Urban Vegetable Farm Takes Root in Brownfield

  • Just outside the Greensgrow compound (photo by Brad Linder)

A farm is a strange thing to see in the middle of a gritty, urban area.
But the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Brad Linder recently visited a small
farm on what used to be a polluted site in an industrial neighborhood:

Transcript

A farm is a strange thing to see in the middle of an gritty, urban area.
But the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Brad Linder recently visited a
small farm on what used to be a polluted site in an industrial
neighborhood:


One of the first things you notice about this one-acre plot in
Philadelphia is how out of place the farm looks. About a block away is a
busy interstate highway that jams up with rush hour traffic twice a day.


The farm itself is surrounded by rowhouses, a steel galvanizing plant, and
an auto detail shop.


Chino Rosatto runs the auto shop. About 8 years ago, he first met his new
neighbors – a small group of farmers.


”It was weird at first, you don’t see no farm in the city.”


But Rosatto says he got used to the farm started by Mary Seton Corboy
pretty quickly.


“It was an empty lot. Nothing there. Just fenced up, and that was it. She
came up, did something with it.”


Before it was an empty lot, this city block was a steel plant. In 1988
the building was demolished, and the EPA declared the site hazardous.


It was cleaned up, but Rosatto says it was nothing but concrete slabs
until Mary Seton Corboy and her small group of volunteers came and started
the farm they call Greensgrow.


Corboy moved to Philadelphia from the suburbs nearly a decade ago. With a
background as a chef, she’d always been concerned about how hard it was to
find fresh produce. So she decided to grow it herself.


“The question that just kept coming up over and over again was, is there
any reason why you have to be in a rural area to grow food, given the fact
that the market for the food, the largest market for the food, is in the
urban area?”


Corboy says usually food travels an average of 1500 miles from its source
to wind up on most Americans plates. And she says when it comes to flavor
– nothing is more important than how fresh the food is.


“If you eat strawberries that are commercially available,
you have no taste recognition of something that people 40 years ago would
say is a strawberry, because of the refrigeration, because of the way they
are picked underripe, because of the things they are sprayed with to give
them a longer shelf life.”


Corboy says her first choice for a farm wouldn’t have been an abandoned
industrial site. But the rent was cheaper than it would be at almost any
other spot in the city.


And even though the EPA and scientists from Penn State University
confirmed that there were no toxic chemicals left, Corboy doesn’t plant
anything edible in the ground.


She grows some plants in greenhouses. Others are planted in raised soil
beds. And she grows lettuce in PVC pipes that deliver nutrients to the
plants without any soil at all.


Corboy still regularly sends plant samples out for testing. The results?


“At one point Penn State sent us back a report, we talked to
them on the phone about it, and they said your stuff is actually cleaner
than stuff that we’ve seen grown on farms. Go figure that. We feel very, very comfortable
with the produce that we grow. Because, you know, I’ve been living on it
myself for 8 years.”


And restaurant owners say they’re happy to buy some of the freshest
produce available.


Judy Wicks is owner the White Dog Cafe, a Philadelphia
restaurant that specializes in locally grown foods and meat from animals
raised in humane conditions. She’s been a loyal Greensgrow customer for 8
years.


“As soon as we heard about Greensgrow, we were really excited
about the idea of supporting an urban farm on a brownfield – what a
dream! To you know, take an unsightly, unused block, and turn it into a
farm. It’s just a really exciting concept.”


Wicks says she’s never had a concern about the quality of the food,
because of the care taken to prevent it from touching the soil.


In addition to its restaurant business, Greensgrow sells fruit and
vegetables to Philadelphia residents at a farmer’s market twice a week.
The farm also operates one of the only nurseries in the city, which begins
selling plants this spring.


Mary Seton Corboy says running the farm has taught her a lot about food,
the environment, and waste. She says she doesn’t look at empty lots the
same way anymore. She’s learned to squeeze fruits, vegetables and flowers
out of every space of this city block. And she sees value in the things
other people throw out.


