Fertile Ground USA...Celebrating the people behind the plow

Tony Leach (left, London Parks and Green Spaces Forum) chatting with American artist/writer Fritz Haeg, whose recent book, "Edible Estates: Attack on the Front Lawn," describes turning barren lawns into food-bearing gardens.

(Embassy photo by S-J Mayhew)

The Growing Food for London conference, which recently took place on Monday, June 30th, had over 200 planners, growers, architects, and policy makers in attendance. The event was jointly organized with the London Parks and Green Spaces Forum, as part of the London Festival of Architecture. This event follows on the heels of a London delegation [supported by the US Embassy] that visited several US urban food growing projects in Milwaukee, Chicago and New York. The four members of the British team included Colin Buttery (Royal Parks, London); Tony Leach (London Parks and Green Spaces Forum); Catherine Miller (Federation of City Farms and Community Gardens) and Ben Reynolds (London Food Link Project/Sustain).

Ben Reynolds has noted a number of similarities to and differences from urban agriculture initiatives in London which he kindly shared with me in an email exchange:

"One major difference [between London and US urban ag projects] was that many [in the US] were much more geared towards commercial production, and often had strong links with other farms, and ran farmers markets or box schemes.  Although a couple of our city farms have farmers markets, you would rarely see much of the produce on sale there coming from the city farm - as these are more educational projects, and not set up with maximising quantity of production at the core...Beyond this I was very impressed with the forward thinking around food waste and aquaculture [for instance] at the Growing Power centre in Milwaukee.  I'm sure they're not alone in doing this - but there was a real appreciation for the symbiotic relationship between different parts of the food system, that when put into practice - made so much sense.  If this sounds a bit vague I'll give an example -- growing watercress in a simple man-made river ecosystem which purified the water going into the fish tank (tilapia - notably fed on the water-cress and other products grown on site).  The waste-water is then pumped back to the start of the river to go through the water-cress beds again, keeping the water (apparently) healthy.  Both fish and watercress were then sold through their outlets...I also hope that, partly through the conference we're organising - we'll see an increase in  urban agriculture projects which take on board the message of producing food for sale, setting up a social enterprise model, rather than just being educational establishtments (as important as it is - we are  now facing  new challenges)."

To read more about the delegation's visit to the US, please see Sustain's report, Edible Cities, which is available free for download.