On June 21st, the Senate passed the so-called “farm bill,” officially named the Agriculture Reform, Food, and Jobs Act of 2012. The 1,010-page bill encompasses numerous policy and spending provisions, including conservation, food aid, nutrition, rural development initiatives, and specialty crop research.
The bill was approved with overwhelming bipartisan support, and now goes to the House, where legislators anticipate fierce opposition from conservative lawmakers who believe that the bill needs to make even more significant cuts in spending on the food stamp program. The Congressional Budget Office has projected the bill’s cost over 10 years to be close to $1 trillion, which is more than the budget for education and less than spending on defense or Social Security, according to NPR.
Despite the misleading title of “farm bill,” the majority of the bill in dollar terms goes towards the federal food stamp program, also known as the Supplemental Nutrition and Assistance Program (SNAP). The Senate bill makes significant cuts in current spending levels on SNAP, while rejecting proposals for more severe cuts. Nonetheless, the cuts have raised serious concerns from food and nutrition groups, who don’t believe that the bill provides enough incentive for families to purchase fruits and vegetables.
The Senate version of the bill cuts money given in direct payments to farmers and farmland owners. The shift away from price supports for farmers towards risk management is designed to protect against natural disasters such as the devastating storms, fires, and floods experienced across the country over the course of the last year. This makes the federally-subsidized crop insurance program the primary safety net for farmers when crop prices fall, a fact that has left some growers complaining that the bill doesn’t compensate adequately for market fluctuations, and that it primarily benefits large-scale growers, because the subsidy is directly proportionate to growing quantity.
In addition to food stamps and price supports for farmers, the bill provides for farmers market and local food promotion programs, fruit and vegetables purchasing incentives, and research into the efficacy of purchasing food aid regionally. Despite these legislative advances, environmental and conservation groups have found a lot to fault about the bill, what with its cuts to farm conservation programs and continuing high subsidies for large, relatively well-off growers of corn and soybeans.
Why does the Farm Bill matter? If you are concerned about the price of school lunches, national park upkeep, equal access to fresh produce, or the state of our country’s woodland preserves, the Farm Bill is a critical piece of how your future will be shaped. If you care about preserving family farms, strengthening local food economies, promoting sustainable growing practices, and lowering the medical and economic tolls of malnutrition, than this massive piece of legislation matters even more. Many analysts anticipate the House bill will further slash food stamp and conservation programs, while continuing to subsidize large monocropping farmers.
Watershed Media and Food Fight 2012 offer a number of ways you can raise awareness and advocate for a fairer Farm Bill, for example, by setting up an info table at a farmers market, or consolidating and distributing information about your local and state representatives and their interests in the issues that are most relevant to you.

Sara Blazevic

Where I live in East Harlem, it can be tough to find fresh, affordable fruits and vegetables. Fast food chains occupy many of the storefronts, and the produce selection at our local Pathmark can be pretty slim.

That’s why this spring, my roommates and I decided to pitch in and buy a farm share. Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) is a way to buy directly from a local farmer, paying for a “share” or “subscription” at the beginning of the growing season and getting a big bag of farm-fresh produce every week.

CSA programs offer enormous benefits. First of all, small farmers – whose business is by nature risky and unstable – get a huge boost from an upfront cash investment at the beginning of the season. Second, urban people with little access to healthy food can cut out the middleman and receive fresh vegetables directly from the farm at an affordable price. Third, the environmental footprint of our food is vastly reduced when we get our vegetables at one centralized location from a single, nearby source.

Not to mention the sense of community that CSA programs inspire. A CSA is a risk-sharing enterprise, and very personal. Neighbors come together to support a single small farmer, and cross paths each week when we pick up our share from a community garden. To get my produce, I walk to Papo’s Garden on 119^th and 3^rd, a beautiful green space first envisioned by Rafael “Papo” Marrero in the 1980s and later transformed with tremendous effort and help from the Bronx and Manhattan Land Trusts and the Horticultural Society’s GreenTeam. Once a trash-filled lot, the garden is now home to rows of basil and spinach, community art pieces, a gazebo, and café-style tables under leafy shade.

