[Thank you to Beth Partin for posting this on her blog: Beth at Home and Abroad]

During her keynote speech at the Grow Food Symposium, Oakland farmer Novella Carpenter made a joke about living next to vegans while raising “edible pets.” It was one of many laugh-out-loud moments that evening. She told stories of cruising the dumpsters  of Chinatown for scraps to feed her pigs and ordering turkey poults online: “They looked stunned” when she took them out of the box and put them in their new home in the parking lot she turned into  a farm.

Carpenter noted that growing vegetables was much less lucrative than growing pot and then asked, “What plant do you want to commune with?” Jokes aside, the topic of making urban farming profitable came up again and again at the symposium. “It’s a hustle,” Carpenter said, and she wasn’t just talking about her own farm. She wants her neighbors in Oakland to make a living as well.

I had no idea that many people consider urban farming to be a cute hobby or that some urban farmers consider the nonprofit farm model to be a problem. Amanda Weaver of Five Fridges Farm and Derek Mullen of Everitt Farms think that the best way to get people to value locally grown food is to charge a fair price for it. She stresses that farmers are business owners.

Although many attendees do make money from their farms, and although Lisa Rogers of Feed Denver, which hosted the symposium, said it’s possible to earn $20,000 from a quarter-acre farm, no one was pretending urban farming was a get-rich-quick scheme. Weaver, for example, teaches geography at CU–Denver in addition to farming, and Mullen said that he and his wife Khamise made more money from selling Christmas trees in 2014 than from selling produce.

Diversifying is the key to success in more ways than one. Urban farmers don’t grow monocultures; they plant a variety of vegetables and herbs close to each other, making it more difficult for weeds to flourish and for one insect to wipe out an entire crop. They may sell cottage foods and eggs as well as produce. All of them are trying to build community in some way, but most of all, they want to rebuild local and regional food infrastructure.

And that, I think, may be where many of the future jobs in urban farming lie. Feed Denver’s website states that there are about 300 farms in Colorado that produce vegetables. Lisa Rogers wants that number to grow to a million small farms producing food for local consumption.

So Colorado needs a lot of farmers, yes, but it also needs people to train them, to help improve the soil, topickle the vegetables, to slaughter the chickens when they are too old to lay anymore. It needs people to set up local versions of the High Plains Food Coop and a labor cooperative to funnel workers to farmers when they most need help—during planting and harvest.

What else do urban farmers need? Candice Orlando of Urbiculture Community Farms stressed that access to land is problematic now in Denver, with its soaring real estate values. Urbiculture is a nonprofit multi-plot farm that grows food in yards and other spaces throughout Denver. One of their locations was recently sold for $3 million. Dan Graeve of True Roots Farm told a similar story. His farm has recently moved to a new location on the border between Golden and Arvada, and the old location will be developed.

Until urban farms are valued as highly as parks, for example, people will continue to sell their land to developers rather than leasing it to farmers. Sundari Kraft of Heirloom Gardens suggested convincing city officials to provide a tax deduction to people leasing their yards to urban farmers.

Chris Sramek of High Plains Food Coop spoke of bridging the urban-rural divide by telling people in rural areas what they want to hear. They want young people to return to rural areas, so if you can show that young people are interested in starting small farms, you will be able to convince politicians to value urban farming more.

The most important idea I took from this symposium was that of abundance—that there is room and to spare for Denverites to produce more of their own food, in small farms, in gardens, on roofs, and in greenhouses. And not only that: many homeowners are open to the idea of someone leasing their land. One attendee said he uses Google Maps to find land for farming. He claimed there is a lot of land people don’t want to take care of and they will line up to get someone to garden it.

Who knew growing in soil would be so revolutionary in the 21st century? Around the world people are realizing one of the healthiest responses to climate change is to develop farming practices that steward and protect land while producing healthy, natural food. Even in cities, soil farming is proving to be an antidote to the limited and dismal opportunities of our low wage, service industry heavy job markets. Learn more about being a farmer in the city at the Grow Food Symposium, March 20 & 21st.

