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it. In 1999, she hired three local welfare-to -work mothers who had
<br />17 children among them. "None of them are still here," she says.
<br />"There was always a kid sick, always a hospital visit." Currently
<br />she has two young women working with her, one a Mexican
<br />immigrant and another a college- educated Long Islander who
<br />cares about sustainability issues. Corboy breaks even only by not
<br />paying herself any salary. Despite the challenges she's faced, Con
<br />boy still dreams of starting 10 similar farms in the city and
<br />thinks she can eventually employ more people and make her
<br />approach work financially by honing her market and teaming
<br />with other area farmers to create a community- supported agri-
<br />culture program, as Allen and Finkelstein have done.
<br />"I think part of the perception problem for urban farms is
<br />that city leaders think they will be laughed at when they go to
<br />the annual Conference of Mayors," Corboy says. "'Oh, here's
<br />Mayor Street, with his farms and pigs he's got now in the city of
<br />Philadelphia.' But I say look at Philadelphia. This place is a sham-
<br />bles; it's a wreck You have 30,000 vacant lots in this city, and you
<br />have no plan."
<br />OTHING I SAW CONVINCED ME THAT
<br />urban agriculture is a great success,
<br />nor is it widespread. Its best achieve-
<br />ments have come in cities abroad that
<br />have embraced it out of necessity.
<br />After the breakup of the Soviet bloc,
<br />Havana could no longer draw from
<br />foreign imports, and some 8,000 city farms have subsequently
<br />emerged. Dar es Salaam in Tanzania produces within its city lim-
<br />its 90 percent of the green vegetables consumed there; the
<br />country has never invested in refrigeration systems to transport
<br />vegetables. Among Western cities, the movement is perhaps
<br />strongest in Vancouver, British Columbia, which is geograph-
<br />ically isolated and endowed with a progressive population.
<br />More than 80 percent of the produce consumed in Vancouver
<br />is produced in the city or its surrounding areas, and the munic-
<br />ipal government recently approved the development of a "sus-
<br />tainable urban neighborhood" in a former industrial area known
<br />as Southeast False Creek. The development will likely incor-
<br />porate buildings that consume little energy amid several small
<br />farms and man-made creeks.
<br />Urban agriculture may achieve only limited success in the
<br />United States. Urban theorists I spoke to met Kaufman's ideas
<br />for widespread inner -city farms with respectful skepticism.
<br />"On the one hand, urban farming could help bring about the
<br />true mixed -use city," says Alex Marshall, author of the recently
<br />published book How Cities Work: Suburbs, Sprawl, and the Roads
<br />Not Taken. "But older cities have a web of infrastructure that is
<br />dense and can support large numbers of people. Is farming the
<br />best use for that? If it can be profitable, then it's a good thing. If
<br />not, it's a feel -good project that is only a stopgap until we figure
<br />out what else to do instead."
<br />The day I felt most hopeful about urban farming's future
<br />came late last summer in the neighborhood of East New York,
<br />.a poverty- stricken section on the outer edge of Brooklyn. A
<br />recently established farmers' market, set on a large rubble -
<br />strewn vacant lot, was teeming with life. Organized in part by
<br />the Cornell Cooperative Extension, the market is staffed pri-
<br />marily by a couple of dozen kids from ages 11 to 14, paid $5 an
<br />hour. The young people also help senior citizens tend their com-
<br />munity gardens on vacant lots, and they cultivate their own gar-
<br />den. The farmers' market is anchored by a few large farms from
<br />upstate New York but supplemented by the produce from the
<br />children's garden and the local community gardens. There is a
<br />waiting list of 40 kids who want to join the program.
<br />"I like it here," Tymarria Kendall, 13, told me. "You have the
<br />experience of selling. When I go and sign up for a job, I can say
<br />I worked in the farmers' market." The kids' salaries are partially
<br />supported by grants, but the community center that organizes
<br />the program with Cornell is hoping to expand its garden and find
<br />ways for the program to become more self - supporting in the
<br />coming years. I had little doubt that this farmers' market and its
<br />small peripheral industries were reaping benefits that would in
<br />time outweigh the small investment they require —by giving
<br />young people their first jobs, providing a common interest for the
<br />young and the old, and ensuring that existing community gardens
<br />don't return to junkyards through neglect. Community gar-
<br />deners generally make $50 to $200 a week from their small
<br />stands, a significant sum for retirees in this neighborhood.
<br />Our current supply of "cheap food" has many hidden
<br />costs: the pollution created by transporting food great dis-
<br />tances, the degradation of large swaths of land in the Ameri-
<br />can West and Midwest by overuse and pesticides, the repairs to
<br />highways that support the trucks carrying the food, and the
<br />pressures exerted on independent farmers by megaproces-
<br />sors. Those people who argue that small periurban and urban
<br />farms are rarely viable without grant support are right, of
<br />course, but they might also consider the dependence of large -
<br />scale agriculture on the government. The opening of the and
<br />regions in the West to farming was made possible only by fed-
<br />erally subsidized irrigation systems. Last year, President George
<br />W. Bush signed into law a $5.5 billion bailout for the nation's
<br />farmers, even as the profits of the multinational food proces-
<br />sor ConAgra reached $630 million.
<br />Brother Rick Samyn in Detroit compares food to sex: It's bet-
<br />ter, he says, when you know your partner. Samyn and Corboy and
<br />Kaufman and Allen have a world view that recalls Jefferson's desire
<br />that the country be populated with yeoman farmers. Their
<br />movement's limited successes and struggles to this point remind
<br />us that the way we currently grow and consume our food is by
<br />no means inevitable. "Every time you produce food in an urban
<br />.environment, you save something in the nonurban environ-
<br />ment," says Jac Smit. "It has an immediate effect. A multicrop
<br />farmer who is farming part -time in an urban area or on the
<br />edge of an urban area: That is an American ideal." n
<br />MAY (JUNE 2002 65
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