Five Borough Farm is a Design Trust for Public Space project, conducted in partnership with Added Value. Design Trust for Public Space www.designtrust.org Added Value www.added-value.org Design Trust Project Team Nevin Cohen, Policy Fellow Agnieszka Gasparska, Graphic Design Fellow Elliott Maltby, Design Fellow Ian Marvy, Added Value Gita Nandan, Design Fellow Kristin Reynolds, Research Collaborator Rupal Sanghvi, Metrics Fellow Rob Stephenson, Photo Urbanism Fellow Design Trust Staff Megan Canning, Deputy Director Susan Chin, Executive Director Jerome Chou, Director of Programs Chris Kannen, Production Associate Kristin LaBuz, Development and Communications Associate Authors Nevin Cohen Kristin Reynolds Rupal Sanghvi Editor Jerome Chou Information Graphics and Book Design Agnieszka Gasparska, Kiss Me I’m Polish LLC Photography Rob Stephenson Printed and bound in the USA by Print Craft, Inc. ©2012 by the Design Trust for Public Space. All rights reserved. ISBN 978-0-9777175-6-9 Mixed Sources This publication was printed on recycled paper containing Cert no. XX-COC-XXXX 10% post consumer recycled fiber, reflecting the Design Trust’s ©1996 FSC commitment to protecting our environment. 1 Preface: Design Trust 3 Preface: Added Value 4 Executive Summary 13 Introduction 22 I. Urban Agriculture in NYC 42 Goals & Activities 50 Types of Urban Agriculture 62 Stakeholders 68 Needs & Challenges 84 II. Metrics 98 Recommended Indicators 108 III. Policy 117 Formalize City Government’s Support for Urban Agriculture 131 Integrate Urban Agriculture into Existing City Policies and Plans 140 Identify Innovative Opportunities to Build Urban Agriculture into the Cityscape 147 Address Disparities in New York City’s Urban Agriculture Community 151 Urban Agriculture Grantmaking 154 Acknowledgements 158 Contributors 160 Glossary Eagle Street Rooftop Farm, Brooklyn Garden of Happiness, Bronx Phoenix Community Garden, Brooklyn Five Borough Farm is a project of the Design Trust for Public Space, in partnership with the nonprofit organization Added Value, to strengthen and expand urban agriculture in New York City. Added Value approached the Design Trust not because of our expertise in urban agriculture, but because of our track record in catalyzing change in the city’s public realm. From reimagining the High Line and jump-starting the first purpose-built New York City taxi, to creating sustainable design guidelines for the city’s buildings, in- frastructure, and parks, the Design Trust produces innovative design and policy solutions to complex, citywide problems. The vast majority of the more than 700 urban agriculture sites in New York City are on publicly owned land—from schoolyards to the grounds of public housing developments, community gardens to parks—creating a decentralized system of diverse, small-scale, community- based public spaces throughout all five boroughs. These sites do much more than provide fresh produce. They offer educational opportunities, create jobs, capture and reuse storm- water, improve local residents’ physical and mental well-being, decrease the waste stream through composting, and bring people together as stewards of communal open spaces. New York now has the opportunity to ensure that the growing urban agriculture movement can continue to make our city a more sustainable, productive, and beautiful place to live. Five Borough Farm: Seeding the Future of Urban Agriculture in New York City provides the most detailed survey ever produced about urban agriculture in New York City. This publica- tion and the companion website, fiveboroughfarm.org, recommend initiatives to connect farmers’ and gardeners’ grassroots efforts to municipal policy and provide a framework for understanding and measuring how urban agriculture contributes health, social, econom- 1 ic, and ecological benefits to the city. Five Borough Farm also demonstrates the effective- ness of the Design Trust’s unique approach. We assembled a multidisciplinary team, in- cluding experts in food policy, sustainable design and public health evaluation, a graphic designer and photographer, and engaged more than 100 key stakeholders. Based on this outreach and research, we have documented farms and gardens citywide and identified the urban agriculture community’s leading priorities, opportunities, and challenges. One of the Design Trust’s core values is that “social justice and environmental sustain- ability must guide public space design.” Throughout our organization’s 17-year history, no other project has embodied this value more than Five Borough Farm. With the publica- tion of Five Borough Farm: Seeding the Future of Urban Agriculture in New York City, the Design Trust continues its dedicated efforts to make New York City a more environmen- tally sustainable, dynamic, and healthy city for generations to come. We are most grateful to Added Value and the Design Trust Project Fellows for their com- mitment to Five Borough Farm, and to the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the David Rockefeller Fund for their generous support. Finally, we wish to acknowledge all of the farmers, gardeners, support organizations, government