|
|
October 2005
Farming Careers in the ’Hood?
By Mark Thompson
Is sustainable
agriculture a sensible career choice for inner-city young people in 21st
Century New York City?
Ian Marvy, co-founder and director of Added
Value and its Red Hook Community Farm, is accustomed to the
question. It is regularly posed by the foundations and government
agencies that underwrite Added Value’s job-training programs, and
Marvy is ready with a reply.
|
“Small-scale, sustainable farming is growing both as a job category
and as an economic engine in society,” he says. It is underpinning a
small but growing alternative food distribution system that is creating
new jobs all along the line, and Red Hook’s graduates will be prepared
to be part of that movement, he believes.
“If we’re doing the work that we’re
supposed to be doing, which is not only growing food but
also expanding people’s access to safe, healthy and
affordable food, and teaching them to understand their food
choices as a political, social-justice act, then yes, I
think it’s a viable career choice,” Marvy says.
|
|
|
Photos by Jill
Slater |
Beyond specific job skills, the Red Hook Community Farm job program seeks
to instill values that will shape the outlook of the young people who pass
through the farm in whatever fields they chose. “I’m
not trying to grow farmers nor am I trying to grow market managers nor
computer programmers,” Marvy explains. “I’m trying to grow a
generation of young people who understand sustainability and have tools
and skills that can help them create a more sustainable world, young
people who have a concept of themselves as a part of a community of
concerned citizens that wants to make that happen.”
Economic
Return from 'Waste Harvesting'
A number of projects on the farm
illustrate larger principles that could have wider application. For
example, the farm is now planning a “food-waste harvesting” project that
will generate an economic return even while reducing the community's use
of petroleum
fuels. “It will provide an education about renewable energy and resource
stewardship through urban agriculture,” says Marvy.
“Our goal is to have a medium-scale composting facility, which
will lessen the impact on the waste side of the food system. The
community’s food waste won’t have to get trucked out to
Virginia, where a lot of
New York City
waste goes,” he explains.
 |
|
“By using a bio-digester and generating
power, we could take our farm off the electricity grid. And we could feed
the waste from the bio-digester to our worm population, and the worm
castings then lessens our reliance on importing organic fertilizer, a
high-grade nutrient additive that we have to bring in to our farm,” he
says.
The farm is a training facility and demonstration
project, but Added Value is determined to show that the farm is
economically viable by keeping track of inputs and harvests, and
doing square-foot analyses of economic returns.
|
|
According to Marvy, the Cornell University Cooperative Extension has
estimated that the farm in Red Hook can gross at least $5 a square foot
from tomatoes. The return per square foot planted in collards might be
less but it might be more for quick-growing baby arugula. The bottom line
is, Red Hook Community Farm can, in fact, make money that will support
Added Value’s broader goals.
Marvy has set ambitious goals for revenue from the farm. This year it will
bring in $8,000 from sales, which represents a little under 5 percent of
the program’s total $180,000 budget, he says. “We think we can
generate $75,000 a year within three years.” |
