BIOCYCLE MARCH 2012 23

IN West Oakland, California, be-hind a high plank board fence, alavender-backdropped geisha mu-ral stretching down its length, sitsthe Ranch at Dogtown whereKathryn Porter directs the farm-ing of 14,000 square feet on the

1.5-acre, 17-unit corner rental com-pound she owns. “Gardening is allabout soil,” she says, before leading abrief tour of the property’s several foodgardens. Since it was December, mostof the food beds which are all ground-level, were resting, some under layersof cardboard and stacks of old New YorkTimes; before layering, they received adose of chicken manure harvested fromthe 28 chickens that inhabit their ownlittle urban farmyard on the property’snorthwest corner in the shadow of aboarded, abandoned house that standsjust north of the ranch.

The paper and cardboard will slowlydissolve with the chicken manure andleave the soil nutrient-rich and readyfor a late-winter planting. When Porterbought the property 20-plus years ago,preparing the clay-dominated soil foragriculture took tremendous effort.Truckloads of biosolids from the East

Bay Municipal Utility District waste-water treatment plant, which stands onthe border of West Oakland a few milesaway, shredded tax returns, rice hullsand worm castings, slowly built a fertilesoil ready to grow food, says Porter.

About 20 blocks southeast, on a quar-ter-acre once-vacant city lot in WestOakland, stands Novella Carpenter’sGhost Town Farm. Carpenter chroni-cled the operation, which includes theraising of ducks, rabbits and two hu-mongous, ravenous pigs (fed largely bydumpster-diving in Oakland’s China-town and behind several of Berkeley’sposh restaurants) in her well-received2009 book Farm City. “Although myholding was small — and temporary —

I had come to realize,” wrote Carpentertoward the end of the book, “that urbanfarming wasn’t about one farm, just asa beehive isn’t about an individual bee.... Urban farms have to be added to-gether in order to make a farm.”

30 PERCENT GOALThe poverty-ridden, semiindustrial

neighborhood of West Oakland, one ofAmerica’s most prominent fooddeserts, is just one region of Oakland’sthriving urban farming milieu. In2006, the city made it a goal to get 30percent of its food from within the im-mediate region. To accomplish this, theOakland Mayor’s office initiated a foodsystems assessment and established

URBAN FARMINGGROWS IN OAKLAND

Making soils productive via organicsrecycling is a cornerstone of meeting thisCalifornia city’s goal to get 30 percent ofits food from within the immediate region.

Paul Hagey

CommunitySustainability

BUILDING HEALTHY SOILS

City Slicker Farms operates sevenurban farms in Oakland, including oneat Fitzgerald Park (top). The Ranch atDogtown covers beds between harvestand the next planting with layers ofcardboard, newspaper and chickenmanure (above).

the Oakland Food Policy Council thatsame year. The assessment estimatesthat 14,601 acres would be needed toreach the 30 percent goal.

“The next step,” said Esperanza Pal-lana, executive director of the 21-mem-ber Oakland Food Policy Council andan urban farmer herself, “was address-ing land access.” In 2009, the councilcommissioned “Cultivating the Com-

mons,” a GIS-based assessment of Oak-land public land, such as city and re-gional parks, for its suitability for ur-ban agriculture. The study concluded,conservatively, that there are 828 cul-tivatable acres on public land, thefarming of which “could produce up to5 percent of the city’s vegetable needsor 6 percent of its fruit needs.”

The study’s coauthor Nathan McClin-tock, a recent council member, says theone-year study was about creating a con-versation around how much food Oak-land could actually grow. “With 100acres,” taking into account the city’shabit of only eating 20 percent of the pro-duce it imports, he says,“you could grow one per-cent of the City’s needs.”

It’s hard, by urban agri-culture’s free-form, dis-parate structure, to quan-tify how much urbanfarming there is in Oak-land. However, the 2010Alameda County CropReport lists 21 certifiedurban farms in the countyfor a total of 109 acres;added to that are 215school gardens totaling 66acres and 19 communitygardens totaling 46 acres.And McClintock esti-mates that there about 50community-farmed gar-dens in the city.

