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Growing up in rural Jamaica, the Wilkses helped their families raise crops like sugar cane, coffee and yams, and take them to market. Now, in Brooklyn, they are farmers once again, catering to their neighbors’ tastes: for scallions, for bitter melons like those from the West Indies and East Asia and for cilantro for Latin-American dinner tables.
“We never dreamed of it,” said Mr. Wilks, nor did his relatives in Jamaica. “They are totally astonished when you tell them that you farm and go to the market.”
For years, New Yorkers have grown basil, tomatoes and greens in window boxes, backyard plots and community gardens. But more and more New Yorkers like the Wilkses are raising fruits and vegetables, and not just to feed their families but to sell to people on their block.
This urban agriculture movement has grown even more vigorously elsewhere. Hundreds of farmers are at work in Detroit, Milwaukee, Oakland and other areas that, like East New York, have low-income residents, high rates of obesity and diabetes, limited sources of fresh produce and available, undeveloped land.
(snip)
The gardeners grow much of the food for themselves, but they have also organized a co-op, Grown in Detroit, to sell their surplus peas, onions, yams and greens. From farm stands in health center parking lots and at a prime booth in Eastern Market, the city’s chaotic maze of wholesalers and local farmers, gardeners lure customers to take their first bite of a garlic scape, or compare their young spinach with that in a Del Monte box down the aisle. Next year two and a half acres that were waist high with weeds last summer will be set aside for market-bound produce.
City Slicker Farms in West Oakland, Calif., started in 2001 with a quarter-acre garden and a farm stand selling neighborhood favorites like collards and mustard greens. It has since persuaded local elementary students to volunteer and gotten owners of five additional vacant lots to let it grow food on their land.
Some operations have figured out how to make real money.
On a fringe of Philadelphia, a nonprofit demonstration project used densely planted rows in a half-acre plot and generated $67,000 from high-value crops like lettuces, carrots and radishes.
“We never dreamed of it,” said Mr. Wilks, nor did his relatives in Jamaica. “They are totally astonished when you tell them that you farm and go to the market.”
For years, New Yorkers have grown basil, tomatoes and greens in window boxes, backyard plots and community gardens. But more and more New Yorkers like the Wilkses are raising fruits and vegetables, and not just to feed their families but to sell to people on their block.
This urban agriculture movement has grown even more vigorously elsewhere. Hundreds of farmers are at work in Detroit, Milwaukee, Oakland and other areas that, like East New York, have low-income residents, high rates of obesity and diabetes, limited sources of fresh produce and available, undeveloped land.
(snip)
The gardeners grow much of the food for themselves, but they have also organized a co-op, Grown in Detroit, to sell their surplus peas, onions, yams and greens. From farm stands in health center parking lots and at a prime booth in Eastern Market, the city’s chaotic maze of wholesalers and local farmers, gardeners lure customers to take their first bite of a garlic scape, or compare their young spinach with that in a Del Monte box down the aisle. Next year two and a half acres that were waist high with weeds last summer will be set aside for market-bound produce.
City Slicker Farms in West Oakland, Calif., started in 2001 with a quarter-acre garden and a farm stand selling neighborhood favorites like collards and mustard greens. It has since persuaded local elementary students to volunteer and gotten owners of five additional vacant lots to let it grow food on their land.
Some operations have figured out how to make real money.
On a fringe of Philadelphia, a nonprofit demonstration project used densely planted rows in a half-acre plot and generated $67,000 from high-value crops like lettuces, carrots and radishes.
Rats like corn, though