Our share is provided by the Project Harmony/Kitchen Table CSA, which buys from Gonzalez Farms in Pine Island, NY. Like more and more CSAs around the city, ours offers a sliding scale share price, so higher-income members can subsidize shares for those who can’t afford full price. They also accept EBTs as payment. The four of us chipped in for a $370 share, which gives us weekly produce from June through November. That works out to less than $5/week per person for a giant bag of fresh greens, vegetables, and herbs. Last week’s share included red scallions, radishes, espinaca, broccoli rabe, red leaf lettuce, and baby celery. In this heat wave, we’ve been assembling giant crunchy salads and cold dishes with our share, saving us money (and a trip to the wilted salad aisles of our local chain supermarket).

For three decades, nonprofit TreesNY has been planting, pruning, and protecting urban forests, and training New Yorkers in forestry and stewardship. Its many programs and workshops have made our city greener and our streets more shady. But its newest project is one dear to our hearts.

May we present FruiTrees New York, an ambitious (delicious) plan to cultivate 65 new fruit trees across the five boroughs. With help from ACTrees, the USDA People’s Garden and the City Gardens Club of New York, TreesNY will cultivate urban orchards, and work with neighborhood gardeners to “develop a harvest and fruit distribution plan.” New Yorkers will be able to snack on fruits as diverse as apple, cherry, plum, aprium, paw paw and serviceberry. The program kicked off this month when volunteers planted four plum trees East Harlem – check out the videos on their website!

“The objective of the FruiTrees New York initiative is to establish urban orchards throughout New York City as we use the fruit trees as a vehicle to promote environmental awareness, education and food literacy,” says Nelson Villarrubia, Deputy Director of TreesNY (via PR Newswire).

Throughout the spring and fall, look for trees popping up in schools, community gardens and other public sites across the city. If you’d like to request a free fruit tree in your neighborhood, fill out their form!

- CL

Photo courtesy of TreesNY.org

With Fourth of July barbecues on the horizon, Earth Matter NY is working hard to get the dirt on compost out to as many summer revelers as possible. Earth Matter is dedicated to advancing the practice of composting in and around New York City, with the mission to improve soil health and reduce the amount of organic waste entering the garbage stream and sewage system. From Saturday July 7th through Sunday the 8th, the non-profit will have stations set up for the Governors Island Cook Out NYC event, a weekend of craft beers, spicy kimchi eating contests, sustainable meat grilling, and live music.

Earth Matter’s Compost Learning Center is on Governors Island, allowing it to be a part of many of the events that happen there (like the recent Jazz Age Lawn Party!). Kristen Bonardi Rapp, a Brooklyn-based writer who serves as the organization’s programming coordinator, describes Earth Matter’s role at these events as twofold: both practical and educational. “We distribute a lot of general info about composting, like which Greenmarkets accept food scraps, how to store food scraps until you can drop them off, et cetera.” Earth Matter’s educational initiatives on Governors Island and elsewhere encourage people to compost their food waste themselves, and provide them with the skills to do so. The Learning Center supplies everything from workshops to literature on composting, and offers a variety of approaches to composting to accommodate varying comfort levels and living situations. This means everything from technical info on how to start a backyard bin or an indoor worm bin, to community composting opportunities for those waste-conscious folks who aren’t able to make it happen in their own homes. Encountering composting through a community event such as Cook Out NY makes the idea of decomposing food waste much more palatable for many city residents who aren’t used to thinking past the trash disposal.

With more than 20 grilling stations, rooftop garden salads from the Brooklyn Grange, a hot dog competition, and celebrity chef demos, Cook Out NYC is the ideal event for a hands-on demonstration of the value of composting. Kristen says, “We collect the food waste from these events, which, for something like Cook Out NYC, is quite a bit, as you can imagine. We take these food scraps (along with the food from our other collection stations throughout the island), and bring them back to the center — and we recycle the food scraps by feeding them to our chickens and goats!” Cook Out NYC promises to be a wild and delicious weekend, and one that will involve tons of new people in the composting process! Earth Matter is still looking for volunteers to collect food waste at the separation stations, answer composting questions, and perhaps even supervise the chickens – volunteers receive FREE ENTRY to the Cook Out in exchange for a two-hour shift. And in addition to the Cook Out, Earth Matter NY will be seeking volunteers for its City of Water Day event and numerous compost bin-building workshops in July. Check out Earth Matter’s postings on GetDirtyNYC, as well as its calendar.

