Urban Farming in Philadelphia

Abstract

Food is the very basis of our lives, and is a common language throughout the global community. With an increasingly globalized food system, many different subsistence measures have come from it, as well as different communities who are served and disadvantaged by it, especially within American cities, like Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Currently, there is an abundance of demographic information on who is farming in rural areas of the U.S. using conventional methods, but urban farming is still considered niche and perceived to be an alternative method. At the time of the 2010 U.S. Census, 80.7 percent of the nation’s population lived in urban areas. Currently, the U.S. Department of Agriculture does not keep data on urban farmers, which means that those producing fresh foods in all of the nation’s population are not being tracked or accounted for. The purpose of this study is to develop an understanding of who is farming as a business in Philadelphia, what they are growing, what methods they are using, and their reasons for becoming involved in the urban agriculture. We intend to use the data collected from this study to better understand the collective identity of Philadelphia’s urban farmers and to allow them to better serve their communities