Benefits of Urban Farming
Urban farming has the potential to help us take charge of the foods we eat, green our cities, build community, and increase food security for urban residents.
Access to fresh produce: Urban farming can certainly increase access to fresh fruits and vegetables to city dwellers but we need to look at how the food is distributed and find creative ways to get the food to the people who most need it. The most sustainable way of all to provide food is to teach people how to grow their own.
Strengthen social networks: Aside from growing food and improving urban diets, involvement in urban agriculture boosts the social capital of city communities. It re-links the blissfully unaware with the nature of food production and strengthens social networks.
Economical advantage: Urban agriculture provides a broad range of socio-ecological benefits, from putting vacant urban sites to productive use as community spaces to absorbing storm water that would otherwise be discharged untreated into nearby waterways.
Uses city land to its full capacity: It addresses the presence of “food deserts” (or areas lacking ready access to fresh fruits and vegetables), makes productive use of blighted property, and creates centers of pride and empowerment in distressed communities.
Healthy lifestyle: Gardening and food production is good exercise, although its value is often discounted. When self-identified as exercise by research subjects or isolated by researchers, gardening has been connected to reducing risks of obesity (children and adults), coronary heart disease (for women and for men, notably menopausal women and elderly males), glycemic control and diabetes (adults, elderly men, Mexicans and Mexican-Americans), and occupational injuries (railway workers).
Reasons behind the most successful Urban Farming stories
Detroit:
* The formation of the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network, an umbrella organization that both promotes and engages in...