Sara Blazevic

If you read our blog, we know you care about green spaces, sustainable food, and healthy neighborhoods. Maybe you’re a Greenmarket shopper or a window box gardener. Maybe you’re a beekeeper or a commercial farmer. Maybe you know the ins and outs of urban growing, or maybe you’re just struggling to keep your kitchen basil plant alive. Whatever your background, chances are you have some knowledge to share and some questions to ask.

Wondering how to keep pests away from your rooftop planters? A fellow gardener may have a tip for you. Want to start a local buyers’ coop or subscribe to a farm share? Someone nearby is hoping for the same thing. Did you just stumble across a jewel of a garden in your area? Your neighbors might like to know.

In a city where agriculture has taken root, our richest resources are each other. That’s why we’re inviting you to join the discussion over at our online forums.

Get Dirty NYC! is all about connections, and our latest project is designed with you in mind. Our forums are a one-stop meeting place to ask questions, trade tips, plan projects, keep up to date on city farming news, and otherwise dig in to the remarkable urban agriculture community in New York. Whether you’re a longtime follower of Get Dirty NYC! or a newcomer to the scene, we invite you to join the conversation. If you haven’t already, sign up as a member of GDNYC!, and jump in to the forums. Your neighbors across the five boroughs are waiting.

When New Yorkers start talking, great things can happen. We encourage you to reach out to each other. Let’s foster the good food movement by joining forces, online and in our neighborhoods. Come get dirty with us!

- CL

The locavore pizza joint Roberta’s is a neighborhood institution in Bushwick. A recent Friday afternoon found it filling up for lunch, the air scented with wood smoke from its backyard pizza oven, customers chatting in an open-air patio.

But across the patio and through a wooden gate, a different world awaits. Fig, apple and peach trees cast shade over sprouts of arugula, chamomile, and baby lettuces. Strawberries poke out from among the spinach leaves. The first tendrils of a grape vine snake up a wooden post. Johnny jump-ups, nasturtiums and sunflowers interrupt the greenery with jewels of purple, red and yellow. And the air is sweet with the smells of cinnamon basil, anise, and tomato leaves.

This is the backyard that supplies a portion of Roberta’s produce, and the lush tangle of greenery is actually a meticulously plotted urban farm boasting over 60 plant varieties. Head gardener Melissa Metrick left her interns to pore over seed catalogs and urban planting guides while she gave me a tour of the gardens. Above the orchard, herb boxes, and berry bushes are elevated greenhouses packed with vegetables, flowers, and edible weeds like lamb’s quarters. And even higher up are a set of brightly-painted beehives on the roof, humming with activity in the midday sun.

Like many city farms, Roberta’s has to pack pastoral dreams into a tight urban space. “It’s intensive gardening,” Metrick says. She uses a system of “companion planting,” a polycultural practice that pairs mutually beneficial crops together. Leeks and carrots share a bed, as do squashes and beans, chamomile and apples, strawberries and spinach. Compost bins reduce waste, and pest-repellent plants keep bugs at bay. Because the farm does

double-duty as an event space, most of the crops are planted in moveable packing crates, and can be rearranged to accommodate community gatherings, parties, and art installations.

The farm provides about 15% of the restaurant’s produce, supplementing from local sources like the Brooklyn Grange. Metrick buys seeds from responsible companies (Johnny’s Seeds, Baker’s Creek), and has used starter plants from local Silver Heights Farm. She works with the chefs each season to decide which crops to plant, and they both play around with flavors and varietals – she showed me chamomile that will end up in homemade gelato, four types of

heirloom tomatoes, a black currant bush, bright yellow strawberries, and sprouts of lemon cucumber. An aquaponics system is underway to expand the farm’s growing possibilities.

