In AREA Chicago's agricultural issue, an article on Growing Powers, a non-profit organization promoting green spaces in Chicago and Milwaukee wrote:


If you could imagine an alternative food system (for Chicago or for your community), how would it operate and how would it be different from the current food system?

...Localness is so much about information, knowledge and closeness to a situation. If you have a deep relationship, or even just an understanding of the process that your food takes, that’s a form of localness that is very valuable. I’m hesitant to imagine an alternative food system by saying, “There have to be this many farms, and within this many miles of the people who are eating from them.” It’s more about choices, understanding. People want what’s right for their families, for the planet, for their communities and other communities.
Chicago is an interesting place because there is so much vacant space within the city limits. I think the figure is 66,000 vacant acres inside Chicagoland. That’s a lot of farmland. But, it’s not farmland until we all really understand how to a.) farm safely and sustainably, make really good soil because all that space is just concrete, and contaminated with lead and all sorts of scary things, and b.) Address the issue of infrastructure. There are very few precedents for institutions that make food, stores that buy food, whatever, to source their food locally. Everyone is used to the Sysco truck pulling up once a month with one delivery of pre-chopped, peeled and pickled garlic coming out of a jar. If you want to use Chicago’s potential farmland, and grow things in the city, you have to revamp people’s expectations about transportation, about invoicing and ordering. Farmers are not food processors, unless they have a value-added product. Restaurants, schools, and hotels are all used to getting their food pre-prepared, so that’s an issue. The baseline is that there is a big chunk of space inside the city that’s a valuable resource. The other thing that the Midwest has is a lot of rural land close to the city. The thing that happened here is that all of the rural land is all corn and soybeans, all huge monoculture, for the most part chemically dependent, GMO crops. There’s real potential here to utilize some of the rural space for some really diversified, small scale, independent growers that will have close access to city populations. In order for an entire city to have real choices about where their food comes from, you need to use the land within the city in new ways. It’s not just about the city, though, it’s also about what’s happening in rural communities as well.
Sure, it’s hard to know where to start, but the resources are all here, unlike someplace like New York. In New York, there’s just no vacant space in the city. Rural areas are much farther from the center of the city than here in Chicago. So again, each region has a completely different project in front of them. That’s why I hesitate to say: my local food system looks like this many farmers and this many people. If each region tackled the issues that face us all—diversifying, using open space in new ways, demanding that we get more information, changing some of the modern expectations about huge industrial food processors and growers, and how they serve us,- then each region can and will develop all the resources they need to troubleshoot an alternative food system specific to them.


Im quite interested in Growing Powers and fully support their ventures and their fight for an urban agricultural community, however, I wanted to clarify some issues in the green space statement in New York as referred to above. Unfortunately, yes, the isle of Manhattan is a big block of concrete, most of downtown built atop garbage, except if you settle yourself between three parks on the Northern tip of the island, Inwood, or can viably afford a half million studio apt off Central Park West, sporting peeks of its Eastern View. However, there are agricultural communities about. Like Chicago, New York is a very vast city. Urban suburbia (or suburban urbanism) does exist close to the borders of more well known Brooklyn neighborhoods.

Communities in East New York, Brooklyn have been feeding their own and educating their children through outreach programs supported by the Brooklyn Botanic Garden for some time now. As reported in the Caribbean News, a free weekly newspaper published in brooklyn (and a second edition published in the bronx/westchester area), a family farmed a vacant lot for over 15 years. They fed their neighborhood and received no financial profit. However, about a year ago, the city took away the land from this community to develop and build housing. It should be stated that East New York is a predominately Black neighborhood, and a low income Black neighborhood at that. There are currently at least four farm markets in Brooklyn that grow all their food in Brooklyn. This information is available here.

More well known farm markets in New York are found in Union Square, Mc Carren Park in Wiliamsburg, and Fort Greene Park, Brooklyn are harvested upstate. I cant condemn this practice of bringing in food from these upstate communities, as they do support what is left of "local" farming. And I must be honest in stating that I am originally from the area where most of these farms exist along the Southern border of the Catskill Mountain range in Orange County, less than a hour and a half from Manhattan. My high school was nestled between apple orchards, cow fields, and rows and rows of corn. I have, at times, made purchasing decisions at these markets based on where the farms come from. Stating, "well, this potato (or onion) comes from the same dirt as I do". Once in Union Square I spoke with one of the farm sellers, and learned his wife grew up down the street from where I grew up in Otisville, rather I grew up near where she did.

North of more prosperous counties, such as Rockland and Westchester, lies acres and acres of old farmland, now sold off to Mc Mansions (the ugliest architectural invention yet) being built at full force, disrupting the local landscape, distressing the natural environmental subsystems. For those inhabitants that still rely on the land, exceptional farming can be found in areas like Pine Island with a work force of migrant workers predominately from Mexico and other Central American countries. Pine Island was formed from a glacier scraping by and depositing minerals, creating a black dirt region known for the best onion farming in New York State. Many of these old farming communities are becoming too quickly suburban with these new housing developments. Farmers resort to selling more infertile land and raising veal calfs to pay land mortgages and maintain equipment. To drive about beautiful hills on country lanes, to see in the distance on the crest of a rolling hill, specklings and glints of blue structures in rows is quite alarming. These calves are chained to their huts, unable to walk or move about, keeping their muscles tender for their subsequent slaughter.

In less than ten years, the housing development in Orange County has driving up residential taxes, strained local schools, and made it harder for the local community to get by. Orange County has become a sleeper community, a suburb of New York City. The majority of its inhabitants work in New York City, New Jersey or Rockland County, creating no viable economy except for consumer goods. There couldn't possibly be another grocery store built in Middletown NY. There are at least seven, all generally offering the same quality of goods. A Starbucks is being opened in a failed Krispy Kreme (we apparently prefer Dunkin' Donuts) near the 24 hour Super Walmart. There are many fast food and chain restaurant options available, one for every day of the week, and ten times as many that were available just ten years ago. Simply, the TGIF Jack Daniel's sauced steak and shrimp menu option is not a long term sustainable economy for this community. And though Starbucks and Walmart anti-campaigns are not new to activism and leftists, the concern remains.

Middletown NY, though a small city, was also historically a railroad town. So, Chicago, keep your vacant lots and 66,000 acres within the city proper green. Sit on it, grow on it, and fight for it.