Thousands of vacant lots remain abandoned in Philadelphia while parkland is farmed commercially. When this happens other places in the world such as South America, we call it "deforestation". Here we call it progress.
Urban farming is great and the Awbury Arboretum/Weavers Way farm is great but maybe not great enough to convert part of an arboretum (read “place for trees”) into farmland, especially when thousands of vacant, abandoned lots could be greened or farmed and certainly not great enough to disregard our own laws which, in this case, require going through the zoning process to use parkland for commercial purposes.
I have asked the Mayor and City Council to take action where the response of the Department of Licenses and Inspections is to look the other way.
The co-op is slathering the farm as an educational thing while as a member I'm taking the profits of parkland used as a farm and rented below commercial property value to the bank- win- win, right? Awbury gets money from the lease. And I get fresh food cheap because it's really cheap to farm on parkland; if anything, the coop is making the case for converting some of the city's vast Fairmount Park land into farmland; I happen to think that the higher good is turning vacant lots into green, gardened or farmed areas.