While Roberta’s is a private farm that supplies the restaurant, Metrick and the owners see it as a community space firmly rooted in the urban agriculture culture of Brooklyn. Heritage Foods USA has its radio headquarters in a repurposed cargo container beneath the greenhouse. The farm has several interns who learn not only horticulture, but farm finance as well. A mentorship program is in the works for this summer, pairing young people from the community with experienced interns. Metrick hosts classes for school groups, open garden hours, and local plant sales, where “people from the neighborhood come and ask me plant questions.” And of course, “customers ask all the time to see the garden,” sometimes scoring a tour with one of the farmers or managers.

Next time you’re in the neighborhood, hop off the L train at the Morgan stop, and you may get a glimpse of this lush urban paradise yourself.

-CL

Contact Roberta’s garden at garden@robertaspizza.com, or learn more on their website. 

Want to learn or share info about aquaponics, companion growing, or beekeeping? Head over to our forums!  

On a balmy Sunday afternoon in Greenpoint, we stepped into a warehouse off Eagle Street. Down a hallway and up some winding stairs, we emerged onto a bright, crowded rooftop, lined with rich soil and neatly arranged into rows of green and brown. This is Eagle Street Rooftop Farm: a jam-packed 6,000 square feet of organic growing space overlooking the East River.

Against a surreal backdrop of blue water and Manhattan skyline, volunteers knelt to pull weeds and tend newly planted rows of radishes, lettuce, and Red Russian kale. Butterflies drifted among the flowering herbs. In one corner, a farm staff member led a “Spring Gardening 101” workshop, explaining the basics to an eager crowd. She described the growing process, answered questions (“What do I do about squirrels?”; “Why do my herbs get bitter?”), and urged us to sample the parsley and pungent chive blossoms sprouting around the roof’s edge. One level down, another staff member managed a tiny market of early greens and farm products.

The peaceful scene belies the tremendous amount of work it took to get this farm up and running. Before their first growing season in 2009, founders had to install a green roof system – layering polyethelene, drainage mats, and special fabrics – before crane-lifting up 200,000 pounds of compost, rock and shale over the course of a single day. Volunteers arranged 16 beds along the roof.

The effort, as any visitor could tell you, was well worth it. Thanks to manager Annie Novak and farm staff, Eagle Street Rooftop Farm now produces fresh organic vegetables and honey, sold at weekly markets and delivered by bicycle to neighborhood restaurants. It provides apprenticeships and volunteer opportunities, along with a Farm-Based Education program with staff support from Growing Chefs. Through careful irrigation management, the roof now holds over an inch of rainwater at a time, reducing storm runoff and cooling costs. And the farm hosts a weekly composting program to cut waste and enrich its soil. Not too shabby for a warehouse rooftop in Brooklyn.

Would you like to volunteer, pick up some fresh produce, or hear a free lecture? Eagle Street has open farm days every Sunday from 1-4pm – see if you can catch a planting and get your hands dirty!

Learn more about the farm and upcoming events here.

Want to learn more about green and white roof projects in NYC? Check this this out!

- Catherine Lea

Photo credits: Jesse Brenneman

Step out of the subway at 138^th St. in the South Bronx and the scene that greets you isn’t exactly bucolic farmland. Cars zoom by on their way to the Major Deegan Expressway, and overhead, a Metro-North train rattles its tracks as it hurtles south.

But tucked between the busy on-ramp and the train tracks, something remarkable has taken root. On a two-and-a-half acre lot of land, once clogged by shoulder-high weeds and trash, a group of local women have built a beautiful community farm: La Finca del Sur.

The “farm of the South,” so named to pay tribute to the Global South and to reflect the Latina heritage of many of its farmers and community members, started in the winter of 2009, when cofounder Molly Culver noticed an empty lot across from the subway station. Together with a core group of community women and volunteers, she got permission from the city to transform the plot into a farm. They trucked in soil, constructed beds, and built a greenhouse and toolshed.

