Growers, Activists, GU Professor Talk New Orleans’ Urban Agriculture
“Land access for urban farming, certainly in the city of New Orleans and many other places, is very difficult — to get it and to sustain it,” Broom said at the event.
By Shivali Vora,
The Hoya
March 27, 2025
Excerpt:
A sociology professor at Georgetown University chaired a March 13 panel with a community activist and teenagers involved in sustainable farming, in advance of the release of her new book.
Yuki Kato, an associate professor, wrote her book, “Gardens of Hope: Cultivating Food and the Future in a Post-Disaster City,” on the role of urban gardening in New Orleans’ disaster response and rebuilding following Hurricane Katrina. The student speakers work at Grow Dat Youth Farm, an organization that gathers and trains young people in New Orleans in sustainable urban agriculture.
In the years after Katrina, farms, gardens and green spaces around the city have emerged as a tenet of New Orleans’ rebuilding. The urban agriculture movement aims to bring diverse groups of people together to increase both food security and appreciation.
The community activist, Pamela Broom, said land access is a major challenge facing urban gardening initiatives in New Orleans.
“Land access for urban farming, certainly in the city of New Orleans and many other places, is very difficult — to get it and to sustain it,” Broom said at the event.
Grow Dat, located in New Orleans’ City Park, is an example of urban agriculture that has flourished in recent years. Staffed by local high school students and led by graduates of the program, the farm has produced over 50,000 pounds of food annually since 2022 using sustainable methods such as avoiding pesticides, rotating crops and cover cropping, the practice of growing specific crops such as grasses to protect and enrich the soil underneath.
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Source: https://cityfarmer.info/growers-activists-gu-professor-talk-new-orleans-urban-agriculture/
