Food in Boston

Farming the Concrete Jungle, in this month’s In These Times, provides a great overview of the state of urban agriculture in the US, and has a bunch of great quotes from Food Project folks.

I would have been thrilled to find this last year when I was starting to wrap my head around this stuff, and still find it useful to see all the various pieces wrapped up succinctly.

(via ethicurian)

The 2007 American Community Garden Association conference was this weekend at Northeastern. Various factors prevented me from spending much time there, but the parts I did experience were good fun:

• Volunteering at registration and for a workshop missing one of its presenters reinforced a lesson I’ve learned before: gardening people are, by and large, friendly and laid-back folks.
• I’d forgotten that there was a Boston Community Garden Council, but there is and it meets every month. I fear that another monthly meeting is not something I should contemplate, but it would be interesting to check out once.
• Will Raap, founder of the Gardener’s Supply companies, presented at the opening session. While his talk veered dangerously into advertisement zone, I really appreciated his discussion of the company’s origins in the 70’s energy crisis, and their work to build a sustainable food economy in Burlington.
• The Saturday morning talks by gardeners and coordinators from New Orleans was really moving. In particular, Noel Jones of the God’s Vineyard project told a story of perseverance in the face of very difficult circumstances. The NOLA food map is a totally different kind of inspiration — while I can see how the absence of food in New Orleans post-Katrina created the necessity for that particular example, I think every community should have one. Certainly Boston.
• A Sarasota gardener’s story about the city’s seizure of her garden’s land (for development purposes) really emphasized the importance of having city buy-in to the value of community gardens. My understanding is that Boston is in good shape in this area, but it’s a sobering reminder of the possibilities.
• Living south of the Charles, I confess that I have little idea about food and garden issues north of the river. I was lucky to be able to attend a tour to Somerville, visiting the Union Square farmer’s market and the Somerville Growing Center, both well worth experiencing.

Regular readers have remarked that I’ve been in a FiB slump for the last few months, but this event, like all good conferences, was a real burst of inspiration. Fortunately, I’m involved in the early stages of an exciting new & related venture, which I’ll be saying more about in the future.