ProblemStatement.docVIP

Kathryn M. Werntz Final Project 11 December 2008 Acknowledgements This work would not have been possible without the participation of Mill Creek Farm in Philadelphia, PA, East New York Farms! in Brooklyn, NY and The Cutting Veg Farm in Brampton, Canada. I would also like to thank Brian Caldwell for assisting with the review of the interview tool. Problem Statement Urban agriculture is on the rise in the United States, Canada and other industrialized countries. Literature reviews often yield either op-ed pieces highlighting the community development or local food movement dimensions of the initiatives or empirical papers on economic sustainability and potential environmental hazards that urban farms may contribute to or encounter. Lacking are papers with a holistic perspective which examine the complex ecological, economic and social domains of urban farms in the United States. Knowing that the syllabus for this class touched upon all three of these sustainability dimensions in relation to rural farms, I felt well-positioned to begin exploring these same dimensions in the urban context. This project was designed to answer the following questions: to what degree do urban farms in the northern climates in the United States and Canada consider and address their environmental, social and economic sustainability? are there benefits and challenges to being sustainable which are specific to operating in the urban context? what kind of research could assist the urban farms in being more sustainable? In order to answer these questions, I interviewed urban farmers and asked them directly about their environmental, economic and social sustainability, their urban milieu and research needs. Recognizing that this survey of questions would be limited in scope given the breadth of this project, I thought of this as preliminary research to explore which questions may be more pertinent than others for use in future surveys. I also felt strongly in collecting qualitative data and ha