Fort Greene CSA Launches Today
Today at 4 p.m. the Fort Greene CSA will celebrate its first day of distribution with cooking demonstrations, composting workshops and even some live music. It’ll all go down at the northeast corner of Fort Greene Park at Myrtle and Washington Park. The food buying club, which is many months in the works, currently has…
Today at 4 p.m. the Fort Greene CSA will celebrate its first day of distribution with cooking demonstrations, composting workshops and even some live music. It’ll all go down at the northeast corner of Fort Greene Park at Myrtle and Washington Park. The food buying club, which is many months in the works, currently has more than 60 members that will share in this season’s harvest from participating farmers from New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania. The CSA got its start through the joint efforts of MARP, FUREE and Just Food. Given all the talk about the lack of fresh produce items available to residents of the Whitman and Ingersoll Houses, it’s interesting that the CSA was able to sell half its shares to low-income earners through a combination of Food Stamps, subsidies and a revolving loan fund. Nice!
This is where the economy needs to go. We won’t have any choice at some point in the not too distant future.
Local and regional agriculture needs access to markets and the consumer pressure to make it grow. Also, school systems throughout the region are realizing they need to teach more about agriculture, support CSAs and create or enhance existing school gardening programs. Many elementary schools in the NE might have a school learning garden but the kids have nothing in middle and high school to continue the educational experience.
Every calorie of food you put in your mouth is estimated to require about 10 calories of effort to produce. Much of these are from the petrochemicals used in fertilizer and herb/pesticides. Trucking food from FL and CA also requires enormous amounts of fossil fuel to get it to your store shelf.
By supporting CSA and local/regional farmers at the City’s many green markets, you are cutting out much of the waste and pollution involved in shipping food from 3000 miles away.
Also, we now have frozen vegetables and fruit coming from South America and China…does this make that much sense. Of course, you might not be able to grow mango and durian in Brooklyn, but getting peas from Ecuador, apples from New Zealand, Cascadian brand frozen raspberries from Chile…?
Like the Victory Gardens of WWII and as some of our forebearers grew beans, basil, tomatoes, etc. on fire escapes and roofs, we need to green-up NYC: community gardens, rooftops, balconies, window sills.
And, for those who are into it, you can grow citrus in pots such as the Meyer lemon. In fact, many varieties of citrus will grow at our latitude.
So find out more and support CSA projects, farmers’ markets and community gardens!
FortGreeneGardener
“Community Supported Agriculture”
What is a CSA?
And Washington Park was a past name for Fort Greene Park. Be nice to do an article on the various CSA’s in the area (Clinton Hill, not Fort Greene, etc). Also how are the efforts to start a food co-op in the area going?
Washington Park is a street that borders the eastern side of Ft Green Park
So this is at two locations? NE Fort Green Park and at Washington Hall Park? Washington Park is at 183rd St, not in Brooklyn.
“FUREE”…LOL