Are urban farms too big?
Monday, December 3, 2012
"Urban farms" may be getting too big, according to Grist, a non-profit organization, based in Seattle, Wash., which describes itself as "dishing out environmental news and commentary with a wry twist."
San Diego's 140-acre Suzie's Farm and 40-acre Skarsgard Farms in Albuquerque N.M. each sell more than US$1 million in organic product in a season. Cleveland, Ohio, San Francisco, Calif. and Kansas City, Mo., all plan to turn disused properties into farmland, some on a substantial scale.
Yet Kaid Benfield, director of sustainable communities, Natural Resources Defense Council, worries that urban farming on a large scale will make cities less walkable and less dense. He argues that growing food in cities should support urbanism, not displace it. Grist writer Christopher Weber notes that Benfield is concerned that a city where pedestrians walk past a 20-acre field isn't a city any more. Plus, residents will get upset when that green space is inevitably turned back into buildings again when the economy turns around. (And that is going to happen when?)
Toronto has its 7.5 acre Riverdale Farm. John Hantz, the founder of Detroit's Hantz Farm, started with a grandiose scheme for a 10,000 acre farm in the city. Local outcry, and his lowballing on land prices, forced him to downsize to 200 acres for a tree farm, Weber wrote. BF