Extreme Local Food: Two Case Studies in Assisted Urban Small Plot Intensive Agriculture

Urban Farm DB summary

This 2008 paper examines barriers to urban agriculture expansion in North America—poor urban soils, lack of knowledge, zoning restrictions, and personal time constraints—through two case studies of assisted urban small-plot intensive farming in Portland, Oregon, and Vancouver, British Columbia. In both cases, entrepreneurs installed and tended small plots on participants' land, selling the harvest at local farmers' markets or sharing it directly with the landowners. The paper notes that both projects had strong educational components and engaged a diverse demographic, and that having one farmer tend multiple plots could help address concerns about the carbon footprint of small-plot farming raised elsewhere in the literature.