Bloomington Urban Garden Project

The Bloomington Urban Garden Project investigates farmer-environment and farmer-culture interactions in the time of rapid cultural and climate variability to build awareness, advocate discussion, and approach policy attention around small urban and peri-urban farmers. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, by 2030 two thirds of human populations will be urban dwellers (Baudoin & Drescher, 2008). Rapid urbanization increases urban poverty and urban food insecurity; planning practices as well as community involvement can help to mitigate these negative effects when implemented well. Poor implementation strategies and exclusion of community voices can heighten the problems that come with urbanization and further disadvantage low-income and minority communities (Mcclintock, 2010; Baudoin & Drescher, 2008). This project, undertaken in spring 2020 Urban Alternative Agriculture course, and in collaboration with the City of Bloomington, the Environmental Resilience Institute (ERI), seeks to understand the impacts of urban and peri-urban farming and their contributions to community resilience, environmental resilience, and economic viability to the community of Bloomington at large.

Urban Agriculture (UA), Peri-Urban Agriculture (UPA), intensive gardens, and other homesteads are increasingly connected to poverty alleviation and community resilience, as well as human-environment adaption (Milestad & Hadatsch, 2003; Campos et al., 2014; Calvo-Iglesias et al., 2006).

 By decreasing the scale of the food system, local urban communities can support each other through the development of community relationships and their agency inside of the food system (Alkon & Agyeman, 2011). The connection between farmer perspectives and actual outcomes is vital in elucidating potential for close farmer-environment and farmer-community relations.

Although many farmers may engage in climate adaptability practices, few explicitly state that climate change influenced these actions (Campos et al., 2014). This project will identify motivations or lack thereof for specific practices by urban and peri-urban farmers. We hypothesize that urban farming and agriculture in Bloomington, Indiana fortifies farmer-community relationships and increase s both perceived and actualized local ecological resilience. 

To increase qualitative value and encourage more open conversation, semi-structured interviews were conducted in April 2020 among Bloomington urban farmers and intensive gardeners (Kallio et al., 2016).  Questions ranged across multiple dimensions to understand farmer intent and perception around community resilience, environmental resilience, and monetary/social capital within urban agriculture.

Interviews consisted of nine questions collectively gathered from the City of Bloomington, the Environmental Resilience Institute (ERI), and our Alternative Urban Agriculture project interest. The questions were arranged into three categories that summarizes the research hypotheses. Questions ranged across multiple dimensions to understand farmer intent and perception around community resilience, environmental resilience, and monetary/social capital within urban agriculture.

Due to the onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic, the research methods were altered to accommodate the Stay-in-Place order given by Indiana Governor Holcomb. Beginning with an initial call list of 30 potential farmers, our final response was 10 completed interviews with or without permission to map locations. The methods of research were originally based on semi-structured telephone interviews and on-farm interviews, but we were resigned to only phone or virtual calls. The on-farm interviews would have allowed us to build a rapport with our research farms to better understand how the farmers personally interact with their spaces. But biggest limitations with the research during the pandemic was building an interview pool via email. 

We found that diverse farming practices were being cultivated across our research parameters; from farmers solely working as independent farmers, to family gardens, to crowd sourced volunteer and donation driven permaculture gardens.

The type of gardening does not deflect participants empowerment and passionate about contributing to their local food system. 

 Regardless of the farming practices, garden size, the impact these farmers have to the local food system is accomplished by decreasing food miles with personal use, donations to the local pantries and contributing to the local economy by selling and trading their goods.

This creation of food sovereignty and food autonomy helps connects communities together with use of ecological services and close-knit urban farming network s to provide a balanced social-ecological and community resilience. 

We would like to thank Theresa Quill and Dr. Olga Kalentzidou for their guidance in our research project. Special thanks to all the farmers who generously provided pictures of their land. All photos and maps are from ESRI, Google Maps, or participants.

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Alkon, A. H., & Agyeman, J. (Eds.). (2011). Cultivating food justice: Race, class, and sustainability. MIT press. 

Baudoin, W., & Drescher, A. (2008). Urban agriculture for sustainable poverty alleviation and food security. Rome: FAO.  

Besser, T. L. (2009). Changes in small town social capital and civic engagement. Journal of rural studies, 25(2), 185-193. 

Campos, M., Velázquez, A., & McCall, M. (2014). Adaptation strategies to climatic variability: A case study of small-scale farmers in rural Mexico. Land Use Policy, 38, 533-540. 

Calvo-Iglesias, M. S., Crecente-Maseda, R., & Fra-Paleo, U. (2006). Exploring farmer's knowledge as a source of information on past and present cultural landscapes: A case study from NW Spain. Landscape and urban planning, 78(4), 334-343. 

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Mcclintock, N. (2010). Why farm the city? Theorizing urban agriculture through a lens of metabolic rift. Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, 3(2), 191–207. doi: 10.1093/cjres/rsq005 

Milestad, R., & Hadatsch, S. (2003). Organic farming and social-ecological resilience: the alpine valleys of Sölktäler, Austria. Conservation Ecology, 8(1). 

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Kallio, H., Pietilä, A. M., Johnson, M., & Kangasniemi, M. (2016). Systematic methodological review: Developing a framework for a qualitative semi‐structured interview guide. Journal of advanced nursing, 72(12), 2954-2965.