Last Friday, I finally got the chance to visit Garden State Urban Farms (GSUF) in Newark. It was probably one of the most amazing places I’ve been in my life. Unfortunately, the lot that the farm currently resides on was only on-loan from the City, and is now going to be used for a low-income housing development. Most of the Earthboxes were gone by that point, they had already been moved to other locations, but the ones remaining still had some awesome fresh produce growing in it. I got to pick my own lettuce, zucchini, and golden beets. While I was there we met with a woman who worked for the Newark Housing Authority (NHA). Based on everything we discussed, the partnership between the City and GSUF, if allowed to come to full fruition, could become a vehicle for serious social change in Newark, and in other depressed communities. The possibilities for expanding GSUF are endless. We tossed around ideas like, a partnership with UMDNJs nutrition program to develop nutrition and cooking classes for people living in communities with a working urban farm.

Currently, GSUF has a number of partnerships with local schools, both public and private, where they have provided Earthboxes and educational materials for the schools to set up their own box gardens. In-ground planting is not an option for urban schools with very limited space; Earthboxes overcome this hurdle. They allow schools to set up gardens anywhere there is empty space with ample sunlight, such as a courtyard or rooftop. The company has also developed an accompanying curriculum for every grade level. Using gardening as an educational tool helps students completely reshape their conception of food, showing how feasible it is to grow fresh real food, and highlighting the negative aspects of processed and fast food. GSUF eventually wants to expand to not only educate kids about nutrition, but whole communities.

Over the weekend I read an article in the New York Times about Jamie Oliver’s initiative in Huntington-Ashland metropolitan area, deemed as the “unhealthiest place in America” by the Associated Press, to promote better eating habits in a largely low-income area. This is along the same lines of what he has done in England where he has tried to completely revamp school lunch programs all over the country. What we’re trying to do in Newark is along the same lines as what Oliver is trying to do, however we want people to eat the food that they help grow in or near their own neighborhood; we want to completely integrate the people of the City into the system from ground to plate.

If you want to check out the Times article about Jamie Oliver (I would its very interesting) then click here.

NJ.com featured an article (with an accompanying video) about the garden and food education programs that have been introduced to some of Newark’s schools. You can find it here.