On a recent night Corboy was driving home with her farm manager Beth Kean,
and they spotted a pile of trash beside a building.


“But what they had dumped were all these pallets. And Beth
was with me in the car, and we both turned and looked at them and went,
Look at those pallets! Let’s come back and get them, they’re in great
shape!”


Urban farming is tough. Corboy originally had lofty goals for her farm.
Greensgrow was going to be a pilot project, something she’d expand to
include 10 farms throughout Philadelphia.


8 years later, Greensgrow is still anchored on its original one-acre site.
But by keeping her costs low and selling to loyal customers, Corboy sold
200-thousand dollars worth of produce last year. That was enough to make
2004 the farm’s first profitable year.


For the GLRC, I’m Brad Linder.

Related Links

Council Looks for Land Use Consensus

Governors and legislatures across the nation have been trying to figure out the best way to manage land-use in areas where urban sprawl is gobbling up open space and leaving behind deteriorating city centers. But finding a way to manage land-use is controversial. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports on one state’s attempt to tackle the problem:

Transcript

Governors and legislatures across the nation have been trying to figure out the best way to
manage land use in areas where urban sprawl is gobbling up open space and leaving behind
deteriorating city centers. But finding a way to manage land use is controversial. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports on one state’s attempt to tackle the problem:


The Governor of Michigan made it clear while she was a candidate that she wanted to tackle the problem of urban sprawl. Shortly after her inauguration, Governor Jennifer Granholm established what she calls a Michigan Land Use Leadership Council. It’s made up of home-builders, developers, farmers, environmentalists and others. The council’s job is to find a consensus on the best ways to make the best use of land in Michigan so that the state doesn’t lose any more farmland and open space than necessary.


Hans Voss was appointed to the council. He’s with the Michigan Land Use Institute, a group
advocating the principles of Smart Growth… getting government to take a more active role in
preserving open space and redeveloping blighted urban areas. He says he expects the council to come up with recommendations that everyone can live with… and still adhere to Smart Growth principles…


“And it’s not a regulatory approach. But, if you put real, substantive
financial incentive on the table by reallocating our existing state dollars,
we will then put together the local coalition to
actually implement the recommendations. It’s all about incentives.”


Voss says local governments too often encourage urban sprawl by putting the
wrong incentives in place for builders and developers. He’s optimistic that the
various interests represented on the
governor’s new council will find common ground and solve some of the problems.


Keith Charters is also a member of the council. He currently serves as chair of
the state’s Natural Resource Commission. He agrees the council will
find consensus and make good recommendations to the Michigan legislature.
But he’s concerned that much of the agreement
will be lost in the legislative process.


“The recommendations are not going to get through the sausage grinder of
the legislature overnight. It’s not a 30-day process and some of the
recommendations may take two or three
years. That’s a lot of time for the special interests to reconsider
some of the consensus they may
have already approved at the council level, to rethink it and come back
with a different attack on it.”


Further complicating the matter is a political consideration. Rick Johnson
is the Speaker of the
Michigan House of Representatives. He says term limits will hurt the chances
of getting more
complicated land use legislation through the process.


“You know, you’re only around for six years in the House. It’s real hard
to – you know, an issue of land use isn’t going to get done in a year, two
years’ time. It’s a more lengthy discussion.”


On top of that, Johnson says legislators have a hard time keeping the best
interests of the state as
a whole in mind when so many local constituents are pressuring legislators to
think local first.


“When you have a bunch of townships, city, county people saying
‘We don’t want that,’ you know. Or ‘What’s good for Detroit, I don’t care.’
Or, what’s good for Marquette, the legislator
from Detroit don’t care.”


Beyond parochial biases, there are philosophical biases. Senator Liz Brater
also sits on the governor’s land use council. She says the political reality
is that the council’s recommendations
won’t carry that much weight with some legislators unless they fit within
their existing philosophy.


