Blake Angelo’s “Building Urban Farmers” course doesn’t trifle with the pastoral. The first week opened with a visit from someone who set out to be a farmer and failed. The course’s fifth-week class, convened on a November evening in an extension office less than a mile from the University of Denver, covers the ways that the young, aspiring farmers in the room might accidentally poison their customers or run into a devastating lawsuit. Mr. Angelo, Colorado State University’s new urban-agriculture-education coordinator, is determined to help these idealistic students, most in their 20s and early 30s, avoid such fates.
“Can we just agree to regularly wash and disinfect the farm tools after we’ve used them?” Mr. Angelo pleads. “There’s nothing like shoveling out manure and then taking that shovel to get your fresh root crops.” The class emits a collective “Eewww.” Mr. Angelo raises his eyebrows and adds, for comedic effect: “Yeah. Seen it.”
“Cooperative Extension Service” generally conjures rural images: the farm kid raising sheep for 4-H, or the extension agent standing in a vast field, helping a farmer find a fix for downy mildew.
But Mr. Angelo represents a new and evolving role for the 98-year-old program, a prominent part of the nation’s land-grant institutions, designed to bring research out to communities for practical use. As Americans have moved off farms and into cities, the extension service has had to follow them there—both to fulfill a mission to serve the public and to remain relevant in the eyes of policy makers, who hold the purse strings. Extension programs are typically supported by a combination of money from states, counties, and the federal government, through the U.S. Department of Agriculture—and all three financial streams have been under pressure, especially since the recession.
So in Colorado, as well as in other states, extension programs are focusing more on the needs of city folk—with, for example, programs in gang prevention, youth education, and economic development in lower-income urban communities.
Louis Swanson, Colorado State University’s vice president for engagement and director of extension programs, points out that 85 percent of his state’s population lives in the urban and suburban sprawl along I-25, from Fort Collins in the north, through Denver and Colorado Springs, to Pueblo in the south.
“We are cognizant of the fact that state funding is going to be driven by a legislature that is predominantly metropolitan,” he says. Colorado State’s extension service gets a third of its money through the Colorado Commission on Higher Education and more than 40 percent of its budget through the counties. “If we are not relevant to the metropolitan sector, then we will increasingly be marginal in terms of state allocations.”
Urban Growth
Out in the country, youngsters still raise sheep and other animals through 4-H, a youth-development branch of cooperative extension, but in cities where livestock is prohibited, kids might build rockets or robots through the program. (Contrary to popular perceptions, 4-H was always intended to teach leadership skills and responsibility, not just agriculture.) Given challenges like obesity, diabetes, and crime among urban populations, the extension services in Colorado, Michigan, North Carolina, and other states reach out with antigang programs and nutrition education.
But farming is not left out. In recent years, urbanites have read the work of Michael Pollan and Barbara Kingsolver, and have clamored for more locally grown food. At the same time, postindustrial cities like Cleveland and Detroit have sought a renaissance through urban farming.
Thomas G. Coon, director of Michigan State University Extension, says that programs in his state and others are trying to help growers open up new markets in city restaurants and school districts—and in the process, perhaps even create a new industry for the Motor City. With food grown in warehouses as well as in abandoned corner lots, “Detroit could become an international center for innovation in the technology of urban agriculture,” he says.
The urban-food trend has caught fire in Denver, too. Mayor Michael B. Hancock has declared that he wants urban farms to supply 10 percent of the city’s food someday. Urban farming may be faddish, but Mr. Angelo readily ticks off the ways that his extension program responds to a real public need: Truck farmers and community gardens have been part of the urban landscape in years past; evidence suggests that small city farms can beautify and strengthen urban communities; and consumers and high-end restaurants have clamored for unusual, local produce.
What’s more, the number of farmers has dwindled—from a third of Americans at the beginning of the 20th century to only 1 percent today—and the population has grayed. “Who are going to be the farmers of the next generation?” Mr. Angelo wonders. Urban farms also provide a valuable test ground. “They get their start in urban environments where they can test the realities of these difficult and risky businesses, and they are able to scale up and scale out.”
A Viable Way to Farm
Elaine Granata, one of the urban farmers who works with Mr. Angelo, got her start farming in 2002, after she became fed up with her job as a consultant in organizational development and felt a call to the land. Her quarter-acre “farm,” cobbled together from open spaces in the city, sells food and flowers to restaurants and specialty markets. “You can’t make a living, but you can make money,” she says, sitting in her dining room in a Spanish Colonial house in Denver’s now upscale Park Hill neighborhood.
