[...] Covenant House is introducing its kids to the transformative possibilities of urban farming. They're working with the New Orleans Food & Farm Network, which is helping to build a community of urban farms and urban farmers around the area. Through a new partnership, the Food & Farm Network will help kids served by Covenant House turn 10 empty lots in the Treme neighborhood into new fruit and vegetable farms. They'll receive training and education, they'll work together to grow food and they'll watch as once vacant and neglected plots of city land become productive property by their own hands. The fresh, healthy produce of the new farms will be served at group meals at Covenant House and also sold to local restaurants to help fund the Covenant House mission.

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Green Shoots in New Orleans

A frustrating quest for food security has led some residents to grow their own.

Margarine, margarine, ‘I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter.’” Poppy Tooker recalls the months of food shortages after Hurricane Katrina ripped the Gulf Coast apart. “I could not believe there was no butter.” According to the New Orleans native, one unfortunate but little-noticed repercussion of the storm was the demise of dairy. As a food activist, she understood the heavily industrial process of butter churning, preservation, shipping and storage. But in light of her city’s rich culinary history—fresh collards, crawfish étouffées and endless okra—the dearth was particularly jarring. After “a concentrated three-day search,” Tooker found her grail—in Baton Rouge, more than an hour’s drive out of the ruined city. From August 2005 until, well, now, thousands of city residents have been living what Pamela Broom, a food-justice advocate also born and raised in New Orleans, calls “the fron tier life.” Richard McCarthy, who reopened one of his farmers’ markets just ten weeks after Katrina, recalls the shortages with a grim look. Privileged shoppers trucked to nearby Jeffer son Parish for essentials, but “there just wasn’t enough anything,” he says. Early returnees picked through food bins alongside National Guardsmen with automatic weaponry.

Read the full story in The Nation →

by Judy Walker, Food editor, The Times-Picayune
Thursday September 10, 2009, 4:05 AM

A healthy lunch is served at Samuel J. Green Charter school.

If there's one thing that parents and students from all walks of life can agree upon, it is this:

Most school lunches leave a lot to be desired.

Saturday from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., you can help do something about that. The Edible Schoolyard New Orleans at Samuel J. Green Charter School will host an event that is one of 290 nationwide, all designed to do one thing: Urge Congress to make the national school lunch program better and healthier.

Read the full story on Nola.com→

Of all American cities, present-day New Orleans best exemplifies the concept of resilience int its ongoing struggle to recover its position as the urban centre of the central Gulf Coast region, and as a city of national significance in tourisem, shipping, and biomedicine. Two trips to the city in autumn 2008, more than three years after 80 percent of the city was under water and the entire population had to flee for weeks or months, convince the author (a New Orleans native) that mucha tht was once considered "normal" has returned.

Read the full article in UA Magazine →

This past weekend marked the fourth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, and while much still needs to be done to rebuild the devastated region, I’m excited to learn that many New Orleans residents are sowing seeds of hope by turning abandoned lots into small urban farms.

A number of amazing organizations, including New Orleans Farm and Food Network (NOFFN), are helping to revitalize neighborhoods by creating beautiful greenspaces that provide healthy, local and affordable produce where in many cases there are no grocery stores. The gardens also improve property values, encouraging people to rent in areas that have remained otherwise vacant since the storm. Once the NOFFN and other organizations are able to navigate through the obstacles of archaic city ordinances and policies, they also hope to provide more economic opportunities with local farmer’s markets.

Read the full story at takepart.com →

"On the east side of New Orleans, three-and-a-half years ago, 90 percent of the homes in the Vietnamese community had gardens, says local activist Peter Nguyen. The green onions, Malabar spinach, daikon, cilantro, mint, Thai basil, and countless Asian vegetables that contribute to Vietnamese home cooking were grown there. Every Saturday at dawn, a few dozen growers gathered to sell their produce at the neighborhood market, and for the elders--many of whom were resettled in New Orleans after the Vietnam War--their gardens were a treasured link to the country they had left behind. But the younger generation wasn't much interested in what they considered to be the hard labor of growing, and the elders wondered how they could involve their children and grandchildren so that the traditions would continue. Then Hurricane Katrina blew through, and three decades of work tending the land was lost."

Read the full story on the Gourmet site »

"Jeanette Bell, who once taught business classes to high school students, sees a money-making opportunity in her second calling. But for the 65-year-old retiree, her motive is more passion than profit.

Bell has built a garden on a once-blighted Central City lot that she bought from the city in 2003. At the time, the Baronne Street property was so overgrown with vegetation, it resembled something out of South America, Bell said.

Now, visitors are greeted at the entrance by a rose garden sorted according to color in the French style. The back of the lot houses Bell's vegetables and herbs, all organically grown, including a large bay tree she describes as "big enough to service all the restaurants in the Uptown area."

Read the full article in CityBusiness »

"Over three years have passed since Hurricane Katrina flooded 80 percent of New Orleans in August 2005. While the population of the metro- politan region is close to the pre-Katrina total, that of the city itself is approximately 70 percent of its former level. Flooded neighbourhoods, such as Hollygrove, Gentilly, and particularly the Lower Ninth Ward, are far from their former vibrancy.

Those who have returned, however, are preparing the paths for others to follow. With large government-funded rebuilding projects slow to begin, the physical restoration of New Orleans is being driven by the efforts of many non- governmental organisations. In this context of grassroots activism, urban agriculture advocates have seized the opportunity to create a healthier, better-nourished city. "

Read the full article in Urban Agriculture magazine (PDF) »

"In her Hollygrove backyard sprouting with bell peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers and eggplant, Mary Shaw sees more than just a growing cycle reaching completion.

She spent her childhood in Napoleonville, where she watched her grandmother tend a vast garden. Then as the years passed, it seemed, people got away from planting their food. Now 61 and feeling pinched by escalating food and gas prices, Shaw is returning, literally, to her roots.

Shaw and other New Orleans residents are part of a swelling, nationwide corps of backyard cultivators who are taking food production into their own hands for reasons that gardening organizations and enthusiasts describe as mostly economic."

Read the full article on Nola.com »
Watch the slideshow with audio on Nola.com »