Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Colin Cureton on August 2, 2012 at 4:23pm

Great question, and a complicated one.

The flip side of this issue, of course, is whether Urban Farming can afford not to have a stronger presence in the private sector. See this wonderful article written by an urban farmer, social entrepreneur, and good friend Vinnie Bevivino. He has helped start several farms in the Maryland area, at least one for educational purposes and at least one under more of a for-profit model.

The article is called "Grant Funded Food Security? How Grant-Funded Urban Farming Can Teach Us, But Not Feed Us." Here's the link: http://www.seedandcycle.com/articles/grant-funded-food-security

There is likely a sweet-spot in the middle, and a place at the urban ag table for both nonprofit and for-profit urban farm projects, but it certainly is a tricky question.....

What do you think, Randel? Where do you see (or don't you see) the role of for-profit urban farming initiatives in the emerging good food revolution?

Permalink Reply by Randel Hanson on August 2, 2012 at 10:18pm

Colin

I dont think we really  know yet what will be viable units within a future local/urban farming system.  I think we need a lot of balls in the air, lots of experiments public, private, hybrid, commons, cooperative, etc., in nature.  I dont see corporations disappearing anytime soon, and 9 billion people will require lots of food.  Personally I am not bending my shoulder to the corporate wheel, but I am not abjectly against their entry into local foods.  That said, we've had a half century, and in a longer arc more than a century, of corporate centralization, deskilling and disassembling of local and regional capacity, in food systems and elsewhere.  Thomas Lyson in his _Civic Agriculture_ book cites some studies of corporatization in the post WWII period that are interesting and relevant to this discussion: how social capital in towns diminish in relation to the level of corporate activity... how power and resources in corporate systems tends to get centralized to locations elsewhere... but also how people who work in organizations in which decision making is centralized and distant participate differently in civic engagement, etc.  Lyson's recap of these studies is worth reading... but the point here is that, from this point of view, 'corporate' is antithetical to local foods if local foods also entails capacity building of local social capital.  Of course all of this can be disarticulated... but I agree with Bevivino that whatever is sustainable probably needs to function within a market of some sort... not necessarily (private) for profit but certainly economically self sustaining... sustained through the sale of goods and/or services.  My two cents at 10 at nite! 

Colin Cureton said:

Great question, and a complicated one.

The flip side of this issue, of course, is whether Urban Farming can afford not to have a stronger presence in the private sector. See this wonderful article written by an urban farmer, social entrepreneur, and good friend Vinnie Bevivino. He has helped start several farms in the Maryland area, at least one for educational purposes and at least one under more of a for-profit model.

The article is called "Grant Funded Food Security? How Grant-Funded Urban Farming Can Teach Us, But Not Feed Us." Here's the link: http://www.seedandcycle.com/articles/grant-funded-food-security

There is likely a sweet-spot in the middle, and a place at the urban ag table for both nonprofit and for-profit urban farm projects, but it certainly is a tricky question.....

What do you think, Randel? Where do you see (or don't you see) the role of for-profit urban farming initiatives in the emerging good food revolution?

Permalink Reply by Colin Cureton on August 6, 2012 at 12:31pm

Great thoughts, Randel.

I especially like your comments on the inverse relationship between corporate presence and rural social capital. I have seen this within many towns my extended family lives in throughout Central Illinois. Main Street is shuttered up and the economic hubs are now vapid strip malls centered around the town's Walmart. Many young people join the military or move away because they don't see much of a future in low-wage service sector jobs. Otherwise the areas are increasingly elderly and poor. And I think that it was only 50 years ago (so I'm told) that these towns were beacons of rural industry, family farms, and tight-knit community.

I think one of the challenges is parsing out the difference between "corporate" and "for-profit." Corporate is a coded word (like "neoliberal") that people use to suggest something much more than just for-profit, or even large and for-profit. I think it would do the movement some good to ponder this question some more....

I definitely see a middle road that includes socially/environmentally motivated nonprofits on one side, economically viable operations on the other through which people can make a half-way decent living on the other side, and our triple bottom line social entrepreneurs in the middle. Then, of course, you are also right that we need some deep thinking about the intersection of social and economic systems where we don't just drop projects into old hats (i.e. non-profit, for-profit, etc.) but rather create new ones.

I love the conversation. Let's keep it going. Also, I will most certainly pick up Lyson's "Civic Agriculture."

 

Permalink Reply by Michael Latsch on August 8, 2012 at 7:45am

Are they a step in a sustainable direction? Maybe so, or maybe not-I think that "urban farming" is too broad a category to be judged on environmental or financial sustainability all of a piece. 

Are they simply a somewhat greener corporate takeover of urban farming? So long as "urban corporate farms" are understood as such, I don't think the concept of takeover has much meaning for the near future-unless we think there is significant overlap between the VC-style capital funding that these operations are struggling for and the philanthropic-type funding that crunchier, smaller-scale urban farming operations struggle for.