Engaging community groups in sustainability initiatives

Neighborhood agriculture and composting

Vacant land in NYC is more profitably used for real estate development than farming, but unconventional spaces, such as roofs and backyards, offer possibilities. There are over 52,000 acres of backyard space in NYC. (“The Potential for Urban Agriculture in NYC,” Columbia U. Urban Design Lab, 2012, p. 42.)

Identifying the spaces that can be productively used, and the innovative social, gardening and business practices needed to make that happen, will be an exploratory process.  Community organizations will be centrally involved.

Share tables for neighborhood-grown produce at community markets

A few NYC community groups are already aggregating and selling vegetables grown in their neighborhoods at the farmers markets they run.  It provides modest extra income for local gardeners and some revenue for the group.

Institutional Purchasing

If neighborhood food production could be scaled up sufficiently, produce could be sold to schools and institutions.  What if NYC procurement regulations encouraged institutional purchase of food grown not just within the State but from within the City?  It could create a market for countless new backyard farmers – as well as for community groups that could aggregate product and promote partner training programs.

Local Models

East New York Farms runs a community supported agriculture (CSA) program, two farmers markets and two urban farms, working with over a dozen community and backyard gardens in East New York, Brooklyn.  Community gardeners can sell even small amounts of produce at the share table of the ENYF farmers market. Gardeners can drop off their washed and bunched produce at the share table at the start of market hours, where an intern will record, count and weigh it.  ENYF staff will also pick up harvested produce from the gardener, or harvest it themselves.  Produce that doesn’t sell is donated to the food pantry. 

The more each gardener gets involved, the more money that gardener makes.  Gardeners who attend meetings and do outreach, harvest their own produce and drop their produce off at the market keep 90% of the sales price, gardeners who do two of those things keep 80%, gardeners who do one keep 70% and gardeners who do none keep 60%.

This summer The BLK Projek will launch a farmers market at Father Gigante Plaza in the Longwood / Hunts Point community of the South Bronx, with a mobile market component.   ED Tanya Fields says:

Social movements for and in underserved communities are best served when they also provide and/or emphasize short-term financial incentives and create opportunity for long-term financial stability

Most of the produce for the market will come from upstate NY farms, but a share table will be dedicated solely to produce from local community gardens.  Vendors will receive an hourly wage and then a commission from sales at their table.  According to Fields, community gardens that sell at other markets commonly receive 50-60% of what is sold, or pay a small table fee to participate and receive 100% of the profit.   

The Brooklyn-based decentralized farming network called BK Farmyards proposes to link owners of backyard green space or temporarily vacant land with experienced gardeners who can cultivate produce for collection and sale by BK Farmyards. They are currently involved with several farmyards.  

Innovative techniques to raise vegetables

Gardening can continue all year round in greenhouses.  Changes in NYC regulations could open up 1,200 acres of commercial rooftops for greenhouse farming.  Rooftop greenhouses will be an important part of NYC’s urban farming future, but probably too expensive for nonprofits.  Innovative but less costly techniques can be used by individuals and community groups to make decentralized urban farming possible throughout the winter in vacant lots, temporary locations, and on rooftops – extending the capacity of neighborhood gardener/community group collaborations.

Farming on vacant lots has advantages over rooftop farming.  Besides lower costs, there is less wind, more flexibility in growth mediums, and ease of access. 596 Acres is helping would-be urban gardeners find nearby vacant public lots. 

Farms with permanent legal access to vacant lots and with access to skilled carpenters can build greenhouses like the one at Brooklyn Rescue Mission in Bed-Stuy, from easily available, inexpensive materials.  Unfortunately, access to vacant lots is often temporary.

Inspired by urban gardeners in Nairobi, Kenya who fill sacks with soil, cut holes in the sides, and plant vegetables in the holes, Feedback Farms is experimenting with mobile planters that can turn vacant Brooklyn lots into temporary farms.  Stacked on wooden pallets for drainage, their lightweight, low cost sub-irrigated planters (SIPs) can be moved mid-season if needed.  SIPs are planting containers in which the water is introduced from the bottom, allowing the water to soak upwards to the plant through capillary action.  SIPs have been used in the US for over 100 years. Many do-it-yourself SIPs can be made from plastic buckets and boxes, and their manufacture for sale to urban gardeners can become a cottage industry. Feedback Farms is testing small sacks, as well as super sacks, a generic industrial bulk bag.

