Seasonal produce at the Portland, Maine Farmer's Market - photo courtesy of www.facebook.com/PortlandMaineFarmersMarket

“Local” has become a new buzz word in America but what does it really mean, and why should we get on board? The reality is that within our own lifetimes we will witness the end of cheap oil and will have to learn to get by with less, whether we want to or not. In an attempt to practice just that, I planted a 600 sq. foot vegetable garden on some family property last year and found it to be very rewarding.

My family and I tilling the ground that will eventually become the garden. I am the farthest on the left holding the rake. Moving right across the photo: my sister, my husband, my brother, my dad, and my brother-in-law (operating the Gravely).

Our family garden about 7 weeks after planting.

Like many people though, I enjoy eating fresh produce all year round and when growing season is over, I find myself perusing the grocery aisles for tomatoes from Mexico and bell peppers from Holland. How can I justify this when I think about how much oil it takes to manufacture, fuel and maintain the truck or cargo ship that transported that produce to my supermarket?

The obvious answer to this dilemma is to only buy produce during its growing season and to do so at your local farmer’s market, which for me is the South Portland Farmer’s Market. Here in Maine, there are many farmers’ markets, several of which operate during the winter months! In fact, the Portland Farmer’s Market holds the accolade of being the oldest continually operating market in the country, something Mainers can be proud of!

While I would love to support my local farmer’s market year round, my current budget does not permit me to do so. To help compensate for this, I plan to enroll in a food preservation class next year at my local university (University of Southern Maine). The course teaches not only canning techniques, but drying, freezing, pickling and much more. That way I can begin to build skills on how to preserve my own harvest, which will ultimately help my budget.

No matter what measures you decide are right for you – growing or buying local, eating in season or preserving your own harvest – the outcome will be the same: you will reduce greenhouse gases and gain valuable experience in how to use less oil, a skill that will help save your wallet in the long run as the price of oil rises.

Urban agriculture holds great promise for Boston.

This post was coauthored by Melissa Hoffer & Jo Anne Shatkin.

We are excited to share with you the news that today CLF and CLF Ventures released a report that, for the first time, details the economic development potential for urban agriculture in Greater Boston, assesses its environmental and health co-benefits, and examines current market and policy barriers to expanded food production in Greater Boston. The report‘s findings confirm that urban agriculture can play an important role in creating a more livable, carbon resilient, healthier, economically vibrant, and environmentally sustainable city—if we put smart policies in place and encourage market development for Boston grown foods.

Download a free copy of the report here.

The City of Boston has taken important steps over the past two years to advance urban agriculture, and new businesses are taking root, including City Growers, a Mattapan-based farming business that is featured in this report. There is a palpable sense of excitement about the potential of this new urban vision for agriculture for communities; possibilities abound. But CLF and CLF Ventures believe it is more than possible— it is a necessity, and an urgent one at that as we face the challenges of climate change, an obesity epidemic, lack of availability of healthy foods in many communities, and a fragile economy.

The report found that converting as few as 50 acres of vacant or underutilized land around Boston into agricultural production would spur job creation, improve access to healthy, local, fresh food, and reduce environmental harms. Key findings of the report include:

• Land is available. 50 acres – an area the size of Boston Common – is a small portion of the vacant or underutilized land available in Boston.
• Urban farms would stimulate the economy by creating jobs. 50 acres of urban agriculture in Boston will likely generate at least 130 direct farming jobs and may generate over 200 jobs depending on actual business characteristics and revenue.
• Healthy, local and affordable food. 50 acres in agricultural production would provide enough fresh produce to feed over 3,600 people over a six-month retail season. If the produce is used to prepare healthy school lunches in Boston Public Schools, 50 acres could provide more than one serving of fresh produce for each lunch served to a student eligible for free or reduced school lunch over a six month period. If 800 acres of potentially available City-owned land were put into agricultural production, the food needs of approximately 10 percent of Boston’s total population could be fully satisfied during a six-month retail season.
• Significant environmental impacts. Urban agriculture in Boston will result in a net reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. 50 acres of properly managed soils would sequester about 114 tons of cabon dioxide (CO2) per year and may result in an additional CO2 reduction of up to 4,700 tons per year.
• Community adaptation. No less than 6,000 new temperature records were set during the recent March 2012 heat wave, and more than 40,000 have been set for the year-to-date. Meanwhile, the July 2011-June 2012 period was the warmest 12-month period of any 12-months on record for the contiguous U.S., with the first half of 2012 being the hottest ever recorded. The International Energy Agency’s recent projection of a 10.8 degree F temperature increase over pre-industrial levels by the end of this century underscores the fact that a more decentralized food system will be necessary to enable our communities to better adapt to changing climate conditions, including the impacts of more frequent severe weather. Urban agriculture is a part of this solution.

As Jo Anne said in the press release announcing Growing Green, it’s clear that even 50 acres of sustainable agriculture on available land would be an economic stimulus and environmental resource for Boston. While we focused on a 50 acre test scenario, these conclusions are scalable across New England. Imagine how vibrant New England would be like with a robust and sustainable regional food system.

In addition to the potential benefits, the report also considers the policy and market barriers to fully realizing the potential of urban agriculture, examining the ways in which promoting urban agriculture will require city and state involvement and key needs for such involvement. Such barriers include the need for policies that provide affordable access to land, one of the key market barriers for both new and experienced farmers; strategies to reduce the risks associated with the Commonwealth’s hazardous material cleanup law; improved access to high quality compost; and better financing options to overcoming prohibitive capital and operating costs, amongst other findings.

Our ongoing work seeks to link urban agriculture to the larger regional food system, and focuses on how to overcome some of the barriers we have identified.

