SOCIAL: Social Digest, Vol 77, Issue 32

[sunny.angulo at gmail.com]

You should check Antonio Roman  antidogmatist at gmail.com and Jessie Woletz jessyjeanine at gmail.com !! (:
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Today's Topics:

   1.  urban agriculture contacts? (Kimberly Conley)


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Message: 1
Date: Tue, 8 May 2012 21:00:46 -0700
From: Kimberly Conley <khconley at gmail.com>
To: Social at lists.deeptrouble.com
Cc: Tara Tranguch <ttranguch at yahoo.com>
Subject: SOCIAL: urban agriculture contacts?
Message-ID: <C96C2F74-924A-4CD5-8494-EA15C43372E1 at gmail.com>
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Socials:
One of my nearest and dearest friends, Tara Tranguch (copied here), is working on a farm in Connecticut and would like to know more about the urban agriculture scene here in SF (see article below). Does anyone know folks at SPUR or CUESA she could talk with? Or other organizations she should know about? Any resources and connections you can provide are appreciated!  
Thanks,
kc






Expanding Urban Ag in San FranciscoFOOD POLICYGROW YOUR OWNMay 4th, 2012  By Brie Mazurek

Mary Davis started feeling the squeeze of city life about a year ago. She had grown up gardening and spent a stint working on an organic farm while attending grad school in Missouri. Now an architect living in San Francisco?s Mission District, she longed to reconnect with her gardening roots, but her small apartment was lacking in the dirt department. ?There was no garden, no outdoors,? she says. ?I really wanted a place with some soil.?

She started looking around her neighborhood and fell in love with the historic Dearborn Community Garden. But when she inquired about getting a plot, she was told there was a 22-year waiting list.

She signed up nonetheless and continued her search, adding her name to the Potrero Hill Community Garden?s list as well, which had a comparatively modest seven-year wait. Since then, Davis has moved into a house with a shared backyard garden, but she still longs for a plot of her own.

Davis?s experience is not uncommon among would-be gardeners in San Francisco. Most of the city?s community gardens have waiting lists of two years or more, according to Public Harvest, a new report by San Francisco Urban Planning + Urban Research Association (SPUR). The most comprehensive report of its kind in recent years, it paints a sweeping portrait of the current urban agriculture landscape and presents a bold agenda to help San Francisco meet the demands of a burgeoning movement.

Since the dissolution of the San Francisco League of Urban Gardeners (SLUG) in 2004, there have been no centralized city-funded efforts to maintain or expand urban agriculture. Residents hoping to start new projects face many bureaucratic hurdles, since public land and urban agricultural activities are managed by multiple agencies, with little coordination. From commercial urban farms to rooftop plots and shared gardens, more than two dozen private and public urban agriculture projects have sprouted up in the City over the last four years as a result of the resurgence of interest in gardening. ?We need to start looking to our public land to meet this demand,? said SPUR program manager Eli Zigas at a recent press event at Michelangelo Playground Community Garden in Nob Hill (pictured below).

While San Francisco Recreation & Parks oversees 35 community gardens on public land, those gardens are generally operated by volunteers, not staff. ?The gardens are run by gardeners,? says Andrea Jadwin, a founding and active member of San Francisco Gardening Resource Organization (SFGRO), which offers support and training for community gardeners throughout the city. ?That?s goo

Excuse typos and brevity- via Sunny's cell!