Farming in Downtown San Diego

This past Saturday my roommate and I decided to head downtown and lend a hand at San Diego City College's urban farm. As a collaboration between the college, San Diego Roots Sustainable Food Project, San Diego High School, and Garfield High School the farm that was once a small patch of campus lawn in the summer of 2008 is now a productive farm that serves as a classroom, an example of local sustainable agriculture, and a source of fresh vegetables for city dwellers who stop by its farm stand every Tuesday morning.

For several hours Saturday morning myself and a few other volunteers, helped prepare a cover crop on one of the farms lower terraces. This crop will not be harvested, but instead the wheat and lima beans we planted will be cut down to feed the soil and make it more fertile for the next planting. It was a unique experience turning soil, watering, laying seed and compost for a lifelong city-dweller like myself, and even more odd that I had to go downtown rather than out in to the country to do it.

I hope that soon changes though and that City College's curious patch of agriculture surrounded by skyscrapers becomes the norm not an oddity. By farming locally in urban centers, and doing so organically we can simultaneously reduce our use of oil (for transportation and fertilization of food), reduce our waste through composting, and increase our self-sufficiency in case of disasters or emergencies that limit external supplies. Thankfully I think it may be a growing trend. San Diego Roots sponsors several projects around the county that you can read about here. There is also Greensgrow in Philadelphia, which is a great example of brownfield reclamation. Finally we can all learn something from Cuba where the fall of the Soviet Union coupled with trade embargoes forced the development of urban organoponicos to fight food shortages.

Down the street from Olive Branch is an empty, fenced-in lot. I walk by it often and think that maybe there's opportunity in that lot for North Park's very own urban farm. Until that happens though, City College's farm is a great example of what is possible.

-Andrew