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Urban Agriculture Is Part Of Our History
1898 Charities Review – Vacant-Lot Cultivation
Many of the challenges – including securing land – remain the same, more than a century after this report was written by philanthropic leaders.
By Rose Hayden-Smith
UC Food Observer
July 2, 2015
Excerpt:
In 2013, Bill Loomis wrote an amazing piece about Pingree for the Detroit News. He wrote:
“Most of the unfortunate would be glad to raise their own food,” Pingree argued. “They are willing to work, and we ought to give them a chance to do it.”
Pingree’s idea of “ethical relief” was met with strong resistance from many who believed that the unemployed – many of them immigrants – were “too lazy” to work. Skeptics, of course, were wrong: 3,000 families applied for the 975 allotments available the first year of the program (1894). The program grew during the next two seasons (1,546 families participated in 1895, 1,701 families gardened in 1896).
The city’s agricultural committee kept records of the investments made into the program and the value of crops harvested. In 1896, the value of food produced in Detroit’s potato patches was greater than the money provided to needy citizens by the “poor commission.”
Read the complete article here.
Source: http://www.cityfarmer.info/2015/07/13/urban-agriculture-is-part-of-our-history/