The food policy councilis also working on renegotiating theCity of Oakland’s contract with its resi-dential and commercial food scraphauler Waste Management. Only 200

yards of compost comes back to Oaklandnow each year, says McClintock. Withan organized municipal organic wastesystem, says council member Chris Wa-ters, the city could retain more foodscraps for composting. According to a2006 Oakland Food System Assess-ment, food waste represents 24 percentof all single-family waste and 15.4 per-cent of commercial waste in the city. Ifall this were composted, it would resultin enough compost for 120 communitygardens, according to the study.

Oakland’s Department of Planningand Zoning is currently working on alocal food ordinance that will recom-

mend urban farming bestpractices for the city andoutline policies of a cityfarming system and its at-tendant production, pro-cessing, distribution, con-sumption and retail, andwaste management. “We’relooking at Oakland as aminifood system,” saysHeather Kline, a planner inthe department. Right now,the city’s addressing animalhusbandry, she says, whichhas become a popular farm-ing practice in Oakland.

Overall, adds Kline, Oak-land is assessing urbanfarm management. “How doyou address soil testing, fer-tilizers and creeks, noiseand odor and good manage-

ment practices around that? Whereshould the compost bins be? Howmany? Should there be differentkinds?” The ordinance will address

SCHOOL food gardens are nosmall part of the urban farmingpicture in Oakland or in Califor-

nia. Delaine Eastin, superintendentfor California public schools from1995 to 2003, started A Garden inEvery School www.cde.ca.gov/ls/nu/he/garden.asp program in 1999.During her tenure, she visitedschools in all 50 California counties,and estimates that now 3,000, andpossibly as many as 5,000, of Cali-fornia’s 9,000 public schools havea food garden. “Alice Waters,” ofthe famed Edible Schoolyard,based at Berkeley’s King MiddleSchool, “was one of my first allies,”says Eastin. “The program is a win,win, win on every level. Every gar-den has a compost pile and kidslearn that this is how soil is made. Ifyou put a garden in a school, youbuild a living laboratory.”

GARDEN IN EVERY SCHOOL

PAUL Quinn College in Dallas, Texasdecommissioned its football field in2006, in part because school ad-

ministrators wanted students to focusmore on learning and community ser-vice than on sports as a way to excel inlife. In May 2010, the gridiron was re-placed with 96 vegetable plots, whichnow serve as an outdoor classroom forcourses in botany and social en-trepreneurship, and which help feedcommunity members ranging from col-lege cafeteria patrons to area residents(the school is located in a food desertwith little access to fresh produce). Farmmanager Andrea Bithell, who managesthe college’s Food For Good Farm,helps students evaluate the efficacy ofvarious farming methods. This season’sexperiments will include plots amendedwith compost only, various organicallyapproved commercial soil amendment

products containing trace minerals, my-corrhizae fungi, coir (a coconut shellbased alternative to peat moss), liquidcompost extracts and sea minerals.

In addition to community residents,who can buy the organic produce at adiscounted price, the farm’s outlets in-clude local urban farmers markets andarea chefs. Students learn how to ana-lyze return on investment, e.g., howmuch money and time did it take to treatand maintain the bed or what they wereable to sell the produce for, says Bithell.Students take great pride in the foodthey grow, she adds, particularly thatwhich gets showcased in the schoolcafeteria. Besides being the highest-paid work-study job on campus, a posi-tion on the farm has now become one ofthe more prestigious. “It’s becoming abig deal to finally understand where yourfood comes from and how it’s treated,”

says Bithell. “That is something we allneed to be aware of. Knowing yourfarmer is a big deal.”

The college farm also donates al least10 percent of its produce to local foodbanks. A modest composting operation— “small enough that we can manage itwith a small tractor, but not by hand” —also receives donations of compostableorganics from places such as the NorthTexas Food Bank and Greenlings organ-ic food delivery service. A recent foodbank delivery included six pallets, about2,000 pounds worth, of spoiled bananas.“We’re calling it our ‘bananarama’ com-post,” says Bithell, noting that amendingsoils with compost is critical in a dry (anddrought-prone) climate. “The more or-ganic matter you can get into the soil, thebetter off you are going to be as far aswater retention. If you can add mulch,even better.”

