Callie Hopkins 

Mentor: Dr.Casey Hoy

Co-mentor: Dr.Ross MacDonald

Project Proposal

Introduction:

This goal of this project is to prove that urban agriculture is a way to improve the economy and to get urban youth involved in the production of their own food. It is imperative that youth have an awareness of where their food comes from and the significance of agriculture in their lives. Also, it is clear that this country is suffering from major economic problems, especially in states like Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. However, governments and citizens alike can be skeptical about agriculture in urban areas. They often see it as an unproductive use of land and do not recognize its economic benefits (Kaufman and Bailkey 2000). In fact, it is already a much larger factor than some people realize. About one third of the agricultural production the United States is produced in metropolitan areas (Nasr and Smit 1992). There is also a problem with young people in cities viewing gardening as an activity for those much older than them and not as something relevant to their lives (Kaufman and Bailkey 2000). Often their notions of farming are out of date and incorrect. A study done in 1995 showed that youth living in rural areas had far greater knowledge of agriculture than inner-city youth, which makes them less likely to pursue an agricultural career (Birkenholz, et al. 1995). Programs in schools can help introduce youth to possible career paths within the field of agriculture, such as the preparation of land for farming, mitigation, marketing, and retail food prep that uses green and local products. The promotion of urban agriculture also falls under the larger umbrella of promoting local food systems.

The benefits of increased urban agriculture would be numerous. “Agriculture in towns, cities, and metropolitan areas can convert urban wastes into resources, put vacant and under-utilized areas into productive use,and conserve natural resources outside cities while improving the environment for urban living” (Nasr and Smit 1992). It would also help alleviate hunger problems in urban households. A 2000 needs assessment by an Omaha Nebraska Cooperative Extension Nutrition Education Program indicated that two-thirds of participants ran out of groceries by the end of the month and eighty percent would like a community garden where they could grow fresh produce (Brown and Jameton 2000). Increased urban agriculture could lead to increased availability of fresh produce at lower cost, which could reduce the hunger rates in low-income urban households. Since the benefits are clear but not well-known, it is necessary to find out about and subsequently tell the stories of those local food entrepreneurs who are making increased urban agriculture possible.

Objectives and Methods:

Over the course of the next eight weeks, I will be working with Ross MacDonald as well as the other three interns in the Agroecosystems Management Program on this project. The first task will be to research local food entrepreneurs in the metropolitan corridor from Cleveland to Pittsburgh. We will need to identify which stories we feel are most important to document and make known to the public. This will require coming up with a set of criteria for determining the significance of individual stories.

The next step will be the actual gathering of information. This process will involve traveling to metropolitan areas and meeting with people who are growing food in an urban setting for local consumption. We will also investigate programs that involve urban youth and their involvement or potential involvement in the production of local foods. We will interview these people and gain as much data as possible about what they are doing and how it impacts both the local economy and their lives.

The final step in this project will be to disseminate the qualitative data that we have gathered. Much of this will be web-based. We will make posts on social networking sites, such as localfoodsystems.org, and possibly other internet outlets. Our objective in sharing these stories is to educate people about the benefits of urban agriculture for local economies and for the people involved. We hypothesize that this knowledge will lead to more acceptance and support of agricultural pursuits within urban areas.

With only eight weeks and a project that does not lend itself easily to numerical representation, finding a way to collect and report data on how these stories affect people’s opinions will be difficult. One way is to monitor the web traffic when the stories are posted and to see what sort of comments andresponses people post. A poll on the webpage that contains the stories might help to attach some quantitative data to the project. We can also track the degree to which stories or parts of stories are picked up and incorporated into other materials. Other measures of our progress may present themselves as work gets underway, in which case we will modify our plans accordingly.