Five Borough Farm: Phase II, conducted in partnership with the NYC Department of Parks & Recreation, builds on the policy and metrics recommendations developed in the first phase in order to strengthen and expand urban agriculture in NYC. 

Background

Five Borough Farm: Phase I  found a groundswell of demand for urban agriculture citywide, as New Yorkers have reclaimed every kind of marginal and leftover space to grow food. However, several critical issues must be addressed in order for urban agriculture to achieve its full potential in New York City, including access to city-owned land, the availability of funding and essential materials such as soil and compost, and the economic development potential of the city’s farms and gardens.

Two key obstacles currently prevent government officials from developing a long-range, citywide urban agriculture plan or making large-scale resource commitments: a lack of evidence demonstrating urban agriculture’s value to the city, and the absence of a structure or process to coordinate actions across multiple agencies and engage key stakeholders in decision-making. Phase II aims to address these obstacles by: 

• Building a coalition of urban agriculture stakeholders to coordinate activity and inform citywide policy.
• Promoting innovative land-use solutions to support urban agricultural activity citywide.
• Measuring the impacts of urban agriculture in New York City by developing user-friendly data collection tools that will enable farmers and gardeners to quantitatively demonstrate their outcomes and output to the city.

process

Working with a new team of Fellows with expertise in community engagement, data collection, land use policy, and green infrastructure, we:

• Organized and convened an Urban Agriculture Task Force with the Parks Department to discuss land availability, funding for urban agriculture, jobs programs and soil and compost 
• Created two short videos about land use issues in NYC and how collecting data can help farmers and gardeners measure and demonstrate the impact of their activities
• Conducted over 30 stakeholder interviews with farmers, gardeners, and government agencies
• Assessed the suitability of city-owned land for urban agriculture
• Held two workshops to test and refine the types of data that were the most meaningful to the urban agriculture community
• Recruited a large group of farmers and gardeners to field test the data collection toolkit during their growing season
• Enhanced the existing online data platform at farmingconcrete.org
  

The final project publication, Five Borough Farm II: Growing the Benefits of Urban Agriculture in New York City, proposes ways of better understanding and demonstrating the benefits of urban agriculture, recommends strategies for farmers and gardeners, support organizations, and government agencies to maximize these benefits, and explores the potential for expanding the types and scale of urban agriculture in the city.