FARMING ON THE 50 YARD LINE

An assessment ofOakland public landfor its suitability forurban agricultureidentified at least 838cultivatable acres thatcould produce up to 5percent of the city’svegetable needs.

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26 BIOCYCLE MARCH 2012

some of these items, she says, whichthe Oakland City Council will considersometime mid-2012.

SOIL AND HARD WORKA tangle of worms, in various shades

of red, writhe in Max Cadji’s palm abovean open worm bin at People’s Grocery’scommunity garden at the California Ho-tel, a low-income residence in West Oak-land. Cadji manages the hotel gardenfor People’s Grocery, a West Oaklandfood equity organization. The wormsfeed on spent coffee grounds and mush-room blocks from the Berkeley-basedoyster mushroom business Back to theRoots and on food scraps gathered fromtwo West Oakland grocery stores.

Cadji says that People’s Grocery getsabout 700 pounds of spent coffeegrounds and mushroom blocks alongwith 70 pounds of food scraps everyother week. The worm castings makerich soil for the farm, and the wormsare sold for about $20/pound to areabusinesses. He estimates that about 70pounds of produce are harvested eachweek from the garden.

Several community groups and mul-tiple individuals like Kathryn Porterfarm in Oakland. “We’re in a wholeecosystem,” says City Slicker Farmsexecutive director Barbara Finnin.When City Slicker Farms, an urbanagriculture collective that now oper-ates seven urban farms in Oakland be-gan in 2001, the organization used bi-cycle rickshaws to pick up food scrapsfor composting from neighborhood res-idences. The organization now re-stricts food scrap harvesting to thetwo produce grocery stores in WestOakland.

In 2010, City Slicker Farms recycled22 tons of organic waste, includinghorse manure, which became about 11

tons of compost, Finnin says. Howev-er, the organization is transitioning tohorse manure as raw material forcompost, because rats were becomingan issue. At one of the organization’ssmall farm sites at Fitzgerald Park,which lies at the base of a local high-way, farm apprentice Kevin Dolepoints to the compost bins, now full ofhay and chicken manure. When theyheld food scraps, he says, “every timewe’d go to the compost bin, there’d bea giant rat.”

When asked about the limits of urbanfarming, Finnin cites land access as be-ing really difficult. In 2010, City SlickerFarms, one of the larger of Oakland’sfarmers, produced over 9,600 pounds ofproduce on 21,569 square feet spread

over its seven farm sites. It also assist-ed West Oakland residents grow a totalof about 24,000 pounds in about 100backyards through the organization’sBackyard Garden Program, whichhelps place small raised food gardens ininterested West Oakland residents’backyards. There are about 30,000 res-idents in West Oakland, and the aver-age person eats about 300 to 400 poundsof produce a year, explains Finnin.“We’re just not growing enough,” butshe adds that there’s great promise forurban agriculture. “There’s a wealth ofresources for farming in a city,” saysFinnin, but “it’s hard work.” �

Paul Hagey is a freelance writer based inOakland, California.

LEAD contamination is often an is-sue in urban soils. In West Oak-land’s South Prescott neighbor-

hood, the U.S.Environmental Pro-tection Agency hasinitiated a demonstra-tion project to showhow high levels ofdangerous forms oflead in soils can bemitigated by the addi-tion of ground fishbones. The bones,high in calcium-phos-phate, react with thelead to make it a sta-ble, harmless com-pound, explains Steve Calanog, theproject’s manager. Instead of remov-ing contaminated soil, “we take the

perspective that the soil’s sick, and wecan make it healthy,” he says. It takes3.5 pounds of fish bones per square

foot. But fish bones arenot a requirement.Calanog stresses thatcompost, when usedover several years, isoften more accessible

for homeowners and can be just as ef-fective in immobilizing harmful forms oflead in the soil.

REMEDIATING CONTAMINATED SOILS

USEPA initiated ademonstration project,managed by SteveCalanog (left), to showhow high levels of leadin soils can bemitigated by addingground fish bones.

COMPOSTING • RENEWABLE ENERGY • SUSTAINABILITY

63 S. Seventh St., Emmaus, PA 18049-3097610-967-4135 • www.biocycle.net

Reprinted With Permission From:March, 2012