By Amanda Kennedy, Associate Planner, RPA-Connecticut
This year, several other RPA staffers and I have purchased shares in Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farms, and after up-front payments back in February, we now receive boxes of locally-grown produce each week. We're enjoying lots of salad and zucchini, and experimenting with a few unusual vegetables like kohlrabi, escarole, and garlic scapes.
The CSA model has a lot to say for it. It gets money to farmers in early spring, right when they need to purchase seeds and equipment, and the limited number of weekly delivery locations cuts way down on their labor costs for distribution and sales. My CSA share is delivered to a local Stamford church site from a farm in the Catskills. Manhattan and Brooklyn have a growing number of farmers markets and RPA's New York office is near Union Square, the epicenter of the local food movement, but here in downtown Stamford, my CSA is the only outlet for locally grown produce.
Few people might realize it, but my locally-grown dinners link me back to one of the most famous movements in city planning, the Garden City movement, which began in England at the turn of the 20th century. At the time, early British planners were struggling with some of the same issues we face today. Cheap imported food had flooded the market just when local British farmers were facing higher distribution and labor costs. Farm workers left rural communities for opportunities in the cities. The supply chain delivered fresh foods only to the largest cities, bypassing many small and mid-size communities completely and leaving residents with inadequate diets. At the same time that cities like London and Manchester faced overcrowding, the countryside was emptying out.
It was these conditions that prompted Ebenezer Howard to develop his famous work Garden Cities of To-Morrow (1898/1902). His book inspired the Garden Cities movement in England and led to the formation of the Town and Country Planning Association. Howard's Garden Cities is well remembered: it outlined new cities in the countryside, connected to one another with a railway system, and surrounded by a buffer of open space. New housing would attract city residents and relieve urban congestion.
What's less remembered are the agricultural aspects of the plan - the garden parts of the Garden City. Just outside the ring railway were community gardens, fruit farms, and cow pastures. The plan allowed for large farms as well as "small holdings" in which a family could live on a farm and supplement outside income with farm goods. An in-town market connected customers with farmers. The integrated rail network made fast and inexpensive shipping of excess produce possible to multiple destinations.
Although the agricultural aspects of Howard's Garden City were never fully implemented in either of the movement's resulting communities, both Britain and the U.S. continued to experiment with models that gave households access to land for food production. Howard's associate Thomas Adams came to the U.S. in the 1920s to direct the development of New York's first regional plan, and so links directly to the formation of RPA. Early RPA work blamed rural depopulation and urban growth for an uptick in imported food prices, and blamed low agricultural land values for urban sprawl.
RPA proposed "farming zones" to provide cities with sources for inexpensive local food. Both George Cadbury's Bourneville and Sunnyside, Queens, incorporated kitchen gardens into the community, and early 20th century schools featured teaching gardens on school grounds. Community gardens have alternately been called "potato patches," "relief gardens," and "victory gardens." Now some of the same models are being promoted again: backyard gardens, community garden plots, and farmers' markets. Schools are again installing teaching gardens. In some cities, it is possible to buy local produce from a CSA farm growing its crops just down the block.
I support today's local food movement for many of the same reasons Howard and his contemporaries tried to support their local farm economy. Our international food chain has seen a series of high-profile contaminations, and I don't want my fruits, vegetables, and meats flown in from South America by a multinational corporation. I like that farmers' markets in urban communities help bring nutritious, diverse ingredients to neighborhoods not served by big box supermarkets. My purchase also links me to the continuing challenge of preserving a functioning rural economy (one that can survive without developing farmland into strip malls and McMansions) and the link between rural farmers and urban eaters.
Since the local food movement is just gaining traction in Stamford, there aren't any local farms in my town, but a new farmers market just opened nearby, another school has a garden, and residents are hoping for more community garden plots to meet the growing demand. The local paper recently featured a family who raises vegetables and chickens in the "green oasis" of their backyard. I'm hopeful that the growing interest in local food will provide the opportunity for other entrepreneurs to make use of the region's farmland, even if that farmland is in the form of a backyard or vacant lot.
This week's menu features summer savory, snap peas, and more zucchini. It will be supplemented by the last of the season's strawberries and a few early blueberries, guaranteeing a series of tasty, nutritious meals. Here's to the rewards of a garden city.
This year, several other RPA staffers and I have purchased shares in Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farms, and after up-front payments back in February, we now receive boxes of locally-grown produce each week. We're enjoying lots of salad and zucchini, and experimenting with a few unusual vegetables like kohlrabi, escarole, and garlic scapes.
