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Where Industry Once Hummed, Urban Garden Finds Success
PHILADELPHIA - Amid the tightly packed row houses of North Philadelphia, a pioneering urban farm is providing fresh local food for a community that often lacks it, and making money in the process.
Greensgrow, a one-acre plot of raised beds and greenhouses on the site of a former steel-galvanizing factory, is turning a profit by selling its own vegetables and herbs as well as a range of produce from local growers, and by running a nursery selling plants and seedlings.
The farm earned about $10,000 on revenue of $450,000 in 2007, and hopes to make a profit of 5 percent on $650,000 in revenue in this, its 10th year, so it can open another operation elsewhere in Philadelphia.
In season, it sells its own hydroponically grown vegetables, as well as peaches from New Jersey, tomatoes from Lancaster County, and breads, meats and cheeses from small local growers within a couple of hours of Philadelphia.
The farm, in the low-income Kensington section, about three miles from the skyscrapers of downtown Philadelphia, also makes its own honey - marketed as "Honey From the Hood" - from a colony of bees that produce about 80 pounds a year. And it makes biodiesel for its vehicles from the waste oil produced by the restaurants that buy its vegetables.
Among urban farms, Greensgrow distinguishes itself by being a bridge between rural producers and urban consumers, and by having revitalized a derelict industrial site, said Ian Marvy, executive director of Added Value, an urban farm in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn.
It has also become a model for others by showing that it is possible to become self-supporting in a universe where many rely on outside financial support, Mr. Marvy said.
Mary Seton Corboy, 50, a former chef with a master's degree in political science, co-founded Greensgrow in 1998 with the idea of growing lettuce for the restaurants in downtown Philadelphia.
Looking for cheap land close to their customers, Ms. Corboy and her business partner at the time, Tom Sereduk, found the site and persuaded the local Community Development Corporation to buy it and then rent it to them for $150 a month, a sum they still pay.
They made an initial investment of $25,000 and have spent about $100,000 over the years on items that included the plastic-covered greenhouses and the soil that had to be trucked in to cover the steel-and-concrete foundation of the old factory site.
"The mission was: How do you take postindustrial land and turn it into some kind of green business?" said Ms. Corboy, an elfin woman with the ruddy cheeks of someone who works long hours out of doors.
She approached her early lettuce-growing operation with conventional business goals and little thought for what an urban farm could achieve.
"I thought you didn't have to have a relationship with the community," she said. "You would just be a business person."
Customers said the farm was a breath of fresh air in a gritty neighborhood.
"It's a little piece of heaven," said Janet McGinnis, 47, who lives on nearby Girard Avenue. "We live in the city, and it makes me feel good to wake up and see flowers."
Ms. McGinnis said she could buy herbs, bread and produce elsewhere but did so at Greensgrow because it is part of the community. "We've got to keep it in the community," she said. "We have to give back."
Despite the community goodwill, the farm lives with urban problems like theft and violence. "I have gone through every tool in the box eight or nine times," Ms. Corboy said.
Although no one at Greensgrow is getting rich from the operation - after 10 years' work, Ms. Corboy is making an annual salary of $65,000 - there is a sense that their time has come.
"Ten years ago when I said we were going green, people thought we were out of our minds," Ms. Corboy said. "Now we are top of the party list."
© 2008 The New York Times
21 Comments so far
Show AllA place called ... Eden?
Ummmm....$65,000/yr in that neighborhood *is* rich, filthy rich. It's no surprise, however, that the NYT would make such an ignorant statement.
Although, that 65K is probably before paying self-employment taxes.
What a lovely place to have, expecially in a "gritty" neighborhood.
Right on, stonybrookfarmer. Heck, $65,000 is rich in MOST neighborhoods all over the United States, the ones that aren't gentrified anyway.
This is very inspiring - this is how we take back control of our own lives and stop depending on big box stores and supermarkets. I hope more people start doing these kinds of projects all over the U.S., especially now that we see that it works, and one can make a nice living doing it.
It is inspiring. It's great that they actually included some numbers in this article. It's hard to get any information on the economics of this type of business. I'm slowly working toward doing something similar in my neighborhood and from the looks of this, it seems that economically at least it's more doable than I had thought. Nice article... and a nice change from the regular depressing news.
My only question is are those raised beds cut off from the land below, or has that land been checked for toxic chemicals, heavy metals, etc. that can leach into the food.
As long as the soil their growing in is clean, it's an awesome idea!
Now can we get one of those on every block in every city in the US?
