City Harvest is currently run as a co-op by three women – Sol, Sharon, and Heather – who currently grow food in 2 small greenhouses and 12 yards that are scattered throughout the city. They’ve been at it for a couple of seasons now and sell most of their produce through CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) veggie boxes that are delivered throughout the growing season. Another portion of the food they grow is sold at a farmer’s market in downtown Victoria.
As of now, urban farming on the west coast appears to be a challenging business that demands resourcefulness – the retired washing machine City Harvest uses as a salad spinner is a good example of that. As Sharon put it, they’re not in it for the money, it’s more a ‘labour of love’. Interestingly, it’s not a question of lack of demand. There are more people willing to have their yards farmed than there are urban farmers. That’s probably because it’s an attractive offer to the yard owner – all they have to do is give up a part of their grass, and they’ll get a share of the food that is grown at no cost.
But still urban farmers struggle to make a living. A large part of the problem is that they have to compete with the under-priced food that is so readily available in today’s supermarkets. How do we get people to start spending more money on food, which has become so undervalued?
In the words of Conrad Schmidt, “the idea that more expensive food is better for people is a concept that’s hard to believe. The proof is in the history and consequences of cheap food. More expensive food means jobs not only for North Americans, but people across the world. It enables better income distribution so that not just the wealthy can afford to dine on meat while a billion people starve.”
Assembling the veggie bins
I’ve started thinking more seriously about heading down the path of urban farming myself. According to Sol it’s a really rewarding job full of interesting challenges, as we were putting together the last round of CSA boxes for this season, Sharon and Sol alluded to all the things they can improve on next year. It takes some time and experience to learn the ropes, but there seems to be huge potential. If you look at what’s happening in post-industrial cities like Detroit, urban farming seems to be a movement that’s on the verge of taking off and will be here to stay.
