Urban Ag Mapping Party with Farming Concrete

Farming Concrete  is a project to measure food production in NYC community gardens for the 2010 growing season. One critical component to making this a success is drawing plot maps and doing crop inventory - something anyone could do and that only takes an hour or two!

We've just launched the Mappers' Map - our means of coordinating mapping across the city. Our goal is to turn all of the blue markers GREEN by mid-September!

If you have a few hours to spare and want an excuse to hang out in community gardens, please choose a few gardens to tackle and email volunteer@farmingconcrete.com for detailed instructions. Mapping urban agriculture is really fun, and you may be surprised at the incredible variety of yummy edibles we can grow in NYC!

More about Farming Concrete:

Farming Concrete is a study quantifying food production in NYC community gardens, fiscally sponsored by the Open Space Institute and partnered with GreenThumb (NYC Dept. of Parks and Recreation), Just Food, and New York Restoration Project. A team of volunteer researchers, students, interns, and gardeners are working with hundreds of gardens to map areas under production, measure total acreage, and track harvest volume by crop. For the first time, metrics will be developed to estimate yield from a small, poly-culture raised bed, a common model for urban agriculture with characteristics that differ vastly from large-scale conventional agriculture.  This information would also inform any new shifts in policy related to urban agriculture and push New York City ahead of the curve in expanding urban food production. The data from this will be available to the public and will be able to answer for each garden and for all gardens as a whole, “We at ___ Community Garden grew ___ pounds of food in ____ square feet, which is worth $___ and prevented approximately ___lbs of greenhouse gases from entering the atmosphere.”