{"id":12508,"date":"2017-05-08t12:17:19","date_gmt":"2017-05-08t12:17:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dpetrov.2create.studio\/planet\/wordpress\/urban-ag-or-jungle-ag-young-farmers-explore-better-food-systems\/"},"modified":"2023-02-28t18:49:31","modified_gmt":"2023-02-28t18:49:31","slug":"urban-ag-or-jungle-ag-young-farmers-explore-better-food-systems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"\/\/www.getitdoneaz.com\/story\/urban-ag-or-jungle-ag-young-farmers-explore-better-food-systems\/","title":{"rendered":"urban ag or jungle ag: young farmers explore better food systems"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>by darby hopper<\/strong><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">chicago \u2014 kassie hinrichsen had no idea she would end up with a farm in a warehouse of the old stockyards district of chicago. after her graduation from the university of minnesota, the 28-year-old moved to south america to work on rural farms in ecuador and colombia.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">but life took her back to her midwestern roots, and a google search for \u201curban farms in chicago\u201d took her to <a href=\"http:\/\/plantchicago.org\/\">the plant<\/a>. she was hooked by the start-ups that turn waste into resources and joined the organization in 2013.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">the plant, also called plant chicago, housed in a 93,000-square-foot former meat processing business, focuses on circular economies of food production. hinrichsen serves as the education and outreach manager for plant chicago, the non-profit working with developer and building owner bubbly dynamics. she works to deliver plant chicago\u2019s message \u2014 that people should think differently about food, waste and the environment. the focus is on students on the city\u2019s south side, where the plant is located, but the plant attracts visitors from across the city and beyond. &nbsp;<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">seventeen food-producing businesses, from an aquaponics system to a mushroom farm to a kombucha brewery, call the plant home. the systems are interconnected: for example, spent beer grain from whiner brewery and coffee chaff from 4 letter word coffee come together to make bio-briquettes, a fuel source.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">\u201cthe circular economy promotes rethinking what waste is,\u201d hinrichsen said.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">across the united states, the number of households growing their own food is on the rise. the highest increases are with millennials: 18 to 34-year-olds are the fastest growing segment of the population to start their own food gardens, according to a 2014 report from the national gardening association.<\/p>\n<p>dave whitinger, the nga\u2019s executive director, said that these young people are largely driven by the local food movement.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cthey don\u2019t really identify themselves as gardeners but they\u2019re growing their own food,\u201d whitinger said. \u201ca big reason for that is that they\u2019re not gardening for the sake of gardening; they\u2019re gardening because of the result they get from it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>the nga report found that one in three american households grow some portion of the food they consume. but urban areas often do not have the access to land available in the suburbs. plant chicago works to make small-scale food systems available to chicagoans, with an emphasis on its south side neighbors, through farmers markets and programmed workshops showing people how to farm in small spaces. &nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>the trends, already visible in american society, have a global reach.<\/p>\n<p>twelve hundred miles south of miami, a group of young americans, europeans and australians joined by a few of their latin american counterparts are establishing an eco-city in the jungles of panama with farm-to-table agriculture. the village, named kalu yala, is dedicated to the pursuit of sustainable lifestyles, an endeavor propelled by the dozens of interns that dedicate ten weeks at a time to learning and doing in the valley.<\/p>\n<p>kalu yala offers educational programming in everything from business to outdoor recreation to media arts. the largest program is in sustainable agriculture. jon trimarco, the director of the program, started at kalu yala over a year ago. after spending two years in ghana with the peace corps, trimarco, 29, wanted to pursue farming because it links the intersection of humanity and the natural world. &nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>\u201ca lot of young americans, a lot of young europeans are kind of realizing \u2014 because, you know, from a generational aspect, we\u2019ve been raised in the cities already and we have that excess and that privilege and we\u2019re already immersed in that environment \u2014 we\u2019re kind of realizing that that\u2019s not quite enough,\u201d trimarco said. \u201cwe want a connection with nature and to smell soil and have dirt under our fingernails and we want to work with the rhythms of the land.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>jonathan pereira, plant chicago\u2019s executive director, also noted the trend, pointing out that every major industrial area in america has a local food movement. &nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>\u201cin a lot of ways what we\u2019re talking about is becoming more like a developing country in terms of sourcing local, using little energy, minimizing the amount of resources that go in, reusing as much as possible,\u201d pereira said. \u201cit\u2019s sort of like a developed country with a lot of abundance trying to act as if there isn\u2019t an abundance.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>trimarco directs his students to develop projects \u2014 almost like micro-level start-ups \u2014 in the area of the farm dedicated to experimental agriculture. from hydroponics to better methods of composting, trimarco\u2019s students try out new farming techniques to ideally apply in the \u201creal world\u201d after they leave kalu yala. they even created walking trails with edible plants along the way. &nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>\u201cultimately, we want to be asking ourselves, \u2018does this drive us toward a better symbiosis with the environment that we\u2019re in?\u2019\u201d trimarco said. \u201cdoes it lead to conservation in its long terms?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>whitinger thinks that after farmers markets and home gardens, the future of the local food movement is raising animals \u2014 true small-scale farming.<\/p>\n<p>\u201canybody can grow tomatoes and anybody can grow a lettuce or a spinach or something like that,\u201d whitinger said. \u201cthat\u2019s really the next step, to get more into being more self-sufficient: raising your own animals\u2026 a lot of cities are changing their ordinances to allow people to keep hens in their backyard. that\u2019s where a lot of the excitement is heading right now.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>but while permaculture \u2014 agriculture systems designed to mirror sustainable natural systems \u2014 is great for individual homes or small communities, it cannot scale up to address the problems of the world\u2019s demand for food, trimarco said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201chow do we take these really cool, fun, often quirky food-producing systems, like aquaponics, how do we make that stuff actually work on a global scale?\u201d trimarco said. \u201cright now, we\u2019re in a situation where, globally, we have the vast majority of food that\u2019s produced, especially in places like the u.s., in ways that are not really sustainable, especially in terms of soil health or in terms of environmental degradation or even just in terms of promoting human health.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>that reality is especially true when it comes to the world\u2019s cities, according to pereira. pereira said that efforts to utilize local farms and avoid waste, particularly in the united states, move cities in the right direction. &nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>\u201cyou have to account for the importing of big grain products \u2014 corn, wheat, soy, things like that \u2014 into cities to be able to exist,\u201d pereira said. \u201c(but)&nbsp;the local\/regional food movement happening in a lot of cities driven by high-end chefs, in particular, is exciting\u2026 you can pick pretty much any major city and there\u2019s probably a culinary movement there to source local.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>young people are exploring food systems through farming. we compared the group we met while in panama with an urban farm on the south side of chicago.&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9417,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4919,4896,4900],"tags":[3786,2092,3787,3788],"storyfest_categories":[],"class_list":["post-12508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-agriculture","category-food","category-green-living","tag-kalu-yala","tag-panama","tag-plant-chicago","tag-the-plant"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- this site is optimized with the yoast seo plugin v24.1 - 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