Michelle Obama to visit San Diego Community Farm
Michelle Obama is visiting San Diego to promote her campaign against childhood obesity.
The first lady will tour the New Roots Community Farm on Thursday afternoon as she promotes her campaign to encourage healthy eating for youngsters.
New Roots is the project of The IRC (International Rescue Committee), which is staffed by local heroes like Amy Lint and Ellee Igoe. They had to work like dogs to get this farm started and it's now the subject of a coordinated grassroots campaign to reform the city's laws around urban ag and community farms. You see, it cost tens of thousands of dollars to start this farm before spending any money on tools, seeds, or anything else. All that money was just to get through the various permitting processes required by the City of San Diego.
I don't have the details exactly, but it sounded to me that you need a good $10,000 or so to get a water meter installed, and then after that, you have to deal with various regulations that were not made with urban ag in mind at all. If you want to put up a structure, the city's laws were made for someone developing a condo building, not a tool shed. If you say you're doing agriculture, the city's laws worry about pesticide and fertilizer run-off, which isn't an issue if you're using sustainable methods. And so on and so on. At one point, San Diego even called a moratorium on new community gardens due to our water shortage - even though swimming pools, golf courses, and green lawns are all a-OK.
Despite this, the IRC still created New Roots Community Farm, which I believe is about 2 1/2 acres located in the City Heights neighborhood (an area with lots of immigrants from diverse backgrounds). I believe all of the folks who farm at New Roots are immigrants, often from Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
In another project, The IRC teamed up with Tierra Miguel (an absolutely amazing local farm) to provide Somali Bantu immigrants with a few acres at Tierra Miguel where they can farm. Tierra Miguel isn't as close to home as New Roots (it's quite a drive from San Diego actually), but the program's a huge success. From what I hear, quite a few of the elderly Somali Bantu immigrants had farming backgrounds and, without land to farm, felt lonely and depressed in their new country, surrounded by a new culture. Tierra Miguel offers them an escape from isolation and depression, and it also allows them to pass down their farming skills to their grandchildren and to provide their families with healthy food.
So I don't know what Michelle Obama will see or talk about when she's here, but I hope she learns a little about the background of the farm. The folks who made New Roots happen deserve the recognition they are getting today, and so do the farmers at New Roots. Now maybe the city government will pay attention to the First Lady, and get their heads out of their asses and fix local policies. (Last I heard, the city was saying that they've streamlined the urban ag permitting process and now all they need is a guinea pig with several thousand bucks to try it out and see if it is indeed better.) |