"Now can we get one of those on every block in every city in the US?"
Sure. Start one on yours. It's solid work, but you'll likely find people willing to help if you ask your neighbors. I just got back from tilling two new yards to plant next week, just in time for summer crops. And the article got one thing right in quoting the farmer: you're not just a businessperson, you end up building community.
Thanks CD for posting this one!
p.s. Just don't get in it for the money, because there's not a lot. $65k after 10 years isn't really much for how hard farmers work.
Indeed inspiring this is how we win people.
I've been writing about people doing urban gardens for a couple of years in my blog at http://goodwordswan.wildflowerstew.com
We have a thriving container garden in the courtyard of the urban apartment where I live including a grapevine and a pear tree!
Great article. More of this needs to be done.
Before the planet runs out of fossil fuel we should be using some of it to convert buildings and degraded properties back to garden land in these urban areas if people want to live there and have something to eat in the future. People will need to be close to their food sources in the future because the feasibility of shipping grapes from Chile to Philadelphia in the wintertime is going to go away. This shows that an urban garden is possible though difficult, given the human failings of thieves and vandals. I don't know how enough food can be grown in urban settings for the millions who will be hungry in the future.
"Greensgrow, a one-acre plot of raised beds and greenhouse ...."
If that's all there is to the operation, then a farm it apparently is NOT. One acre does not constitute a farm. I don't know that it'd even be considered a fermette in Quebec, Canada, f.e. Those can be five, 10, 15 acres even, but I've never seen anything less than five acres.
But it's also not a big deal; just a technical matter about wording.
"The farm earned about $10,000 on revenue of $450,000 in 2007, and hopes to make a profit of 5 percent on $650,000 in revenue in this, ...."
NOT with only one acre can a person get that much revenue. If they're producing and selling year-round, then maybe they could get $50,000, or perhaps as high as $100,000, in revenues; but $450,000? I doubt that very much.
If they are getting that, then what the kind of skyrocketed prices are they selling their produce for? $10 for a head of broccoli? $1.50 or more for a single and medium sized tomato, potato, cucumber, ...?
I purchase, during season, fresh organic farm produce from a farm about 5 minutes, or less, drive from where I live, and they sell their produce for certainly fair enough market prices. But I was at first stunned by their price for the garlic grown there, $1 a bulb; while I get three similarly sized bulbs from an organic grocery store in town for around $1.20. However, while being poor caused me to think two or more times before I started splurging to get some of the freshest garlic available, I had to try it.
You get what you pay for; again. That garlic blasts the garlic sold in grocery stores, including organic ones, away. One bulb of this garlic compensates for three bulbs from the stores. The latter are almost dry, very little juices left, while the $1 per bulb garlic I'm speaking of is very juicy and really smells as it should; great "stuff". Garlic dreamers' paradise.
It's a crop that can be planted and harvested two times a year, I've read and believe, and the general figure for revenue from one acre of garlic here is around $15,000 a year; so $30,000 a year if grown and harvested two times a year.
And a lot of organic foods and other organically, or else environmentally friendly (like a great liquid and concentrated soap made from plant substances by some business in Maine, f.e., I believe anyway), is considerably more expensive here than when I was in the U.S. in the 1990s and shopped at B&C. Never saw a circus there, though.
"In season, it sells its own hydroponically grown vegetables, ..."
I hate that sort of cropping; similarly with "sister" mari-jane. I want my food grown in the fields with roots in the Earth's natural soils and with full exposure to the sun; except for plants that should be grown in more shady areas, of course.
BUT, but, but ... Hydro-cultivation of food crops is better than not eating or eating the crap from Big Chem. Agri. farmers. If I have a choice, then I won't touch hydro.; the sole exception being for plants or crops that naturally grow in water are a different matter, a natural exception, such as what's mis-named "wild rice", which is a grass or water-grass seed, f.e.
"The farm, in the low-income Kensington section, about three miles from the skyscrapers of downtown Philadelphia, also makes its own honey - marketed as "Honey From the Hood" - from a colony of bees that produce about 80 pounds a year."
That'll certainly help to explain the extraordinary high revenues, although honey-making is not farming; not here anyway. Again, it's certainly no big deal; just a question of wording.
"And it makes biodiesel for its vehicles from the waste oil produced by the restaurants that buy its vegetables."
Probably don't, and certainly should not, have to pay for that waste oil, which restaurants otherwise throw out to garbage anyway. So this'll help the small one-acre business to reduce its operational costs; I think, anyway.