The fastest growing job sector is the service industry with its hard, uninspiring, long hours, and limited advancement opportunities. Jobs where you are the public face of a company that does not support you with insurance, family leave, or retirement options. Fast food, health care, prison, retail stores, phone banks, data input, video scanning, child care, teaching, and the list goes on. Some of these are honorable jobs, some just placeholders until robots can fill the need. All of them offering minimal wage or less, none of them providing long term commitment or security to you.

Urban farming actually offers an interesting alternative in this service-heavy job market. If you are a self-starting, creative, hands-on sort of person urban farming can provide a modest income in an environment you build yourself, maybe even in your own backyard.

A small yard can build a solid supplemental income while also providing home-grown food for your family. This sort of financial offset can be significant when you consider the average organic vegetable ranges from $3-8 per pound. If you can have chickens you will never need to buy eggs again. At $6 and more per dozen for pasture raised hen eggs this is noteworthy.

A creative, entrepreneurial-minded urban farmer with access to a quarter acre of front and back yard space can gross up to $20K per year and more. The use of regenerative soil techniques and agrarian principles will bring more than a return on the investment of the first years but will lead to rapidly diminishing investment needs in future years. A healthy farm builds itself with proper care.    

This is not easy work but it’s not as bad as working for a landscape company, construction crew, or even in a restaurant kitchen. It takes a person who is not afraid of getting dirty, who enjoys the outdoors, and who will put in the time it takes to get a job done. The hours are flexible but the work requires commitment.

The most difficult part of the work of being an urban farmer is finding your market. Where does an urban farmer find people who want to eat healthy local food these days? What about people looking for healthy worm and soil products for their own gardens? The very special gift city farmers have is they live in communities full of people who eat and garden. And we are blessed in Denver and Colorado to have governments and zoning that respect the economic and environmental opportunities offered to neighborhoods with urban farms and gardens. The City of Denver Cottage Food Act allows a person to sell produce and simple baked and canned goods from their very own front porch. Attracting customers is dependent on your own community engaging creativity. Working a farm might be a solitary endeavor but selling to market is definitely not. Growing a product and selling it to your neighbor is at the true heart of economics. This is what creates a healthy community and a strong business – farming in the city.

What do future urban farmers look like in 2015? Meet Jamie Purcell and Cassandra Bush. These power women run the Wyoming Food for Thought Project - an organization dedicated to creating systemic change in their local food system through direct outreach to children through weekend food bags, as well as the management of year-round farmers markets and community gardens.

The food issues we have in cities are endemic. One single approach is not going to solve this convoluted and complicated problem. Jamie and Cassie are dedicated to chipping away at both ends. Making healthy food available to children in food desert communities while simultaneously teaching and encouraging new urban farmers in these very communities. Nothing is more empowering than growing food where there is little and creating a business that helps feed your family and your soul at the same time.

Jamie and Cassie are looking forward to the Grow Food Symposium where they can connect with other grassroots organizers, learn more about urban farming, and create lasting partnerships.

My husband and I are aspiring urban farmers in Denver. We're finding that some of our biggest challenges with getting our hands dirty is connecting with the right resources and finding land. We're experiencing that the most valuable information and the most helpful resources are from the small network of farmers in the area, growers and those that are involved in the urban farming movement. The networks and relationships that we're starting to build are providing us with the most momentum and inspiration to move forward.  We have learned that there is no handbook to figuring out our challenges, but we instead need to continue to build networks with other people and join forces with other farmers for us to begin to develop our urban farm and our ideas.

We're anticipating that the 'Grow Food Symposium' will give us an opportunity to not only meet some of the more significant figures in the urban farming movement, but it will give a chance to add more to our web of resources and relationships. We hope to gain specific knowledge from the speakers at the symposium of what has worked for them and what has failed. We're looking forward to making those connections that will help us move our venture forward and possibly partner up with others that understand we have to work together at some level.