Urban Farming is the practice of cultivating, processing, and distributing food in or around a village, town, or city. Urban agriculture can also involve animal husbandry, aquaculture, agroforestry, urban beekeeping, and horticulture. These activities occur in suburban areas as well, and may have different characteristics. Urban Farming is often thought of as being the same thing as Community Gardening, but they actually represent two different concepts. While both tend to occur in densely populated areas, that is where the similarities end. Urban Farming assumes a degree of commerce, the growing of products to be sold as opposed to being grown for personal consumption or sharing. In community gardening, there typically is no commercial activity.
As urban farms tend to be much smaller operations, due in large part to limited space, the food they produced is usually distributed in an area local to the farm itself. One of the most popular places the food is sold is at farmer’s markets, where consumers are able to purchase products directly from the farms. Some grocery stores also sell food from local farms, and they will typically advertise the items as such. Many restaurants will also purchase from local farms, and the farms often donate to local charities.
While buying your food from a local urban farm doesn’t exactly make you self-sufficient, there are still great benefits. Since the farm is in your local area, the food doesn’t have to travel great distances from where it is grown to where you buy it. Eliminating much of the transportation aspect means your food is often fresher once you buy it. Also you are helping the environment….buying tomatoes grown a few miles from you means there were less emissions from transport than buying tomatoes grown in the state bordering yours, or halfway across the country. Finally, you are supporting others who live and work in your own community with your business and dollars, and not some “Big Agriculture” conglomerate that primarily profits people who have nothing to do with actual farming. While Off-Grid & Urban promotes self-reliance, we are also big advocates of working together within your local community to help each other in being prepared for times of crisis. One way of doing that is to support your local small businesses.