La Finca is now a thriving cooperative farm led by Latina and Black women and their allies, and tended by a core group of 17 farmers. In a neighborhood suffering from poor health and limited access to fresh food, the farmers’ mission is to “build healthy neighborhoods through economic empowerment, increased nutritional awareness, training and education” and to “advocate for social and political equality and food justice in low-income communities.” The farm has overcome a score of challenges, even surviving a break-in and looting last fall. Now it sells vegetables at farmers’ markets, provides educational panels on nutrition and gardening, and hosts artistic events for the neighborhood.

Last Saturday, we wove our way through traffic to a gap in fencing where a man tearing tickets for the season’s opening workday greeted us with a smile. On the other side of the fence, the farm teemed with people, and the scent of fresh earth and greenery made us forget where we were for a moment. Young children, fathers, grandmothers, and friends knelt in the dirt, tugging weeds, mulching, and planting seedlings, taking turns with a rotating set of spades and rakes. In a little greenhouse, sunlight streamed onto trays of carefully labeled seedlings: red sugar baby watermelon, cantaloupe. A white cat dozed in the sun. Across from the greenhouse, a handful of builders were drilling and hammering, constructing raised garden beds. Over by some vacant soil, a group of scientists prepared a discussion about brownfield remediation. Meanwhile, in the shade of a leafy tree, volunteers dished out a hearty lunch to the urban farmers. A volunteer pointed out the first green tendrils of a grape vine winding around a slender arbor.

Nancy Ortiz-Surun, the farm advisory director of La Finca, was in ten places at once – greeting new arrivals in Spanish and English, supervising planting and mulching, dashing into a cow-spotted toolshed to grab an extra rake or pair of gloves, filling plates for volunteers resting in the shade of a tent.

La Finca del Sur is growing hope and health in an underserved neighborhood, and is one of the more inspirational – and flat-out beautiful – farms we’ve seen. It embodies a dedication to urban agriculture and community-building that Get Dirty NYC! loves.

Want to partner with La Finca for a project? Send an email to  annielmoss@gmail.co or infosbufc@gmail.com. Check out their blog for updates, and check our website for upcoming workdays throughout the summer!

- CL

Last month, Brownstoner featured Get Dirty NYC!’s own Stephanie Corrado in its “Hot Seat” interview section. We were thrilled to be the focus of a Brooklyn-based community website. Thanks to Brownstoner for helping get the word out about our work!

Here is the interview in its entirety:

Welcome to the Hot Seat, where we interview folks involved in Brooklyn real estate, development, architecture and the like. Introducing Stephanie Corrado, one of the founders of Get Dirty NYC. Get Dirty NYC is a volunteer-run nonprofit that serves as a one-stop meeting place for interested volunteers to connect with city farm and garden organizations in New York.

Brownstoner: What neighborhood do you live in, and how did you end up there? 
Stephanie Corrado: I live in Carroll Gardens and my co-founder Gigi Chew lives in Park Slope. I moved to Carroll Gardens a year ago after living in Manhattan for 4 years – my husband and I were looking to live in a quieter neighborhood that had a greater sense of community. We have loved ever second here.

Brownstoner: Can you talk about the beginnings of Get Dirty NYC? 
SC: Get Dirty NYC! was founded about two years ago and was the product of discussions Gigi and I had been having about how to help connect New Yorkers who were interested in volunteering in urban farms and gardens with projects in need of help. While there were plenty of volunteer opportunities available in New York City, information about these projects was dispersed, making it difficult for volunteers to find one that matched their interests. As a result, we decided to create an online platform that would serve as a centralized meeting point for farms to list their volunteer needs and for volunteers to find a project that interested them.

Brownstoner: What current projects/initiatives is GDNYC undertaking right now? 
SC: GDNYC! is currently preparing for the beginning of the growing season in the spring. Over the winter, we took the time to expand our online services to offer greater support to the urban agriculture community as a whole. Not only will we provide free advertising for volunteer projects on our website, but we will soon be unveiling online forums that will allow for farms, gardens, activists, volunteers, organizations and even the casual home gardener to connect, form working partnerships and exchange resources and ideas. So, for example, if you wanted to know the best types of tomatoes to grow on your apartment balcony, you could post that question in our forum and get answers from others using our forum.

