Q&A
Urban agriculture projects and initiatives facilitated by the Office of Urban Agriculture
1:18:09
·
157 sec
Council Member Farías inquires about the number of urban agricultural projects facilitated by the Office of Urban Agriculture since its establishment. Qiana Mickie explains that they have established 7 different initiatives supporting various urban agriculture models and economic development.
- The NYC food each training supported 9 food and food hub businesses
- The reimagining farm to school initiative leveraged 16 city-based contracts for various partners
- Impact includes working with thousands of students across 5 boroughs
Amanda Farías
1:18:09
Entire docket of questions.
1:18:10
So thank you for writing this out with us.
1:18:14
Just just some quick first ones.
1:18:16
Since the office's establishment last year, how many urban agricultural projects have you helped facilitate?
Qiana Mickie
1:18:24
Do you mean, just to clarify, initiatives or particular projects?
Amanda Farías
1:18:30
If you can give us both, that would be helpful.
1:18:33
Initiatives that we have throughout the city or if there are a handful of projects.
1:18:36
And I was briefly looking through the report.
Qiana Mickie
1:18:40
So, in the past few years, we've established 7 different initiatives around urban agriculture and innovative, production that supports economic development as well as, other urban agriculture models.
1:18:54
However, within those initiatives, they're designed to leverage this our city's office to support, the breadth of UrbanX stakeholders.
1:19:03
So that number is a little bit larger than that.
1:19:06
So while there's 7 overall initiatives, there's different, ways that we have been supporting partners.
1:19:12
So, for instance, the city, the NYC food each training, with the current funding that we have, we were able to support, 9 food and food hub businesses within that training with, additional scaling.
1:19:27
Moving forward, we, expect to support more through our work on reimagining farm to school.
1:19:34
We connected with, 4 4 urban, gardens and one rural farmer.
1:19:40
But again, the learning doesn't just stop at that project.
1:19:43
It also, continues with what we're able to do.
1:19:47
Sorry.
1:19:48
There's, getting a little hot.
1:19:50
There's one concrete example that I could probably support.
1:19:53
And in the reimagining farm to school initiative with our current pilot program, we were able with that $200,000 funding, state and federal, to leverage 16 different city based contracts for nonprofit partners, urban growers, food and farm businesses.
1:20:09
But in terms of the impact, we would need to continue to talk to our partners.
1:20:15
But what I can share is beyond that, we worked with, with that initiative, a few 1000 students in the 5 boroughs, with our school and farm visits.
1:20:27
Students were able to bring their families, and then they said they were coming back to the farm.
1:20:31
So, I can say right now we're at a smaller scale in terms of projects and initiatives.
1:20:37
But what we've seen is the way we approach our initiatives, the impact goes further into the community and supports, existing stakeholders and the work they're doing already.
