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Urban farming is turning cities green
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With organic stores and co-ops such as Whole Foods sprouting up on every corner, urban farms no longer seem so novel.
Grow Pittsburgh, a five-year-old nonprofit, is just one of many groups helping cities grow and go green, the Pittsburgh Post Gazette reports. Urban farming has caught on quick and in fact, the nonprofit’s executive director, Julie Butcher Pezzino, claims that the group can no longer keep track of how many spaces in the city have been transformed into gardens.
While the nonprofit currently operates four gardens around the city, it is looking to expand its reach by working with local government groups and other nonprofits to launch additional community gardens outside of the city.
The organization is part of a larger national movement that has been forwarded by campaigns such as the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s "Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food," First Lady Michelle Obama’s own initiative to plant a garden at the White House, and documentaries such as "Food, Inc," the paper writes.
In addition to helping the environment, urban farms, like Grow Pittsburgh give individuals who normally could not afford to eat fresh access to pesticide-free produce. One garden, known as the Pittsburgh Project, has worked to broaden children’s understanding of nutrition while supplying food to a neighborhood that lacks a grocery store within walking distance.
"Whole Foods could be in this neighborhood and it wouldn’t matter. If it’s not an effort like ours, our neighbors can’t afford to eat well," Jonathan Young, an AmeriCorps worker, told the Post Gazette. "We started the farm as a food access initiative."
However, the garden has become so successful that it will now be selling produce to Bistro to Go, an area restaurant.
The urban farming trend has become so popular, it is even spawning books, a quarterly magazine and dozens of blogs. Books such as "Farm City" and "My Empire of Dirt" detail city dwellers’ education in rooftop growing and backyard pig raising.
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