Farmer Shortage!!!

Dan Bravin from City Garden Farms, an urban farm in Portland, OR

We need new, young farmers!  According to a recent article in Oregon Small Farm News, a publication put out by Oregon State University’s Small Farm Program, “farmers are getting to be a rare, old breed in America, comprising a scant 1% of the U.S. population compared to 40% in 1900″.  We are ignoring one of the ideals upon which our country was founded.  Independent family farms supporting an agrarian society were to be the backbone and strength.  We move further and further from that ideal everyday.  Commitment from local and federal governments to supporting and encouraging new farmers is more important than ever.  It has never been considered the place of local governments to encourage farming, but now is the time to start.  I call on our mayor elect, Sam Adams, to take seriously the concept of urban farming.  Mayor Adams needs to start discussions with those who are already exploring the concept of 21 century urban farming and lead the way, as Portland always does, to building this progressive movement.  Urban farming makes sense in so many ways.  It is a necessity that we will very soon understand.   Agriculture will become the backbone of our society once again and it will take local governments to start the process of making public land available to small urban farmers.  Let’s start making all of that underutilized land out productive once again.  So what do you say Mayor Adams?

US Backyard Farming: MyFarm – San Francisco

A backyard farm installed by MyFarm in San Francisco.

The Portland Organoponico Project is dedicated to bringing to light the small urban farm efforts around the country.  They seem to be popping up all over the place.  Michael Pollan recently wrote an open letter to president-elect Obama (have I mentioned that I love saying that) called Farmer in Chief. In that piece he suggests the new green economy must include programs to train a new generation of farmers.  Since the family farm has been in decline for decades these new farmers, in the numbers that we’ll need, aren’t going to be coming from rural areas.  Many of them will be from the urban centers.  They will cut their teeth on urban farming projects like Portland Organoponico Project (POP).

Another urban farm that has received considerable attention lately is MyFarm in San Francisco.  I had the pleasure of meeting the founder of MyFarm, Trevor Paque, while we were both attending the B-ISA summit (more on that in another post) in Berkeley, CA last week.  Trevor has quite an impressive operation going on there.  His farms are small but quite productive.  He also had a NYTimes article written about his operation this year.  Go Trevor!  You are the future of farming.

Welcome to POP Farming!

banana organoponico in Cuba

I’m excited to announce the new blog for the Portland Organoponico Project (POP).  You can come here to find out about the exciting new movement of urban farming.  We are inspired by the Organoponico farms in Cuba that popped up around the time of the Soviet collapse.  Cuba called this time the “Special Period”.  I guess it was special if you consider a sudden lack of resources including, most importantly, fuel and food to be special.

The media continues to ramp up their attention to urban farming and it’s importance in the new green economy.  It seems like a movement that makes so much sense would have gotten more attention in years past.  We’ll take the opportunity and space in this blog to keep you informed about how the local food and urban farming movements are gathering steam to become a growing force.  I expect that president-elect Obama (I love saying that) and his interest in the green economy will drive interest even higher.

Let’s start out with an article from Reuters today.  It mimics so many articles that have been written over the past few months.  It touts the achievements of the Cubans overcominb their food crisis by implementing organic urban farms in every nook and cranny of their urban areas.  Every vacant lot, every patch of open space, every crumbling building has been turned into growing space.  In their food crisis they were forced to develop a truly sustainable and ultra-local food system.  It’s my thought that we can take the hard lessons learned by the Cubans and apply them to our own situation before we actually need to do it.  Take a look at this article to get a general overview of what I’m talking about.

–POP Farmer