“There’s a certain group of legislators that just embrace the whole Smart Growth
principles and would go forward with it. There are others that are concerned that we’re taking away property rights and the rights of homebuilders and developers to have economic benefit from land that they control. So, there’s a whole gamut and what we need is to identify the common ground.”


But… even if the legislators see some common interests within the Michigan Land Use
Leadership Council’s recommendations… many of the public comments indicate there are a lot of people who are skeptical about land use management. It’s even been called un-American. Senator Brater says if more people knew the issue better… there wouldn’t be so much concern and opposition…


“But, I think we have a lot to overcome in terms of this perception
that we’re trying to do some
kind of centralized, top-down state planning, which I don’t think anybody
really is talking about,
but that is a fear out there that we have to address.”


The Michigan Land Use Leadership Council will make its recommendations for managing land
use in just a few weeks… but whether anything like Smart Growth principles
become part of Michigan law or policy will depend on finding some common ground
between the different interests
and overcoming political biases of the state’s people and their elected representatives.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.


EDITOR’S NOTE: Audio for the piece was gathered at a People and Land conference.
The Great Lakes Radio Consortium receives funding from People and Land.

COUNCIL LOOKS FOR LAND USE CONSENSUS (Short Version)

States are concerned about the loss of farmland and open space to sprawling cities and suburbs… but it’s hard for legislatures to find practical political solutions. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

States are concerned about the loss of farmland and open space to sprawling cities and suburbs…
but it’s hard for legislatures to find practical political solutions. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:


Land use management is not simple. In some areas it means preserving farmland… in other areas
it means urban renewal… and in others it means building higher density housing instead of big
houses on big lots.


In Michigan, for example, the Speaker of the House, Rick Johnson predicts conflict between
legislators from urban, suburban and rural areas. He says getting legislators up to speed on land
use management and in agreement will be more complicated than many of the other issues
legislators face.


“Land use is going to be extremely harder because the focus is so immense and different
from different areas.”


A council appointed by the Michigan governor is working to send land use
recommendations to the legislature. Meanwhile, even during these poor economic times… rapid
growth at the edges of metropolitan areas on what was once open land continues with little
restraint.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.

Unique Industrial Land Seen in New Light

  • Marian Byrnes has been called the "environmental conscience of the Calumet." She has been a key leader in getting the city of Chicago, and the state of Illinois, to see the value of Calumet's natural areas. Photo by Mark Brush.

In an area in south Chicago you can see the remnants of a steel industry that has had better days – silent smokestacks looming on the horizon, empty parking lots, and for sale signs in front yards. The Calumet region was once a haven for big industry… and because of that it is also home to a list of seemingly endless environmental problems. Many people thought the problems were too great to overcome, but as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mark Brush reports… that attitude is changing:

Transcript

In an area in south Chicago you can see the remnants of a steel industry that has had better days – silent smokestacks looming on the horizon, empty parking lots, and for sale signs in front yards. The Calumet region was once a haven for big industry… and because of that it is also home to a list of seemingly endless environmental problems. Many people thought the problems were too great to overcome, but as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mark Brush reports…that attitude is changing:

If you’ve ever driven by Chicago’s south side, you’ve likely seen the smokestacks and factories that dot this old industrial area.

But when you get off the main highway and drive down the back roads of Calumet, you see something you wouldn’t expect – remnants of unique wetlands and prairies. It’s an area where thousands of migrating birds come each spring. Herons, egrets, and cranes carefully pluck their food from these marshes – marshes that are right next to chemical factories and toxic city dumps.

(Bring up sound of sparrows and outdoors)

The sun is setting in this part of the Calumet – some sparrows nearby are settling down for the night – and Marian Byrnes is showing me around the places she’s come to know from living and working here for more than 20 years.

“This land is mostly slag on the banks of Indian Creek, but it’s not considered hazardous.”

