing and producing in the clogged cities? Oxymoronic, you might say. But the overflowing gardens and impressive statistics of their production prove differently. In fact, urban agriculture may be a key to the solution for a long list of problems that America’s cities face today. With the continuation of this movement, and the societal realization of its importance and possibilities, urban agriculture is in a position to create great changes in our relationship to both food and the land.

In an independent study through Dartmouth’s geography department and future Urban Studies Center, I spent the fall term discovering the promises which the urban agriculture movement holds for all cities’ populations and environments.

Walking in the November sun between dark tilled beds of soil at the Boston Food Project, a community garden in the center of the city, I noticed that the surrounding apartment buildings seemed to lean inwards towards the half acre oflife amidst the pavement. The buildings were not the only things that were drawn to this center of activity. Urban community gardens nation-wide act as a place of congregation, strengthening communities of all kinds, from low-income housing developments to upper-class neighborhoods. At the Food Project, student interns and volunteers learn to work and plant the land, as they are welcomed into a community of people who provide alternatives to afternoons spent on the streets or playing video games inside. And it’s not only the kids of all ages who frequent these gardens to work, play and learn. The appeal of urban gardening has caught on, and neighbors come to add their touches to the rows of tomatoes, lettuce and com, and to take seedlings, tools and knowledge back to their own backyard gardens. The multiplying plots that I saw in the blocks surrounding the Food Project- planted in the riotous and seemingly haphazard traditional layouts of the various countries from which their tenders came- provide food security for fresh and culturally important produce that isn’t always available to the average city shopper.

But it was not the food security, the community building and neighborhood improvement, the work ethic, or the youth outreach of this and other urban gardens which impressed me, a born and bred rural Vermonter. In the man-made environment of steel, cement and glass where 80 percent of Americans live, my hope and excitement were sparked by the small but powerful gardens that offer a connection to the land which too many city dwellers lack. Toni Nelson, in her article entitled “Closing the Nutrient Loop,” is correct in her analysis that; “As cities industrialize and concrete buildings with sewer lines replace shantytowns and dirt roads, the direct connection between humans and nature becomes increasingly obscured, and it is not unusual for children to grow up thinking that milk comes from paper cartons or honey from jars.” 1

With this second and third generation of disconnected, urban-raised people- to whom the land has been both foreign and absent- now coming of age and making important decisions about the environment and our relationship to it, what hope can we have that they will feel the need for strong environmental policy change? Novelist and environmental prose-writer Barbara Kingsolver fears that “It’s easy to ignore damage you don’t see and to undervalue things you haven’t made yourself.”2 It was exactly this problem that I saw being confronted and solved as urban students and community members took me on a walk through their garden, explaining to me the different stages of growth and care of the land throughout the seasons.

Today, between metroplolitan community gardens, individual backyard gardens, and commercial urban and peri¬urban farms, urban agriculture makes up 30 percent of the United States’ total farmland and 35 percent of its vegetable production.3 The Food Project alone produces 200,000 lbs of food annually. The movement is growing, testing our ideas of the definition of a city and the appropriate place for agriculture, and bringing issues of the environment to the forefront of urban residential thinking. The transformation of vacant lots, backyards, rooftops, and window boxes into beautiful and productive gardens is the next step in rekindling our relationship with the natural world.

Endnotes
1 Toni Nelson, “Closing the Nutrient Loop,” World Watch Nov.! Dec. 1996: 17
2 Barbara Kingsolver, “A Good Fanner,” The Nation Nov. 2003: 14
3 http://www.na1.usda.gov/afsic/AFSIC–pubs/urbanag.htm#toc2

Norah Lake ‘05 is a recently decided Environmental Studies major. She has done a lot of work on organic farms and is spending the winter in Mexico working for FORO, a sustainable development organization in Chiapas.