The SPIN farming method emphasizes intercropping and scheduled crop rotations for high vegetable yields in small spaces and is recommended by permaculture expert Rob Hopkins.   Active Citizen Project (ACP) is setting up Project EATS, community-operated farms and food distribution systems using the SPIN method. ACP plans to sell produce to commercial customers and to community members at 50-70% of market price.   Through partnerships with public high schools, community-based organizations, community garden groups, local colleges, restaurants, and city agencies, ACP now maintains five farm sites in Brooklyn.

Small business opportunities in composting
and food waste

“We currently spend more than $1 billion a year to manage solid waste including $300 million to export 3.3 million tons of City-collected waste. These costs are projected to rise exponentially. We must take aggressive steps to make our waste management system more environmentally and economically sustainable.” - PlaNYC, p. 137.

Much of the waste management industry is about recycling.  Not all of it is big business.  A simple, decentralized way of turning waste into cash is well known to New Yorkers – the reclaiming of empty cans and bottles for recycling deposits.  Similar but more lucrative business opportunities exist for entrepreneurs and community groups who want to use organic material.

Organic material, much of which is food waste, makes up about 18% of NYC’s waste stream. PlaNYC’s 2011 update recognizes the importance of composting or recycling more of it, instead of trucking it to out of state landfills.

Many New Yorkers want to do the right thing, and compost their food waste, but the few scheduled food waste collections at a handful of farmers markets are not easily accessible.  A few individual households are willing to pay Vokashi a monthly service fee to pick their food waste. The firm uses a Japanese method of bacterial fermentation, which allows food waste to be stored in airtight plastic buckets for weeks until pickup for later composting in community gardens. 

Composting advocate Greg Todd wants to provide food waste pickup service from restaurants, by local residents driving industrial bicycle carts. This method has been pioneered in Northampton, Mass. but can’t be applied in NYC due to waste hauling regulations aimed at excluding criminal enterprises. 

Today we can buy compost bins and potting soil at gardening supply stores.  Why not brands of locally produced compost, perhaps identified by neighborhood, or by the community nonprofit that organizes neighborhood food waste pickups, and charges local businesses?    Perhaps their commercial compost sales would subsidize a lower cost sale of compost back to community gardens. The City could support the development of a NYC-produced compost industry if (a) If the City would create an exemption to these rules for bicycle-riding entrepreneurs, (b) would guide partnerships between licensed waste hauling companies and local composters, or (c) convene experts and advocates to identify a workaround.

It’s increasingly popular to raise chickens in NYC as well as other US cities and suburbs.   Chickens eat more than just chicken feed, and some commercial chicken operations raise hens solely on food scraps and insects in their compost piles. Although  some of that food waste could be fed back to chickens and cycled back as eggs it would not be profitable considering the very low current cost of eggs.
Gourmet mushrooms sell for a much higher price than eggs, and NYC’s abundant production of coffee grounds, now thrown away, could become their feedstock.  Two UC Berkeley seniors were months away from graduation and business careers when they came across the idea of using coffee grounds to grow oyster mushrooms. Their Oakland-based company now employs 21.  They’re selling mushroom growing kits at Whole Foods, as well as bags of compost.  Also, beekeeping is on the rise in NYC.  It’s reportedly quite profitable and already legal.

Where can NYC community groups start?

There are opportunities for organizations to produce, sell and distribute vegetables in their neighborhood.  A community inventory of gardening resources would be a place to start.  Already existing community gardens, NYC greenmarkets and CSAs could become allies or partners.  City gardening groups, other civic groups and elected officials could collaborate in finding areas that could be turned into gardens, including vacant lots, large roofs, and backyards.  As long as some portion of sales goes to the sponsoring organization, setting up a farmers market or a share table could provide a modest amount of income along with a new program.

By partnering with the innovators profiled here, even nonprofits without background in food and agriculture can explore how to leverage their network of local contacts and community resources.