The Urban Farming Supply Chain In The Modern City
As urban farming is becoming a serious business in many cities around the world, it’s interesting to see how the city farming scene extends its influence from a ‘vacant-lots-only’ phenomenon to a ‘rest-of-the-city’ phenomenon.
Recently we mentioned the urban farmer meeting hub Farm:shop in London. But this combination of an urban farm and a bar, shop and expo venue is not the first example of the increasing visibility of urban farming in the streets of our cities. In New York, an urban farming style shop opened doors in 2011. Two branches, one specialized in aeroponics and the other one in hydroponics, serve urban farmers in the Big Apple with everything they need to fulfill their duty. Also Portland has its Urban Farmers Store, and in Brooklyn some urban farming entrepreneurs run the Haysees’s Big City Farm Supply Store. Apparently the urban farming niche is big enough in some cities to enable people to make a living on it.
In many American cities we find urban farming supply shops situated in regular shopping streets. Egg|Plant Urban Farm Supply is Minnesota’s source of supplies and inspiration for your own backyard homestead. The shop sells seeds, plants, soils and tools for small-scale urban kitchen gardens, as well as backyard chicken-keeping supplies, canning and preserving, fertilizers and pest control, all with an organic and sustainable focus. Seattle Farm Supply is an urban farming supply company based in the Seattle area. It specializes in backyard poultry farming supplies including baby chicks, coops and brooders to feeders, waterers and supplements. SFS also offers worm composting equipment, raised flower beds and more.
Urban farming gets professional! Thanks to an upcoming business-to-business circuit in urban farming it’s becoming easy to buy your seeds, soils, rainwater harvesting barrels and drip irrigation systems or whatever you need in a shop in your neighborhood. Who doesn’t want to live in a city that offers these highly specialized services?