officials, and funders who helped guide and shape this project. Susan Chin Executive Director, Design Trust for Public Space 2 For more than a decade, Added Value, a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting the sustainable development of Brooklyn’s Red Hook neighborhood, has been working on the ground in our community, with sister organizations here in New York and colleagues around the country and the world, to build a healthier and more just and sustainable future for us all. Working together with teams of youth, committed volunteers, partner organizations, and government agencies, we have transformed more than four acres of underutilized City and State parkland into vibrant urban farms where young and old can grow and learn as they sow seeds and harvest crops. Using urban agriculture as our platform, we have developed a Youth Empowerment Pro- gram, which has provided long-term engagement for more than 200 teenagers, and es- tablished a Food and Farm Based Learning initiative, which works with more than 1,000 students a year from nearby schools. The food grown on our farm supplies 70 families with weekly vegetables through the Red Hook Community-Supported Agriculture pro- gram, and is sold alongside regional produce at our farmers market and distributed to six locally owned restaurants. This past year we composted more than 160 tons of food waste, decreasing the carbon footprint of our neighborhood while increasing the produc- tivity of our farm. Together with friends and neighbors we are building a small yet mean- ingful economic engine while educating a new generation of young leaders. As our work has grown and expanded, so too has the field of urban agriculture and the food justice movement. More and more people here in New York City and across the nation realize that our broken food system has serious consequences for our individual health, and for the health of our environment and our economy—particularly for people 3 of color and those in poor communities. It has become more and more important for all of us to be able to understand and articulate how urban agriculture can contribute to our society and economy, and the planet on which we all live. Because we believe in the potential for urban agriculture to have powerful impacts, we teamed up with our friends at thread collective, a Brooklyn-based design firm, and craft- ed a proposal to work with the Design Trust for Public Space. I am excited about the work that the Design Trust team has done, and grateful for all those who have contributed their time. We look forward to working with our colleagues in the urban agriculture community to implement the metrics framework and policy recommendations in this publication. I am hopeful that Five Borough Farm: Seeding the Future of Urban Agriculture in New York City will contribute to the field of urban agriculture on the ground, in our communities, boardrooms, and classrooms. Ian Marvy Co-Founder and Executive Director, Added Value and Herban Solutions Inc. Five Borough Farm is a project of the Design Trust for Public Space, in partnership with Added Value, which operates the 3-acre Red Hook Community Farm in Brooklyn. Five Borough Farm has three main goals: 1. Document New York City’s existing urban agricultural activity through photographs, maps, infographics, and detailed interviews with key stakeholders, and describe the opportunities and challenges facing the city’s urban agriculture community. 2. Establish a shared framework and tools to allow users to track urban agricultural activities citywide, and evaluate their social, health, economic, and ecological benefits. 3. Develop policy recommendations that will help make urban agriculture a more permanent part of the city’s landscape and governance. 4 This summary includes key findings and recommendations from the publication’s three main chapters – Urban Agriculture in NYC, Metrics, and Policy – and outlines steps to implement these recommendations. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Urban Agriculture in NYC There are more than 700 farms and gardens citywide that grow food. This total includes nonprofit and commercial farms, as well as: • An estimated 390 of 490 community gardens1 • 245 of an estimated 600 New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) gardens2 • 117 of an estimated 289 public school gardens3 This count does not include sites associated with restaurants or other businesses not solely dedicated to growing food; institutions such as assisted-living facilities or shel- ters; or individual backyard or rooftop gardens growing food. The vast majority of these sites are roughly 5,000 square feet or less, with many as small as 2,500 square feet—about the size of three NYC subway cars. Urban agriculture is about much more than just growing food. 5 Growing food is often one among many urban agricultural activities directed toward community development goals. These activities include education programs for stu- dents, paid internships and youth leadership training for teenagers, nutrition and cooking classes, environmental conservation through composting and rainwater col- lection, and many others.