Her farming brings in as much per year as her Social Security checks; her per-hour rate might crack $6 next year. Ms. Granata says she chose to be an urban farmer because her partner did not want to leave the city, and because the up-front costs were much lower than for large-scale farming.
She considers Mr. Angelo to be her advocate and “hub” for bringing in information and pushing it out to the public. When Colorado State hired him last year, “that represented something really important,” she says, “to have someone at the university who is looking at urban ag and taking it seriously as a viable way of providing food to people.”
As a guide for farmers like Ms. Granata, Mr. Angelo is not a specialist but more of a capable generalist—someone who fills in the spaces between the policy makers and the researchers. He graduated from the University of Colorado at Boulder with a degree in ecology and evolutionary biology in 2007. Since then he has worked as a director of a nonprofit focused on community development, started a master’s program in public health, and spent time in Europe as a farm manager.
His day-to-day work can take him to Denver’s various farmers’ markets, where he records the vegetable offerings and their prices on his iPad. Or he might spend an afternoon convening a meeting between an aspiring urban farmer and a land-preservation organization. Or he might help a farmer write a grant application for equipment.
One afternoon over the summer, he meets with a female student from Denver’s Auraria Higher Education Center, home to Community College of Denver, Metropolitan University of Denver, and the University of Colorado at Denver. She is working on various campaigns against gas drilling, industrial agriculture, and, in particular, genetically modified food.
It’s a delicate conversation: Cooperative-extension programs eschew political positions, Mr. Angelo explains, preferring to distribute only peer-reviewed research and other vetted resources—which can support the use of genetically modified food.
“The empirical evidence out there is mixed and doesn’t necessarily support the claims that it’s bad,” Mr. Angelo says. He gives her the names of some researchers and local policy makers who might be useful resources, then offers an apologia for farmers who choose to use genetically modified crops, cautioning her against demonizing them: “I think if a lot of us were in the same situation we might be making the same decisions. Farming is an extraordinarily difficult occupation.”
Well-Intentioned Novices
Emphasizing the challenges of farming is a refrain in Mr. Angelo’s work. Some idealistic books out there promise would-be farmers a salary of $30,000 to $150,000 a year growing crops on less than an acre. Mr. Angelo’s course for aspiring urban farmers gives them a dose of reality, and culminates with the students producing a business plan. Many come to the realization that they may not make any money in the first few years of farming, as they get established.
Amid the burgeoning movement in urban agriculture, “the well-intentioned novice is kind of the market that we try to serve as much as possible,” Mr. Angelo says. Success might mean helping to get a new urban farmer up and running, or it might mean helping people realize that they don’t really want to make their living off the land.
At the Denver extension office on that November evening, a dinner of Southwestern chicken, rice, and salad is served as the students assemble. The more experienced farmers in the room, who act as advisers, offer a greeting familiar to those who work the land: “How was your season?”
Jamie Wickler, who is 27, and Micaela Truslove, 34, sit next to each other during class. They have similar backgrounds: Their undergraduate degrees had nothing to do with agriculture—Ms. Wickler studied civil engineering at the Colorado School of Mines, and Ms. Truslove got a degree in anthropology from the University of Nevada at Reno— but the idea of growing food for fun and profit has captured their imaginations. Ms. Wickler hopes to farm her third-of-an-acre yard in Lakewood to sell its produce to restaurants; Ms. Truslove, who managed an urban farm in Arvada, is looking for land to lease. They both have husbands who support their farming endeavors, financially and otherwise.
“This has been a big eye-opener,” Ms. Wickler says of the course. “I have more realistic expectations.”
Ms. Truslove agrees. “It has opened up a line of communication between me and my husband about the plan.”
After a discussion about food pathogens, Mr. Angelo introduces Larry Roe, an agricultural-insurance broker. His blue jeans held up with a belt buckle the size of his meaty fists, Mr. Roe peppers his talk with horror stories—like one about a farm visitor who wears high heels out in the field and twists her ankle, then ends up suing the farmers. Mr. Roe and Mr. Angelo point out that urban farmers—with their plots spread out in populated areas—might have a lot more exposure to trouble than farmers in rural areas.
After running through various scenarios and fielding nervous questions, Mr. Roe passes out his version of a business card—his name and number printed on a yellow poker chip.
“This reminds you,” he says, “that it’s a big gamble.”