USA: Urban agriculture gains popularity

Beer may have made Milwaukee (USA) famous, but the city's image in the 21st century could be shaped by organic vegetables and free-range chickens raised in urban neighborhoods. Milwaukee is at the center of a growing international movement that advocates urban vegetable gardens, and even livestock farms, to raise food locally and to bring together residents of neighborhoods torn apart by poverty and crime. The Urban Agriculture Conference at the downtown Hilton Milwaukee City Center, which ended Saturday 1st March, drew 250 people from around the world to discuss everything from rooftop gardens to pigs raised in skyscrapers. Organizers said it was the first U.S. urban agriculture conference with an international audience.

"Urban agriculture in most people's minds is a contradiction of terms," said Michael Ableman, an urban farmer, author and educator, and the conference's keynote speaker. "Doesn't agriculture take place on farms, far from cities?" Rising food prices tied to higher shipping costs, crime in poor neighborhoods and diseases linked to unhealthy foods are compelling reasons to bring farming – and its values – into cities, Ableman said.

Rooftop farms in Amsterdam?
Academic researchers, city planners, health officials and urban farmers came to the three-day conference from as far as Europe and Africa. Jan Willem van der Schans, a researcher at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, said he was surfing the Web when he found the conference agenda online and immediately booked a flight to Milwaukee. He was looking for ideas to develop a rooftop farm with livestock and vegetables over a shopping center. "We are very into modern architecture in Amsterdam, but our town is not known for being green," he said. "The urban agriculture movement really captures the spirit."

Van der Schans said he was particularly interested in a workshop about SPIN (small plot intensive) farming, which theoretically can gross more than 30 thousand euros with a half-acre of organically farmed land, according to the concept's Canadian developers, who spoke at the conference. Van der Schans was involved in a research proposal that drew international attention, but it failed because it was too large-scale – an urban skyscraper with organically farmed pigs in stacked flats with a self-contained ecosystem, including a manure factory on the top floor.

Examples from Milwaukee
A major conference draw was the chance to visit Growing Power, which grows vegetables and trains urban farmers close to the city's largest public housing project. Other local success stories included Walnut Way Conservation Corp. – a community development organization that is using community gardens to help revitalize the area. Milwaukee has shown that community gardens also help battle chronic diseases by encouraging people to eat fresh vegetables.

More info:

• www.insnet.org
• www.walnutway.org
• www.growingpower.org