The US Government is Loaning Millions of Dollars To Jumpstart Urban Farming (businessinsider.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Every year, the US Department of Agriculture devotes millions of dollars to farmers in rural areas. The government is increasingly starting to offer assistance to urban farms, too. In 2016, the USDA funded a dozen urban farms, the highest number in history, Val Dolicini, the administrator for the USDA Farm Services Agency, tells Business Insider. In 2017, he expects the USDA to funnel even more money toward farms on rooftops, in greenhouses, and in warehouses. USDA Microloans, a program that offers funding up to $50,000, is specifically geared toward urban farmers. Established in 2013, the program has awarded 23,000 loans worth $518 million to farms in California, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. Though it is open to all farmers, urban farmers often apply for it because it offers the money on a smaller scale than other programs. Seventy percent (or about 16,100 of those loans) have gone to new farmers, many of them in cities.

Comments

Waste of money

[mingot]

Cities are a terrible place to try to grow food. Spend the money doing it where the results are worth the effort. This is almost as bad as solar panels street surfaces.

Re:Waste of money

[drinkypoo]

Cities are a terrible place to try to grow food. Spend the money doing it where the results are worth the effort.

That is what they're doing. When the salad mix industry was invented, it wasn't for consumers. It was for food service institutions. Pre-mixed salads didn't appear in stores until much, much later. The majority of what is being grown in the US in cities is greens. The greens are being grown hydroponically in/on vertical towers, which minimizes the use of space. Salad doesn't travel well, and there is typically a lot of waste. Producing it near the point of consumption addresses both of these issues and reduces the cost. Greens are probably the crop most viable in the city, so that's what you'd expect to see produced most, and that's actually what is happening.

The people behind the modern farm-to-table movement didn't invent it because they wanted to be cool. They were trying to both cut costs and increase quality. Modern food production methods produce an inferior product in the name of convenience. Going back to local production and seasonal vegetables means eating better-quality food. But this is a way of having fresh greens year-round and in fact at a competitive price because so much of the packaging and transport is taken out of the equation.