We launched our urban agriculture Data Collection Toolkit – the first of its kind in the nation – at an all-day workshop in May co-organized with our collaborator, Farming Concrete.  At the workshop, the Five Borough Farm Phase III team trained farmers and gardeners on how to use the Toolkit to collect data on their work, as well as strategies for how to motivate other practitioners to join this effort to measure the impact of their work. 

Building on Farming Concrete’s existing user-base, our Five Borough Farm  Outreach Fellows Liz Barry and Philip Silva recruited over 30 practitioners to identify topics they would like to measure and track at their farms or gardens. The farmers and gardeners brainstormed new ways of generating and collecting data about the things that mattered most at each garden to refine strategies for measurement that were simple, realistic, and achievable. The team beta-tested the Toolkit throughout the 2013 growing season. At the close of the harvest season, we convened the participants who field-tested the toolkit to report on their efforts and discuss what worked and what did not work.

Now after over a year of development, the Toolkit and the Farming Concrete online data platform is available to farmers and gardeners nationwide!  This valuable resource includes a sixteen protocols organized into five categories: Food Production Data, Environmental Data, Social Data, Health Data, and Economic Data. Each protocol is designed to help farmers and gardeners keep records and tell meaningful stories about the value of their work on subject areas like rainwater harvesting, compost production, and the numerous social benefits provided by each garden.

Are you interested in growing NYC’s urban agriculture data set? You can start by downloading the Toolkit and registering your garden on Farming Concrete. Throughout the 2014 growing season Five Borough Farm Outreach Fellow Sheryll Durrant is here to provide technical assistance and answer any questions about the Toolkit or Farming Concrete.