Inner-City Farms

I was really disappointed when I found out that 2008’s Slow Food Nation event was going to be held in San Francisco only because we’d moved from the Bay Area ourselves just a year prior.  I wanted to attend! 

We’ve been members of Slow Food for the last two years.  For the most part it’s primarily meant making a small financial contribution to the organization.  This last year we were able to attend a Slow Food gathering for our (new) local convivium here in Snoqualamie Valley.  I’m really glad to see that our area has it’s own convivium actually, most of the active ones are surrounding large urban areas (Seattle, San Francisco, etc).  While I think it’s quite important for urban dwellers (as we once were) to reflect on these topics as they certainly have specific challenges, I also think it’s great for those of us in the agricultural regions that often supply these large urban areas to kind of get out and celebrate what we contribute to the system.

This article spotlights the Victory Garden put in place for the Slow Food Nation event in San Francisco.  I can definitely see the logic for taking these large evenets to “the big city” (better audience for change and larger exposure) but I hope they don’t entirely lose track of their roots.  I’m also not trying to deny those determined urban farmers, I want to see more of them!

“Farm aid, the annual concert dedicated to raising funds for the American family farmer, has been held in such agricultural strongholds as Manor, Texas, and Ames, Iowa. But the most recent venue, the distinctly nonrural borough of Manhattan, is not as incongruous as it seems. With its estimated 600 small-scale farms (which are often large-scale vegetable gardens), New York City is part of an urban agricultural boom in the U.S., where rising food and fuel prices are making city farming seem less and less outlandish. In July volunteers began transforming the front lawns of San Francisco’s city hall into the first edible offerings on that site since 1943, when civilians across the country were encouraged to aid the war effort by growing victory gardens.”

TIME: Inner-City Farms