That waste oil can also be used to make candles, or candle substitutes. While I was quasi-homeless for a couple of years, a guy where I was had already been making these for some years, and they cost nothing to make, and several of them will provide dim, but still enough light for a room.
This is a wonderful story, and possibly a model for how food producing can be localized all over the country. This is a trend that needs to happen to offset the high (and soon to be impossible) cost of transporting food across continents and oceans to market. It will be necessary for people to survive on mostly locally grown/raised food -- we have to re-learn.
Actually, I was mistaken; it is a 'farm', according to the following definitions for a fermette (farmette in English) and a farm.
http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Farmette
Quote: "A farmette is a small residential farm run by an owner who earns income from a source other than the farm. It is sometimes known as a yokelet or a farmlet. ..."
The the definition for a farm says the following.
"A farm can be a holding of any size from a fraction of a hectare to several thousand hectares."
Now I can say that I've learned something new today, that I hadn't know before. I have never heard or seen anything called a farm being tiny.
I read an article in YES magazine last year about a couple on the west coast earning a living in a farmers market.
Acreage?
A city lot.
They had planter boxes everywhere including their roofs.
JH,
Definitely; it is a great way to go. And I wish I could afford an acre of unused land, but this is Euro-colonialist and -imperialist West (certainly including in Canada), so even unused acres that aren't wooded (don't want to destroy wooded areas that should be protected!) can't be used by the poor. You have to be capitalist, and successful enough to accumulate adequate savings for buying a measly acre of fucking unused land.
" workreno May 20th, 2008 10:25 pm
I read an article in YES magazine last year about a couple on the west coast earning a living in a farmers market.
Acreage?
A city lot."
What's the size of the lot; did YES mag. state the size?
"They had planter boxes everywhere including their roofs."
In densely populated urban areas, there's no choice for most people, except to use boxes. And you can make them youself; just need to find scraps of wood, f.e. Plastic could also do the trick, I guess; but I'm not sure if it's as good as wood given that the latter is porous natural material and doesn't contain petroleum or related elements, which I assume would not be good for crops, if it contaminated them.
If I had wood, then I wouldn't look for plastic boxes; but if wood couldn't be found and I couldn't afford any that'd be adequate, well, ... survival.
For spice lovers living in the area of crops available like this farm provides, and while I'm saying this only for people who haven't yet learned this, spices and herbs are basically the same thing; being from the same plants, with only the use being different. Spices are for flavouring dishes, while herbs tend to be for herbal teas and medicinal uses, f.e.; but they're otherwise from the same plants. It's what I've read at, I believe, Wikipedia and www.whfoods.com , anyway.
Use herbs for flavouring and they're then spices, not herbs; and vice versa.
I learned this only a few years ago and am 51, today. Damn it takes a long time to gain a [little] education. So I expect that there are other people who haven't yet learned of the above.
What I'm leading to is that the article says this tiny (in size, obviously not revenues), but great farm operation grows herbs, while saying nothing about spices. Go to a place like that while seeking spices, but the business mentions nothing about these, though sells herbs, then minimally inquire which of their herbs can also be used as spices.
If they don't grow any of those types of dual-use herbs/spices, then they most definitely should, imo anyway. Perhaps a lot of people aren't like me, but I make little use of herbs, while making everyday use of multiple spices. And imported stuff is usually irradiated, unless a person spends a little time to shop for non-irradiated; if available in the USA, which I think they should be.
Btw, and for those who haven't yet learned of this additional factor; don't use cayenne, paprika, ... pepper spices for cooking, either, but add after the cooking is completed; says www.whfoods.com . Some spices should only be added after food or a dish is prepared, or else toxins form; says whfoods and other food information resources.
My relatives always baked chicken, and this usually, often anyway, was with the addition of paprika, but during the cooking phase.
Jon Hurdle must've never set foot in "Philly" because anyone from there knows Kensington (K&A aka Fishtown) is NOT in N. Philly but in the N.E. part.
Yo Jon!!! Here's a hint: try using an atlas next time!
Here in Iowa, I have 3 acres of river bottom, some of the best planting land you could have and it never floods. I have offered my city friends access to plant on the back acre, no takers yet, so my lady and I just do our own and bring some into work. After this years grocery bills, who knows? I think that each major city should be thinking about bring some raised planting areas to the roofs of certain buildings.
Mike I can't recall the size of the lot ,but the picture made it appear small.
Also not sure if there was another source of income,but it would still be fun seeing just how productive one could be.