Agriculture on institutional lands

FYI: Thanks Francey for sending this in from the COMFOOD listserve
Hello again,

Thanks very much to everyone who contacted me in regards to my request a few weeks ago for examples of commercial agriculture taking place on institutional lands. Below is a summary of responses I received. 

Caitlin

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• st. joseph’s hospital in Ann Arbor. They have a farm onsite, horse drawn ploy, etc
• Baltimore - ag projects on land owned by the city's school system. Non profit but they both sell food: http://www.greatkidsfarm.org/ and http://real-food-farm.org/

• CSA on a school property in Portland: Singer Hill Gardens www.singerhillgardens.org
• Brooklyn: 1 acre youth farm on front lawn of a public high school www.bkfarmyards.com
• City of Columbia, Missouri - Columbia Regional Waste Water Treatment Plan has a 125 acre parcel leased to a farmer to cut, rake, and bale hay, as well as a 65 acre tract leased to a farmer to grow soybeans and corn
• NYC - Mount Sinai hospital has a farmers market 
• Rodale Institute maintains a list of colleges with farms: http://www.rodaleinstitute.org/ffc_directory
• Virginia Tech 3,200 acre farm http://www.vaes.vt.edu/college-farm/index.htm - recommendation to check any university with a cooperative extension
• Appalachian Staple Foods Collaborative - study about the feasibility of farming on wellheads, as well as other agricultural uses of public land
• a few responses about prison farms: report on their phasing out  http://www.cga.ct.gov/2008/rpt/2008-R-0081.htm (unfortunately, this is also a trend we've seen in Canada: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/story/2009/02/25/prison-farms.html); but also info about a group that is working to revive this http://blogs.evergreen.edu/sustainableprisons/about/
   
• finally, this article from Toronto http://www.agdevjournal.com/volume-1-issue-2/139-could-toronto-provide-10-of-its-fresh-vegetable-requirements-from-within-its-own-boundaries-matching-consumption-requirements-with-growing-spaces.html?catid=62%3Aurban-agriculture-call-papers 

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Caitlin Dorward

Research Associate, Institute for Sustainable Horticulture

Kwantlen Polytechnic University

604.365.0336