Causecast

by MELISSA JUN ROWLEY, Contributing Writer

While the current economic recession is triggering layoffs left and right, it’s also sparking some innovative and cost-effective eating habits. Urban agriculture is on the rise, and with good reason. In addition to costing less, home-grown foods are healthier and often taste better.

However, growing your own produce can seem overwhelming for some aspiring farmers, and they could use a little support and education from experienced gardeners, which is one of the reasons the England-based initiative Growing Real Organic Food in Urban Neighborhoods (GROFUN) was started. Founded in 2006 in Bristol, England by Nadia Hillman, GROFUN began with Hillman handing out flyers in her neighborhood, seeking participants to build a local-food growing community. The project now has 206 members, who share labor, skills and tools to help one another cultivate kitchen gardens and harvest produce on their own patios.

The group’s Many Hands program orchestrates gardening among neighbors and provides farming space for those who do not have a garden on a community allotment in St. Werburgh’s. GROFUN is also in the process of developing a community garden in a historical Bristol location. The goal is to enhance community-driven food projects, and exhibit how growing food in urban areas can transform lifeless patches of concrete into colorful and fruitful places filled with life.

Small and large communities in the U.S. are taking hold of the concept with both hands. The Pittsburgh company Steel City Soils lives by the motto that no lot or yard is too small to grow your own food, and helps people plant their own vegetable gardens. San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom recently ordered all city departments to audit unused land that could be used for urban agriculture. In the Midwest, the nonprofit organization Growing Power, Inc. promotes urban gardening as a way to bring healthy food to inner city youth.

You can always, of course, try planting your own garden with even a small amount of space. Just make sure it will get a good six hours of sun per day.

Photo by mskogly, flickr