Urban Agriculture: East New York: Local Farmers

This is a great example of how real grassroots community gardens benefit neighborhoods and city residents! The woman profiled in this video reaps the same real benefits from her garden as I have from my community garden: from the tangible (fresh vegetables) to the emotional (a sense of pride and connection to nature) to the social (real community building and working out problems with neighbors).
There is an important distinction between gardens like this one and the corporate-sponsored “community” gardens run by organizations like NY Restoration Project, in which outside designers are brought into the neighborhood to create spaces that are more about making artistic statements than building community. Those can be pretty parks, but their contributions to the neighborhood too often end there.

“Urban Agriculture” have been existed and practiced in Switzerland for a long time. For a while I’ve been travelling in Europe … and during my visit in Switzerland I saw Urban Farms that are old as the farmers are (60-70 yrs or more). Although, Switzerland is small, and has over 7 million populations,… almost every city, every community has its own gardens in different part of the city. It amazed me because that’s a “normal” thing to have… they told me. Who wants to have one, he/she goes to city, and applies for. And he/she gets for free land, water, and light, with the condition that you keep it in order, the Swiss-order!

Hello,

Is it possible to get a dvd copy of this film?

Thanks,
Ian

very interesting profile of the garden/gardener, especially when contrasted with a professional version (designer/park). Potentially a lot of interesting parallels and contrasts there. I like how fecund the garden is on the opening shot- when she’s saying “a lot of food comes out…”. It still retains that abandoned lot aesthetic; kind of cool, and makes agriculture very normal.

thanks for the profile.