Boston is ideally positioned to play a lead role in coordinating with the Massachusetts Food Policy Council, other New England states, and cities around the region to build a vision for a New England regional food system and make it happen. Boston is emerging as a national leader in urban agriculture innovation, and can be a voice for the benefits of urban agriculture and as one of the region’s largest consumers, help to build the market for regionally grown food.

Download a free copy of the report here.
Find an infographic detailing the report here: http://bit.ly/clfgrowinggreen
To read more about CLF’s Farm & Food Initiative, click here: http://www.clf.org/our-work/healthy-communities/food-and-farm-initiative/

More small-scale farms, in more local communities, growing a greater diversity of food in sustainable and humane ways, are key ingredients in CLF’s recipe for a healthy, thriving New England for generations to come.

Let’s face it, with gas prices topping $4 per gallon and global warming causing deepening droughts across many of the world’s most productive agricultural areas, we just can’t continue to count on being able to get produce, meats, and dairy products shipped to our local supermarkets from factory farms that may be thousands of miles away.

Extended-share CSAs and other community financing tools can be a valuable way to help smaller farms--like the one where these goats live--flourish

Even in Vermont, where agriculture is a key component of our state’s economy and character, there are challenges to realizing an agricultural renaissance.  One of the biggest challenges involves connecting existing and would-be farmers with the financing they need to flourish. With recovery from the credit crunch still slow, banks and other traditional sources of capital may be reluctant to take risks on smaller-scale farming operations (and with so many stories of banks behaving badly, local farmers may also be reluctant to work with banks).

Increasingly, Vermont farmers are turning to friends and neighbors in the communities where they live to raise smaller amounts of capital in unconventional ways.  That’s why I was so excited to participate in a collaboration with farmers, attorneys, accountants, and investment professionals that is aimed at helping publicize and demystify the various community-financing tools that farmers can utilize as they seek to start up and/or grow their farms.

The effort was led by University of Vermont’s Center for Sustainable Agriculture, which recently published the “Guide to Financing the Community-Supported Farm: Ways for Farms to Acquire Capital Within Communities” (you can download a free copy by clicking here). Among the many community financing tools discussed in the guide are:

• owner-financed sales and land contracts (chapter authored by yours truly)
• cohousing and cooperative land ownership
• equity financing
• extended Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) shares
• revenue-based financing
• vendor financing
• pre-buys

Though written by Vermonters for a primarily Vermont audience, much of the analysis and many of the case studies in the Guide will be useful to farmers and community food financiers all across New England. Check it out!

CLF and CLF Ventures are proud to again co-sponsor the third annual Massachusetts Sustainable Economy Conference (SEC), April 30 at the Federal Reserve in Boston. I invite you to please come to the panel discussion I will moderate on the opportunities and barriers involved in cultivating Boston’s and the region’s urban agricultural sector, with some of the area’s leading entrepreneurs.

The brainchild of CLF Ventures Board Member Crystal Johnson, the Sustainable Economy Conference is an unparalleled opportunity to build bridges within and across Massachusetts’ government, business, academic, nonprofit, and community sectors to foster sustainable communities and a viable 21^st century economy. CLF and CLF Ventures are working to address barriers to the growth of urban and regional sustainable agriculture from market and policy perspectives. At CLF, we view sustainable agriculture in our cities and our region as a key component of a more carbon-resilient future for our region in the face of unprecedented climate change and its threats to our economy and way of life. We’ve met many compatriots at past Sustainable Economy Conferences and look forward to a great conversation about urban agriculture with panelists:

• Newly sworn in Agricultural Commissioner Greg Watson
• Head of Boston’s food initiative Edith Murnane
• Marketing coordinator of Holyoke’s Neustras Raices
• Entrepreneur Glynn Lloyd of City Growers

As a founding board member of the national Stewardship Action Council, I was fortunate to also participate in last week’s 25^th anniversary celebration of the Toxics Release Inventory and Environmental Conditions in Communities Conference, a gathering of national public and private leaders in sustainability. Before my panel discussion about building collaborative partnerships among state, non-governmental, and industry partners within the Stewardship Action Council, four members discussed how they interact with communities:

• Mike Wendt of 3M explained that “a crisis is a bad time to make new friends,” so at his Menomonie, Wisconsin facility, community engagement is embedded in the culture.
• Annette Russo of Johnson & Johnson described their new Procurement Sustainability Initiative to ensure their entire supply chain is focused on sustainable solutions for ingredients and packaging.
• West Liberty Foods HR Director Tara Lindsey linked that organization’s renovation of a neglected church into a day care facility as an initiative that both fostered employee retention within the company and benefited the community.

Stewardship Action Council members also had an opportunity to weigh in on EPA’s role in promoting sustainability leadership with Deputy Assistant Administrator in the Office of Policy Vicki Corman. It’s a sign of the changing times that industry, at least those leading organizations participating in SAC, are ahead of EPA in adopting measurement and reporting initiatives. EPA can provide national leadership and guidance to advance the practice of environmental stewardship, but would only confuse the marketplace if they were to develop their own standards in the already crowded voluntary sustainability standard realm. In our development of measurements for “Level 4” membership in the Stewardship Action Council, we identified over 200 “standards” under the umbrella of sustainability reporting.

The demand for sustainable solutions will be drivers for the 21^st century economy. The third annual Sustainable Economy Conference is designed to:

• Provide a platform to discuss new collaborations and partnerships for sustainable solutions within and across sectors
• Serve as a resource on cutting edge “sustainable thinking” through experiences, case studies, and showcases
• Promote diversity and inclusion to improve business performance in Massachusetts
• Provide effective tools and approaches for meeting the challenges of the changing global market and encouraging businesses to meet the new market expectations
• Promote an equitable and ecologically sustainable economy

I look forward to meeting you there.