Wanted: More Practical Discussions of Urban Farming

Just months after celebrating their success in getting their city to change its zoning laws to allow for urban agriculture, two young city farmers learned the land they'd been leasing had been sold. They also began to come to grips with the reality that together, they'd earned about $15,000. (Yes, $7,500 a person--for the entire year). So they wonder, what to do next?

Their plight is far from uncommon in the oft-celebrated world of urban agriculture, which is why I was left wanting more from the otherwise impressive new book, Carrot City: Creating Places for Urban Agriculture. The book, which began as a traveling exhibition, argues that, in the past few decades, urban agriculture has advanced from being a brainiac futurist concept to a fertile plan for real-world solutions. It showcases 40 projects, with the aim of demonstrating how the production of food can lead to "visually striking and artistically interesting solutions that create community and provide inhabitants with immediate access to fresh, healthful ingredients." In so doing, Carrot City follows a general trend of considering urban ag as a design issue rather than an economic/government/agriculture one.