Michael T. Martin

Urban farming is a great way to feed city folk healthy, local food. It teaches people how to work with the land and reap the benefits of its fruits. It’s a way for community bond and to have a shared stake in what often would be an abandoned lot. Despite these very positive results, urban farming should not be thought as a substitute to actual, sustainable economic development. 

Recently I’ve been having discussions with people about this subject as well as having read an article in the Times-Picayune about urban farming in New Orleans. My issue is not with the practice, which I think is, as I said above, very positive. My contention is that urban farming is not the end product of economic development; it’s an alternative for food security when none exists. While money should go into urban farming so as to build capacity in communities, more money should be funneled towards more traditional economic development: job training and placement programs, technology training, business incentives and investment, etc. 

Many urban farms are popping up in the cities that have been critically divested from. Resources and thought should be put into how to bring business back to the city and how that city can leverage its own resources rather than simply throwing hands in the air and saying “we have no grocery store, we have no healthy food, lets start a garden.” A garden is a great stop-gap measure and a small piece of the economic development matrix, not an endpoint.