Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Growing in the Big Apple

By: Siena Chrisman, World Hunger Year

In sites across the city, New Yorkers are addressing CSD issues of agriculture, land and food on the ground: coaxing carrots, collards and, ultimately, community health from the city's soil. Last Saturday, 30 CSD participants saw firsthand what sustainability looks like in Brooklyn, the most populous of the city's five boroughs.

Model Farms

The City Farm Showcase Tour visited four sites, representing a progression of approaches to sustainable practices. Accompanying the tour were representatives of the State Department of Agriculture and Markets, the City Council Speaker and the City Parks Department, leading to discussions on agriculture and land policy with government and UN agency representatives from Germany, Barbados and France. Other conversations were more practical: the youth caucus member from the low-income Brooklyn neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant shared companion planting techniques with delegates from Kenya; a Venezuelan agroecologist and a Bolivian NGO representative examined seedlings.

The new composting toilet at the tour's first stop, Hollenback Community Garden, elicited much interest from the delegates, several of whom said it would be a useful addition to their own projects. Hollenback and Hattie Carthan Community Garden, another stop, are traditional community gardens where members grow in plots for themselves, but each is working on larger sustainability projects.

Fresh Alternatives

At Hattie Carthan, a larger site in Bedford-Stuyvesant, community food educator Yonnette Fleming gave a healthy cooking demonstration. Residents of low-income communities in the U.S. tend to have little access to healthy foods, especially fruits and vegetables, which puts the poorest populations at the highest risk for diabetes, heart disease and other diet-related illnesses. Upon learning of New York City's skyrocketing rates of these diseases, a South African civil society representative responded, “In a city so big and so well-established, how can you not have fresh vegetables?”

To address this need, the Bed-Stuy Farm, also in Bedford-Stuyvesant, annually grows more than 3,000 kg of produce for the Brooklyn Rescue Mission food pantry. Both Bed-Stuy Farm and East New York Farms work with local youth, teaching them better health and nutrition through small-scale sustainable agriculture, soil improvement and marketing to their community.

Over lunch at Hattie Carthan, a representative from the UK commented, “My impression of U.S. food and food habits is very bad. It's good to know this kind of thing is happening here.” She took a bite of homemade cucumber salad and added, “Next time I come to these meetings, I'll come get my food here.”