The CSA model has a lot to say for it. It gets money to farmers in early spring, right when they need to purchase seeds and equipment, and the limited number of weekly delivery locations cuts way down on their labor costs for distribution and sales. My CSA share is delivered to a local Stamford church site from a farm in the Catskills. Manhattan and Brooklyn have a growing number of farmers markets and RPA's New York office is near Union Square, the epicenter of the local food movement, but here in downtown Stamford, my CSA is the only outlet for locally grown produce.
Few people might realize it, but my locally-grown dinners link me back to one of the most famous movements in city planning, the Garden City movement, which began in England at the turn of the 20th century. At the time, early British planners were struggling with some of the same issues we face today. Cheap imported food had flooded the market just when local British farmers were facing higher distribution and labor costs. Farm workers left rural communities for opportunities in the cities. The supply chain delivered fresh foods only to the largest cities, bypassing many small and mid-size communities completely and leaving residents with inadequate diets. At the same time that cities like London and Manchester faced overcrowding, the countryside was emptying out.
It was these conditions that prompted Ebenezer Howard to develop his famous work Garden Cities of To-Morrow (1898/1902). His book inspired the Garden Cities movement in England and led to the formation of the Town and Country Planning Association. Howard's Garden Cities is well remembered: it outlined new cities in the countryside, connected to one another with a railway system, and surrounded by a buffer of open space. New housing would attract city residents and relieve urban congestion.
What's less remembered are the agricultural aspects of the plan - the garden parts of the Garden City. Just outside the ring railway were community gardens, fruit farms, and cow pastures. The plan allowed for large farms as well as "small holdings" in which a family could live on a farm and supplement outside income with farm goods. An in-town market connected customers with farmers. The integrated rail network made fast and inexpensive shipping of excess produce possible to multiple destinations.
Although the agricultural aspects of Howard's Garden City were never fully implemented in either of the movement's resulting communities, both Britain and the U.S. continued to experiment with models that gave households access to land for food production. Howard's associate Thomas Adams came to the U.S. in the 1920s to direct the development of New York's first regional plan, and so links directly to the formation of RPA. Early RPA work blamed rural depopulation and urban growth for an uptick in imported food prices, and blamed low agricultural land values for urban sprawl.
RPA proposed "farming zones" to provide cities with sources for inexpensive local food. Both George Cadbury's Bourneville and Sunnyside, Queens, incorporated kitchen gardens into the community, and early 20th century schools featured teaching gardens on school grounds. Community gardens have alternately been called "potato patches," "relief gardens," and "victory gardens." Now some of the same models are being promoted again: backyard gardens, community garden plots, and farmers' markets. Schools are again installing teaching gardens. In some cities, it is possible to buy local produce from a CSA farm growing its crops just down the block.
I support today's local food movement for many of the same reasons Howard and his contemporaries tried to support their local farm economy. Our international food chain has seen a series of high-profile contaminations, and I don't want my fruits, vegetables, and meats flown in from South America by a multinational corporation. I like that farmers' markets in urban communities help bring nutritious, diverse ingredients to neighborhoods not served by big box supermarkets. My purchase also links me to the continuing challenge of preserving a functioning rural economy (one that can survive without developing farmland into strip malls and McMansions) and the link between rural farmers and urban eaters.
Since the local food movement is just gaining traction in Stamford, there aren't any local farms in my town, but a new farmers market just opened nearby, another school has a garden, and residents are hoping for more community garden plots to meet the growing demand. The local paper recently featured a family who raises vegetables and chickens in the "green oasis" of their backyard. I'm hopeful that the growing interest in local food will provide the opportunity for other entrepreneurs to make use of the region's farmland, even if that farmland is in the form of a backyard or vacant lot.
This week's menu features summer savory, snap peas, and more zucchini. It will be supplemented by the last of the season's strawberries and a few early blueberries, guaranteeing a series of tasty, nutritious meals. Here's to the rewards of a garden city.
@RegionalPlan
Here in Madison WI, CSAs are thriving. They even have an umbrella organization that coordinates a number of insurers who offer a healthy eating rebate to defray the cost of CSA membership up to $200 a family each year! Even more, they raise funds to assist low income families who want to eat fresh, natural foods.
Check it out in a post I wrote recently detailing this wonderful program at http://digginginthedriftless.wordpress.com/2009/07/10/csas-madison-style-or-insuring-good-nutrition/
Happy, healthy eating for us all!
Denise Thornton
http://digginginthedriftless
I'm part of the Staten Island CSA and it is wonderful. We've had a variety of organically grown vegetables and have now begun receiving fruit as well from a farm in NJ. We've also connected with some farms in upstate NY that provide us with other products such as meat, eggs, bread, jam, honey, maple syrup, cheese, goat milk etc. Another member of the co-op has her own vegetable plot as well so she's getting vegetables even closer to home. We also shop at the local Greenmarket that has several vendors who grow right on Staten Island.
- Carol V.