Urban agriculture & Community gardening: growing interest, but is it sustainable yet?

Urban agriculture and community gardening have been in the news a lot lately. I get inspired every time i see a new garden popping up in an urban space, even when i only get to see the photo and not the physical garden!

Building stronger connections to our food can be fun and can help you connect with your community and your health. For some, gardening is a way to engage with their community, others, it provides subsistence to help them save money and get by with less, and there are the farmers behind the movement doing it for both of these reasons and more. The urban agriclture movement has room to grow and as one article suggests below, it has a lot of room to grow before it can be sustainable for the farmers. Cities such as Toronto have had a long standing food policy council, others are hammering away on theirs right now such as Edmonton, Alberta and other cities such as Calgary have recently just implemented a council to cover such matters as urban agriculture. In Edmonton, Sustainable Food Edmonton (SFE), run a community gardens program. There are 70+ active community gardens in the city, and it will likely expand again this year.

Learning to grow food is an important skill, of which many people are yearning to learn again. Many of us are seeking a deeper connection to our food and what to know: where it comes from, who made it, how was it grown, how was it harvested, etc.? I find it fascinating to watch what can come from a tiny little seed, a bit of soil, water and sunshine! A truly natural miracle that happens every year, right before our eyes.

Interesting food for thought pieces: Community Garden Plots See Growing Demand. (Victoria, BC). Metro-agrarians seek there day in the sun, (Cleveland, Ohio), Urban farmers earn less than $9/hour, research study finds (Vancouver, BC), & Urban agriculture takes root in Montreal (Montreal, PQ).