Our goal is to create an online platform will provide the internal infrastructure that will provide New York City’s urban agriculture community with the tools to grow and maximize its positive impact on the city and its residents.

BS: Urban farming is a relatively new phenomenon. Why do you think it’s gained so much momentum now, especially in a place like New York? 
SC: While urban farming is seeing a resurgence in popularity, it has been around for quite some time. It is important to recognize the tireless work of the founders of the city’s community gardens in late ’60s and ’70s – they helped create something that we can now build and elaborate on. I think the new excitement around urban farming and its potential has a lot to do with greater awareness of environmental issues and a broken food system. More and more New Yorkers want to connect back with nature and work towards solutions that can make the city more sustainable. They also see the potential urban farming has to address food security issues – by taking control of food production, even on a small scale, we put power back into the community, allowing residents to provide itself with healthy, fresh produce.

BS: What’s the state of Brooklyn’s urban farming scene? 
SC: The current state of Brooklyn’s urban farming scene is exciting, it seems that every day there is a new farm, garden or urban agriculture organization being created. I think one of the most exciting things happening right now is the reclamation of vacant lots by local residents, who are turning them into community gardens. The recession has stalled many building projects, leaving empty lots to collect trash, attract rodents and serve as an eyesore in the neighborhood. The community is taking action to improve their neighborhoods and transform these lots into clean, welcoming spaces for residents. Organizations such as 596 Acres have become instrumental in helping residents identify derelict spaces and provide them with the tools to convert them to community gardens. Halsey Street Garden in Bedford-Stuyvesant is a great example of how even just a few residents can completely transform a neighborhood.

BS: Is urban farming a viable solution to lower income neighborhoods in the midst of food deserts? How can gardening/farming in NYC address these problems in NYC right now? 
I think it is great that urban farming has risen in popularity among policymakers as a way to address food security and food deserts in low income areas. I believe urban farms can serve as a viable component to a broader solution for food access issues in low income neighborhoods. One example of how urban gardens are already helping to address these problems (and the potential urban gardening can have if more funding is provided) is the Garden of Happiness in the Bronx. This garden has been providing fresh and organic produce to Bronx residents since 1980. Not only are gardens like this addressing food access issues, but they serve as community education centers, providing residents with nutrition and cooking knowledge that helps combat other social issues such as obesity.

BS: Finally, your favorites: favorite Brooklyn nabe, favorite open space, and favorite BK garden. 
SC: I’m preferential to Carroll Gardens, I can’t help but love its close-knit community feel and local family-run stores. I really enjoyed the new Pier 6 this past summer, just south of Brooklyn Bridge Park – you can’t beat the views from the volleyball courts and I’m pretty jealous of the amazing playgrounds there…I wish I had something like that growing up!

My favorite Brooklyn Garden is at the Old Stone House in Park Slope. The garden, run by Claudia Joseph, is in such a peaceful part of Park Slope and is a wonderful place for newcomers and families to learn about urban agriculture and how to plant and grow their own vegetables.

- Emily Nonko

Last month, students at the Bronx Guild High School broke soil in an empty field and planted an apple tree together. What’s more remarkable is that this tree was the first of a planned 150-tree orchard that may soon be bearing not only apples but peaches, pears, and figs.

Thanks to the school’s urban agriculture project, students already tend to chickens and bees in the neighborhood, and maintain small gardening plots. Last year, they decided to add a huge orchard in an acre of wasteland in Soundview. Assisted by science teacher Bill Lynam, they measured the land, drew up a budget, and planned out plots for fruit trees and berry bushes. They hope to cover the costs – $4000 in total – with grants and in-kind donations. “It’s a dream big kind of project,” says assistant principal Meghan Best.

Senior Yonathon Ledesma looks forward to seeing the project bear fruit: “I imagine coming back in 15 years and seeing all these trees developed,” he says. “I think it is going to be pretty awesome.”

Get Dirty NYC! is thrilled to see young people so dedicated to a hands-on urban agriculture project in our city. We’ll keep you posted as the orchard blooms! Watch a short video and read the full story here.

- CL

Photo credit: DNAinfo/Serena Solomon