“How would the slag get here?”

“Oh, it was waste from Steel Mills – mostly Republic Steel which was north of here.”

(Fade her under + continue outdoor sound)

Marian Byrnes is a retired public school teacher. And at age 76, she volunteers her time as the executive director of the Southeast Environmental Task Force. She repeatedly meets with businesses, community groups, and city and state advisory boards – patiently delivering her message that the Calumet region is worth protecting.

And over the years Marian, and others like her, have steadily worked against a city that didn’t seem to care about the natural areas in Calumet. For many of them, it began more than twenty years ago, when they got a note from the Chicago Transit Authority in their mailbox. The note outlined the Transit Authority’s plan to build a bus barn on their neighborhood’s prairie:

“It was like having our own little forest preserve right behind our houses. You can walk out there, and when you get out – maybe a block or so – you’re not aware that you’re in the city at all. I mean you can’t even see the houses, so it’s just a wonderful place to be in touch with nature.”

They convinced the transit authority to build the bus-barn elsewhere. And in the years that followed they fought off other proposals such as plans to build a toxic waste incinerator, and plans to re-open old city dumps.

But despite those successes, big environmental problems still persist. And the list of contamination is intimidating – heavy metals, PCBs, and leaking landfills. The problems are so overwhelming that when planners in Chicago were thinking about spreading miles and miles of concrete for a new airport, Calumet was thought of as an ideal location.

Kathy Dickhut works in the planning department for the city of Chicago:

“The area does have a lot of environmental problems. Ten years ago the thinking was it was all dirty, environmentally dirty, and that was sort of across the board, …so one way to deal with that is, you know to cover the whole thing up.”

But local environmental and community groups became united in their opposition to the plan. And instead of an airport, the local groups asked the National Park Service to designate the area as an ecological park.

And slowly but surely, the city began to look at the area in a new light:

“I think people didn’t realize just how much opposition there would be to paving over this area. I mean the airport proposal was quite dramatic, and because it was quite dramatic, there was quite dramatic outcry about it – so once that played out – we had to look at it again in a different way. And what we’ve done is really look at the resources that we do have here, which are substantial, and how we can improve those.”

Today, the city appears to have a completely different attitude about the Calumet area. Chicago lawmakers recently passed a land use plan that calls for the best of both worlds. They want to protect and clean up the natural prairies and wetlands – while at the same time – attract new businesses to build on old industrial sites.

City planners hope to balance what may be seen as competing goals (attracting new industries AND cleaning up the environment) by prioritizing where to build and where to preserve. And when they do build – planners are encouraging green building practices. Practices that complement the surrounding natural areas rather than cover them.

Those involved with the project paint a pretty nice picture of what’s to come.

Lynn Westphal is a researcher for the U.S. Forest Service, and works closely with the city of Chicago on the Calumet project: “Imagine an industrial area with the buildings roofs are green. Where instead of turf around – you have native grasses and because of that you have more birds and butterflies… you’ve got bicycle access, people fishing on their lunch breaks…. And it’s not far from becoming a reality. This is all very doable. So it’s not totally hypothetical.”

And in fact, movement toward that new vision is already underway. The Ford Motor Company is building a new industrial park for its suppliers. And many of the green building practices Westphal describes will be used. And the Corps of Engineers is spending more than 6 million dollars to clean up an area known as Indian Ridge Marsh.

But those involved with the transition of this area say that leadership from the community will be the key to its eventual success.

Meanwhile, the Southeast Environmental Task Force will have a new executive director by this summer…

“…and that’ll be someone who’ll learn to do what I’ve been doing for past 20 years, cause I can’t keep on doing it indefinitely.”

“Do you have any advice for them?”

“Have a lot of patience…”

The same patience Marian Byrnes has used when riding a city bus to meeting after meeting, listening to the community, and working with city officials – all in an effort to create what she believes will be a better future for the people in Calumet.

For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Mark Brush.