Three maps tell the story of urban farming in Philly right now

There are 3,000 acres of vacant property in the city. Out of 42,100 vacant lots and buildings in Philly, about 6,000 properties are publicly owned and available to hand off to an agricultural-minded owner.

By Catalina Jaramillo
Why PBS
January 15, 2020

Excerpt:

In the last four years alone, Philadelphia has lost 141 gardens and farms, according to city data. Each disappearing farm has a unique backstory, but new development has replaced many of them.

Hundreds of gardens remain vulnerable because, often, the farmers don’t own the land they tend and do not have a clear route to ownership. By crossing the city data of building permits for new residential construction and existing gardens, Interface and Soil Generation found that one in three active farms could be threatened by gentrification in areas such as Point Breeze, Pennsport, Fishtown, Port Richmond, Norris Square, Brewerytown, Francisville and Manayunk.

“Most places where gardens are being threatened are in places with higher development pressure,” said Kirtrina Baxter, an organizer with Soil Generation.

Sixty-seven percent of the active gardens or farms in the city bloom in areas where poverty rates run higher than the city average and more than half of households are Black, Latinx or immigrants and have little access to high-quality food.

“The gardens are showing up in areas of high need and people are taking autonomous practices and growing their own food because they need it,” said Ash Richards, Philadelphia’s urban agriculture director.

Yet the need for edible gardens remains far from met. Draft data collected by the city shows that only 20% of those living in areas without much access to high-quality produce live near an active garden or farm.

“These maps are showing us the gross gaps of food inaccess for areas of high poverty,” Richards said. “So what do we do to address that? At this moment in time, we know that it can’t be fixed by the private market supermarket, so then what else? I think urban ag fills in a lot of gaps.”

Read the complete article here.