Creating Food Security: Empty Plot to Urban Farm

Yesterday morning, a handful of us Summer of Solutions participants and volunteers showed up at the St. Olaf Community Center in North Minneapolis for a "farm raising" event. The goal: turn a grassy plot of unused land into a community garden over the course of one day. Pretty intimidating task, right? Not to mention the fact that parts of North Minneapolis have been labeled a "food desert," where a shortage of fresh fruits and vegetables has had deadly impacts on the health of residents in the area. Most of us have signed up for the Urban Agriculture project as part of the Summer of Solutions; others just came because they had free time. We found ourselves in a parking lot with dozens of other volunteers, ages ranging from under 10 to over 50, with piles of compost, mulch and cardboard in front of us. There was a 40% chance of rain. We were there because we had voiced our commitment to food security, to urban agriculture, to the green economy, and to changing a global mindset.

The Summer of Solutions program I'm participating in this year is based in the Twin Cities, Minnesota. Most of the day to day operations take place in a house in the Phillips neighborhood in South Minneapolis, where many of the participants live. There are a little more than 30 of us, environmentalists and political/social activists from all over the country, who have hopped on board with the Summer of Solutions. SoS is run through Grand Aspirations, a national network of young leaders working to halt climate change, create economic security and ensure social justice. We're driven by all kinds of experiences and ideas, but we find ourselves in the same place - a lower income, minority neighborhood which has faced some of the toughest impacts of climate change and the unsustainable economy. The program will run until July 31st - officially. From there, we'll take what we've learned and try to initiate a pandemic, until we get everyone to start seeing green.

We spent most of Saturday on the St. Olaf Community Center's lawn, laying cardboard over the grass and shoveling soil on top. The volunteer force peaked at about 35 in the middle of the day, and we watched the mountain of compost shrink as the beds were arranged and seeds were planted. There's something humbling about the process of moving dirt and realizing that this is where life comes from, why we live and eat and breathe. Compost is, of course, warm - there's tons of bacteria and nutrients crawling around inside of it. Watching steam rise from the piles in front of our garden - and realizing that food will soon rise out of our collaborative effort - was a reminder that we're growing more than a single farm. We spent about 5 hours working on the garden, and by the end of the day, we sat under a tent in the pouring rain, picking the dirt off our hands and watching as the seeds were buried. The transformation of the land was inspiring because it was visible; we're just using small projects as a means to satisfy a large scale vision. We're starting on a half-block wide plot of land, and this movement won't end until the entire globe is a part of it.