#015: Farm School NYC's Onika Abraham lays out the history, challenges, and hopes of community gardens in urban America, including the need to restore equity by reclaiming the commons and to empower those closest to problems as the authors of solutions.
Onika Abraham is the Executive Director of Farm School NYC, the co-founder of Black Urban Growers, and one of the organizers of the Black Farmer Fund. She completed an apprenticeship at the Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems in Santa Cruz, CA and is a certified Urban Gardener through the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Onika serves on the Real Organic Project Advisory Board.
To watch a video version of this podcast please visit:
https://www.realorganicproject.org/onika-abraham-voting-with-your-fork-wont-end-food-apartheid-episode-fifteen/
The Real Organic Podcast is hosted by Dave Chapman and Linley Dixon, engineered by Brandon StCyr, and edited and produced by Jenny Prince.
The Real Organic Project is a farmer-led movement working towards certifying 1,000 farms across the United States this year. Our add-on food label distinguishes soil-grown fruits and vegetables from hydroponically-raised produce, and pasture-raised meat, milk, and eggs from products harvested from animals in horrific confinement (CAFOs - confined animal feeding operations).
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We believe that the organic standards, with their focus on soil health, biodiversity, and animal welfare were written as they should be, but that the current lack of enforcement of those standards is jeopardizing the ability for small farms who adhere to the law to stay in business. The lack of enforcement is also jeopardizing the overall health of the customers who support the organic movement; customers who are not getting what they pay for at market but still paying a premium price. And the lack of enforcement is jeopardizing the very cycles (water, air, nutrients) that Earth relies upon to provide us all with a place to live, by pushing extractive, chemical agriculture to the forefront.
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